Stability of beta 2?

[Jbobby22]

Good morning all,

I have my iphone and ipad running beta and have had no problems whatsoever. But unlike those two pieces of hardware I have only been using a mac for about a year and I use it for work. Would it be best to wait or is it safe to run the beta on my mac?

Thank you all!

 

[casperes1996]

Anything you use for work, assuming your work isn't to test out the beta, don't install a beta OS on.

 

[adrianlondon]

There's nothing major in this new release that's worth playing around with a laptop you need for work, in my opinion.

If you're confident in doing a full OS restore, then restoring a Sonoma backup (preferably Time Machine), and finally overlaying your Sequoia data backup, then feel free to give it a go. No major issues but, as I mentioned, nothing hugely new and exciting either.

 

[Jbobby22]

Thank you for that I kind of figured thats what I should do. I like dabbling with the beta's but not as well versed with macos as the other two.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you want to "dabble with betas", get an EXTERNAL SSD and use that for purposes of experimentation.

Having said that, I found the first beta stable. Second one, too.
But again, this is installed on an external USB3 SSD, and NOT on my "main drive"...

 

[casperes1996]

If you want to "dabble with betas", get an EXTERNAL SSD and use that for purposes of experimentation.

Having said that, I found the first beta stable. Second one, too.
But again, this is installed on an external USB3 SSD, and NOT on my "main drive"...

Even then. The betas can also update firmware that can still be in a beta stage when loaded into the main drive. It’s much safer to experiment this way but still poses some risks for a work machine

 

[rehkram]

Even then. The betas can also update firmware that can still be in a beta stage when loaded into the main drive. It’s much safer to experiment this way but still poses some risks for a work machine

That's a very good point. If a beta included a firmware update I'd think twice about installing it, and would probably decide to wait for the public release.

Has that actually happened in the past, or is it only in the realm of possibility?

 

[casperes1996]

That's a very good point. If a beta included a firmware update I'd think twice about installing it, and would probably decide to wait for the public release.

Has that actually happened in the past, or is it only in the realm of possibility?

It has happened many, many times. Ventura did it for example. Can't recall if Sonoma did too

 

[rehkram]

It has happened many, many times. Ventura did it for example. Can't recall if Sonoma did too

Which begs the question, how would one determine, preferably in advance, whether a new beta includes new firmware?

 

[casperes1996]

Which begs the question, how would one determine, preferably in advance, whether a new beta includes new firmware?

I mean, in theory it's possible to inspect the bundles looking for it. After the fact you can just consult System Information. Easiest is to ask a brave soul who already upgraded to the beta. Beta works fine on my personal laptop but I wouldn't put it on my work laptop.
And if you play with betas like this, always have at least two Macs anyway so if anything does go wrong you can re-flash the broken one with Configurator. Otherwise, stay on the stable track I say

 

[profdraper]

If you want to "dabble with betas", get an EXTERNAL SSD and use that for purposes of experimentation.

Having said that, I found the first beta stable. Second one, too.
But again, this is installed on an external USB3 SSD, and NOT on my "main drive"...

Makes no difference if external, the sw messes with the firmware & that could be a real problem, see:

Should you try the public beta-release of Sequoia?

What you need, what the risks are, and how to ensure you don’t have problems if things go wrong. Includes coverage of VMs and more.

eclecticlight.co

 

[VitoBotta]

So far I am shocked at how stable and smooth Sequoia has been for me. It doesn't look at all like a dev beta to me.

 

[haralds]

I've seen memory leaks, specifically in Contacts. On a 64 GB M1 Ultra, the system ran out of "application memory" in an hour. Using Activity Monitor Contacts was found to be the cuprit. Force quitting it solved the problem.

I still mainly boot into Sonoma on this system and just test certain features in Sequoia.

 

[VitoBotta]

I've seen memory leaks, specifically in Contacts. On a 64 GB M1 Ultra, the system ran out of "application memory" in an hour. Using Activity Monitor Contacts was found to be the cuprit. Force quitting it solved the problem.

I still mainly boot into Sonoma on this system and just test certain features in Sequoia.

Weird. How much memory was Contacts using before you killed it?