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Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of macOS Sierra 10.12.6 to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

With High Sierra coming after Sierra it reminds me of Snow Leopard coming after Leopard...since Snow Leopard was the best version of OSX for stability in my opinion my hopes are high for High Sierra...I am guessing I will be let down but you never know
 
tkukoc said:
It's in case a developer notices a major issue. Then Apple can stop the public fanbase from installing.
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Apple developers are the coolest. I wish I was an A-lister!
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newdeal said:
With High Sierra coming after Sierra it reminds me of Snow Leopard coming after Leopard...since Snow Leopard was the best version of OSX for stability in my opinion my hopes are high for High Sierra...I am guessing I will be let down but you never know
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Also reminds me of Mountain Lion coming after Lion. Lion was awful.
 
jbachandouris said:
Don't know why they release it for developers only and then turn around and allow the public beta just a few hours later. Is there really that high of a demand that they have to be staggered?
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It has nothing to do with stress on the download system. It may have to do more with stress on the bug-reporting process.

Each stage of the testing process - internal (alpha), developer beta, public beta, and public release - exposes the software to a substantially larger number of users. A small population is capable of finding major flaws, but you need a larger population, running a far more diverse set of hardware and software configurations, to find the more obscure flaws.

A developer beta is more likely to be a constructive process than a public beta. Developers have a vested interest in seeing the new OS work (and seeing that their apps will run well on the new OS). They'll be far more likely to file bug reports and work constructively with the OS's developers than the public beta testers, who present more of a mixed bag.

While some public beta testers are actively engaged in the test-and-report process, others won't take the time to report - they have other priorities. Filing a useful bug report requires more than a simple, "It broke!" - it means analyzing and attempting to duplicate the issue, collecting logs, and describing it in terms that will be useful to the developer. A fair number of public testers are interested in nothing more than having "inside" access to the next big thing. If they get an onscreen prompt to file an automated crash report, they may just click "Ignore." If the bug doesn't generate an onscreen prompt they may do nothing more than reboot, or publicly complain that the new software is "buggy crap."

And yeah, there's some politics involved. If developers didn't get their hands on the beta before the public, they're less likely to feel like they and the OS developer are on the same team, working together to present quality products to the public. They may feel as if they were thrown to the wolves, rather than have a chance to have a ready response when the public starts filing reports (and complaints). This, in turn, affects the efforts the developers may make to adopt the new technologies and initiatives included in the OS.
 
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pommie82 said:
If it is as bad as this one then they can keep it for a couple of weeks so that we can have a solid build to work from then something that just reboots your machine every 30 seconds which is a complete waste of time

i have learnt my lesson now this is the last time i am even going to bother messing with beta because they are not worth the bother at all nice to get the new features early but at the end of the day you will get them at some point so it just better to sit tight and wait for the gold release to come out and then use that and save haven all this messing around
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Seriously, this one is so bad that it crapped out my 2015 MBP... Not ready for dev work even!
 
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macintoshmac said:
While I agree with you on the snappiness of the OS, frankly, Snow Leopard does not have the feature set that today's Apple ecosystem uses. But, I do wholeheartedly agree with you on the one thing that people remember about SL - snappiness - and that really, really matters a lot.
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MacOS is pretty slow and clunky these days, and it's very obvious when you use Snow Leopard on a machine that's far less powerful.

For all the grief over Windows 10, it's very fast even on modest hardware.

Apple doesn't seem to care about OS performance when it comes to either MacOS or iOS.
 
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On a late-2016 MBP 15, I have found that 10.12.4 was not the most stable and 10.12.5 is not the most responsive.

I hope they can provide a version that does both before High Sierra is released. Or at least I hope I'm the only one who sees it this way.
 
macintoshmac said:
While I agree with you on the snappiness of the OS, frankly, Snow Leopard does not have the feature set that today's Apple ecosystem uses. But, I do wholeheartedly agree with you on the one thing that people remember about SL - snappiness - and that really, really matters a lot.
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I know the drum keeps beating about Snow Leopard, but I use it on an old MacBook Pro 2010 for old programs and sometimes general usage...why? Because "Yes" it is faster and "snappier" then even the newest offerings and generally feels better to use. I am amazed at the speed with general tasks like just copying a file, even over Ethernet, opening stuff and general usuage. Maybe it is because it is not bogged down with graphical eye candy or other background stuff. Feels light weight to use. Regardless, why is it faster than my newer systems once I put in 16 GB of RAM and a SSD? That is not right....now a 7-8 year old system.....

Yes..now the UI feels old etc. but it seems to fly compared to the newer? Go figure..?
 
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jbachandouris said:
Don't know why they release it for developers only and then turn around and allow the public beta just a few hours later. Is there really that high of a demand that they have to be staggered?
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My guess is so public beta testers don't cry when something goes wrong and they have to reinstall the whole thing. Public betas today are more for the person that wants it now vs the person that really wants to test it out and help the process.
 
asiga said:
You shouldn't forget that there's a not so small group of users (I belong to that group) that choose not to be in the bleeding edge of new releases because we prefer rock-solid stability. I'm one of those still at 10.11.6, and waiting for the last 10.12.x update for going into Sierra. Regarding High Sierra, I don't plan to update to it until next summer at least (or even more, because a new filesystem is not something I like to betatest).

