Apple seeds first OS X 10.10.4 beta to developers for testing
One week after releasing OS X 10.10.3 with Photos for Mac, Apple on Thursday issued the first beta build of OS X 10.10.4 Yosemite to developers for testing.
The new version, beta build 14E7f, comes a little over one week after Apple released OS X 10.10.3, which came with substantial additions like the long awaited Photos app and video glitch. Apple also included support for the NVM Express protocol, enabling faster SSD throughput.
As a change log for OS X 10.10.4 was not immediately available, it is unclear what improvements and fixes Apple built in to the new beta, though enhancements most likely deal with stability improvements and bug fixes.
Developers can download the latest OS X 10.10.4 beta from Apple's Developer Portal.
The new version, beta build 14E7f, comes a little over one week after Apple released OS X 10.10.3, which came with substantial additions like the long awaited Photos app and video glitch. Apple also included support for the NVM Express protocol, enabling faster SSD throughput.
As a change log for OS X 10.10.4 was not immediately available, it is unclear what improvements and fixes Apple built in to the new beta, though enhancements most likely deal with stability improvements and bug fixes.
Developers can download the latest OS X 10.10.4 beta from Apple's Developer Portal.
Comments
Last chance for stability before 10.11.0 ruins it again. And thus the yearly cycle of beta testing begins anew.
Oh put a sock in it, please.
Sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is only change. Lately Apple has been kind of a mixed bag. I appreciate the fact that we are "cool" and "cutting edge" but change for the sake of change is irritating to those who use Apple products as business tools and are not developers (or extreme techies)
Change is neither good, nor bad.
Improvements are good, change for the sake of change, bugs, and deterioration are all bad.
The problem is, when change and the pace of it are driven by marketing, not engineering.
Example: MobileMe to iCloud transition when there was no way to sync key chains for two years, and even now, only a single keychain can be synced.
Example: Photos isn't ready for prime time, cannot replace either iPhoto or Aperture properly, while flipping off the entire pro segment. Just like iPhoto and Aperture could share one library, so could Photos and Aperture: inspection of the transitioned libraries shows that they are structured very similarly, so a rather minor update could have made Aperture compatible with the Photos library until Photos is advanced enough to replace Aperture and has plug-in support such that third party extensions could pick up the slack.
Instead we get marketing driven change whether or not the software is ready; if you can't put your computing needs on hold until maybe two years later Apple's engineers catch up with the marketing changes; you're constantly screwed, particularly since Apple barely supports anything but the very latest versions of their software, incl. major security fixes they only roll out for the latest software.
You know, ever since the developer beta program has existed for OS X I have always run the latest betas of all the OS X iterations. Of course I always clone my boot drive and back up all data (these days with Carbon Copy Cloner's wonderful ‘make a sparce disk image’ function for the boot drives). I simply run a hard clone of all data every night at 6 p.m. for data drives.
I install OS X betas on several Macs, a new cylinder Mac Pro 6 core, a Mac mini 2014 and a 2010 MBP i7 15" and a 2012 MBP i5 15”. I am doing real world work on these and have all of Apple's Pro apps and of course all the standard Apple software as well as Adobe CC and many utilities.
I have two observations:
Firstly I have never had any issues other than occasionally third party plug-ins might not work but very often the companies have betas versions too they are always happy to send me and usually ask for feed back.
Secondly I find it an invaluable way to be ahead of the curve in learning new changes. This is great for helping others when their time comes to upgrade.
Photos being an excellent recent example. I have encouraged my computer savvy friends to join the Public Beta testing of new OS X versions of late and they have enjoyed it tremendously especially getting a head start in Photos and new iCloud services.
In conclusion, IMHO the newest OS X betas are almost always superior to the last GM. I cannot state enough how incredibly stable the betas are even from the get-go. Photos was a bit flakey on the very first release but fixed a week later. I have never once had to restore back to a back up of my boot drives to downgrade OS X.
Adobe is probably the only major company that has lagged behind in compatibility on occasions, After Effects springs to mind, but I have lived with that as Photoshop has never had an issue and that is the most important app from Adobe to me. This Adobe issue is often true long after the GM from Apple too so hardly an issue with the OS X betas.
Man, I hope it fixes my flippin' Wifi. Immediately after installing 10.10.3, my wifi starting bombing and only repeated NVRAM resets will fix it - until my computer sleeps again, that is. My 2013 Retina MB Pro worked perfectly fine before the upgrade.
Lately, I have to agree that Apple is dropping the ball on quality. It used to be you could be pretty comfortable Apple gear would be rock solid, but that's no longer the case. And it seems WiFi issues have plagued Yosemite in general. And don't get me started about Airdrop never working when I need it.