I was using the AppleSeed discussion forms as recently as October of 2024. I’ve been an AppleSeed member for YEARS, but I was never super involved in the discussion forms. Still, they were a valuable resource and felt like a little private club even after Public Beta was a thing.
Something about watchOS 11 destroyed my Series 9’s ability to charge or hold a charge, and Apple Support refused to replace it under warranty or AppleCare while it was on beta software. This was a huge pain in the ass and soured me on doing free labor for Apple. Before anyone chimes in, I definitely knew and accepted this risk beforehand, you don’t need to scold me. Anyway, I decided this experience changed the cost/benefit equation for me and I almost entirely stopped running betas and stopped paying attention to the emails they sent, though I never unenrolled and still have access to them in Software Update. Since October 2024, I would
very rarely install an RC of a point update if I had read it solved an issue I was having with the stable public release, but then I’d immediately get off the beta train at the next opportunity. And I never again put beta software on my watch, full stop.
For the uninitiated, the AppleSeed builds for the last many years were essentially identical to the Developer builds, but my Software Update would show them as distinct (also distinct from Public builds). Even if I rarely/never installed them, they were always a couple of taps away.
Now along comes 27 OSes and I gotta admit I’m feeling the itch again. While I’m not willing to run betas of 27 OSes yet, I’ve heard that 26.6, not yet released but also in beta, prepares the new Spotlight index that Siri AI and other features will need, so I just installed the 26.6 AppleSeed beta on my iPad today and went looking for the discussion boards for the first time in almost two years. Not only can I not find them, this thread seems to be one of the few mentions I could find online of the boards being inaccessible. I’m not terribly surprised, but it’s too bad.
If I find anything else more definitive, I’ll come back here and post about it just for the public record. If someone knows what happened in my time away, please chime in.
@imacken, did you ever find out what happened?