However, PDFkit could change everything I said in this paragraph. Are there any reputable experiences about the current status of the PDFkit bugs?
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Same here - waiting for 10.12.6 final before I upgrade from 10.11.6
 
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asiga said:
However, PDFkit could change everything I said in this paragraph. Are there any reputable experiences about the current status of the PDFkit bugs?
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The latest version of Sierra 10.12.5 still barfs on scanned PDF files generated by my office printer/scanner. The same files print fine from Acrobat Reader (the only reason I keep that around since Sierra dropped).
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Altis said:
MacOS is pretty slow and clunky these days, and it's very obvious when you use Snow Leopard on a machine that's far less powerful.

For all the grief over Windows 10, it's very fast even on modest hardware.

Apple doesn't seem to care about OS performance when it comes to either MacOS or iOS.
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You pretty much need to run modern macOS from a SSD. I upgraded my 2010 Mini with a SSD and it is usable now.
 
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Altis said:
MacOS is pretty slow and clunky these days, and it's very obvious when you use Snow Leopard on a machine that's far less powerful.

For all the grief over Windows 10, it's very fast even on modest hardware.

Apple doesn't seem to care about OS performance when it comes to either MacOS or iOS.
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That's why apple keeps increasing the speeds of their proprietary ssd's: Because their OS is so ****** slow that even standard ssd's (860 Eva's, etc) arent really fast enough to remedy the sluggish OS - even though they are 20x faster than the spinning hard drives we used to use just a couple of years ago!
 
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robeddie said:
That's why apple keeps increasing the speeds of their proprietary ssd's: Because their OS is so ****** slow that even standard ssd's (860 Eva's, etc) arent really fast enough to remedy the sluggish OS - even though they are 20x faster than the spinning hard drives we used to use just a couple of years ago!
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The performance equation for macOS will change again once APFS drops for everyone. Hopefully it'll reduce the overheads compared to HFS+ but I don't have any usage experience to comment.
 
Anony-mouse said:
The latest version of Sierra 10.12.5 still barfs on scanned PDF files generated by my office printer/scanner. The same files print fine from Acrobat Reader (the only reason I keep that around since Sierra dropped).
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PDFkit bugs are the only thing that worries me about Sierra. I wanted to update all my Macs to Sierra, but if PDFkit is still not as rock-solid as it used to be, I might decide to update to Sierra only one Mac, and downgrade the rest to Yosemite (because Preview in ElCapitan has bugs with old AMD GPUs which didn't happen with Yosemite). I really don't understand Apple these days. In fact, I was used to face serious bugs and incompatibilities only when using Windows PCs, and never with Apple.
 
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pommie82 said:
I don't think many people are even interested in Sierra at all any more they are more interested in high Sierra
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Be careful what you wish for. The early reports are not good at all. Check out some of the beta threads. ugg..
 
dogslobber said:
Apple developers are the coolest. I wish I was an A-lister!
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Also reminds me of Mountain Lion coming after Lion. Lion was awful.
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Sierra is good, solid release.

High Sierra will be a major step forward for the platform with APFS.

Its a wonder Apple didn't choose another name to set the two releases apart.

Sierra and High Sierra has the potential to cause confusion.
 
Altis said:
MacOS is pretty slow and clunky these days, and it's very obvious when you use Snow Leopard on a machine that's far less powerful.

For all the grief over Windows 10, it's very fast even on modest hardware.

Apple doesn't seem to care about OS performance when it comes to either MacOS or iOS.
Click to expand...


It's true, I've made old Core 2 Duo era Macbooks faster by throwing Windows full time on them, it also supports further back than macOS.

After Snow Leopard, macOS seems to really hate mechanical hard drives more than Windows or Linux, I think this is where the extra slowdown comes from on old systems (on a new system like my 15" retina it's hard to tell the difference). Windows also got very good at scaling RAM, as an accidental benefit of their tablet focus.
 
tipoo said:
It's true, I've made old Core 2 Duo era Macbooks faster by throwing Windows full time on them, it also supports further back than macOS.

After Snow Leopard, macOS seems to really hate mechanical hard drives more than Windows or Linux, I think this is where the extra slowdown comes from on old systems (on a new system like my 15" retina it's hard to tell the difference). Windows also got very good at scaling RAM, as an accidental benefit of their tablet focus.
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Much of todays software is geared towards large amounts of RAM and higher specifications. That applies especially to Linux. Ubuntu ten years ago was a 768mb download. Now its more than double that with all the Unity bloat. Precisely the same can be said of Linux Mint. It is ironic the only current major release that performs well on ten year old hardware is Windows 10.
 
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