Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 to Developers [Updated: Public Beta Available]

[haddy]

Careful folks, on two machines (MacBook, iMac Pro) updating to 10.13.3 beta 4 (17D2034a) killed USB external storage from being seen - a showstopper. Two (an SSD and a Seagate 3TB HDD) were no longer recognized by either system. Have to recover to 10.12 now.

Umm...not on my machine late 2012 27" iMac. And my build no: is 17D34a

 

[tywebb13]

Umm...not on my machine late 2012 27" iMac. And my build no: is 17D34a

Not sure what anticipate got on his MacBook. Probably 17D34a actually. That's what most other macs got. But on his iMac Pro the build number given is correct as 17D2034a.

So far the iMac Pro has been getting its own special versions of system updates including betas and the 10.13.2 supplemental - and this necessitates their own special build numbers.

Maybe at some stage they will "converge" but there is a special thing only the iMac Pro is getting called the macos brain which no other mac gets. I think that will stop such convergence till 10.14 betas are released. Or maybe just the final 10.13.3 or 10.13.4 betas.

So far however they are getting separate build numbers.

 

[anticipate]

Not sure what anticipate got on his MacBook. Probably 17D34a actually. That's what most other macs got. But on his iMac Pro the build number given is correct as 17D2034a.

So far the iMac Pro has been getting its own special versions of system updates including betas and the 10.13.2 supplemental - and this necessitates their own special build numbers.

Maybe at some stage they will "converge" but there is a special thing only the iMac Pro is getting called the macos brain which no other mac gets. I think that will stop such convergence till 10.14 betas are released. Or maybe just the final 10.13.3 or 10.13.4 betas.

So far however they are getting separate build numbers.

Sorry, that build number was for the iMac Pro only. I installed it on a Mac mini and the iMac Pro, not the MacBook. And clearly it has issues... even the internal card reader disappeared under that beta.

Luckily, I was able to go into the recovery partition and restore. It showed I was restoring a "beta", but actually restored 10.13.2 (17C2120) which is what it came with. Very messy.... though not exactly surprised.

Regardless, be careful. This beta messes up USB storage devices entirely and kills the internal reader. I filed a very detailed Radar report.

 

[The Friar]

No specific number really, basically as many as Apple goes with. There can be some history for reference, but ultimately it's still just history.

Is there maybe some relation to the amount of bugs the testers come up with? And the complexity of them?

 

[C DM]

Is there maybe some relation to the amount of bugs the testers come up with? And the complexity of them?

Doesn't appear to be (not that we really have much access to that kind of information).

 

[Steve's Dead]

What exactly is MacOS Brain, has this been discussed anywhere? Does it handle hardware provisioning?

 

[The Friar]

Doesn't appear to be (not that we really have much access to that kind of information).

The last part i can understand.
But the seemingly inconsistent amount of Beta's that Apple fires at it's Betatesters has me slightly puzzled to.
No OSX update seems to have the same amount of Beta's before final release.
Im sure there must be some kind of philosophy behind this modus operandi, but wich one?

 

[C DM]

The last part i can understand.
But the seemingly inconsistent amount of Beta's that Apple fires at it's Betatesters has me slightly puzzled to.
No OSX update seems to have the same amount of Beta's before final release.
Im sure there must be some kind of philosophy behind this modus operandi, but wich one?

In part it depends on some schedules, in part on how much has changed and if issues are being found, in part on them making call on when they feel it's good enough, etc. All of which can be different for different releases.