Test-drive OS X betas for free!

[sir pball]

Apple has OS X Beta Seed Program to anybody with an Apple ID (formerly, it was reserved for developers who'd coughed up $99/year). If you have a spare Mac that you want to toy with, or like living dangerously and want to run it "live", you can sign up here to get the access package. It's just an addon to the App Store that lets you install the latest beta OS X as easily as Mavericks. Pretty nifty.

[NV Whino]

1. Given that it took something like four hours to install Mavericks

I think I'll pass.

[brooklynite]

2. Don't be flippant about signing Apple's Non-Disclosure agreement

I've signed a couple and I wouldn't risk revealing anything I wasn't supposed to.

[sir pball]

3. I've been under more than one NDA,

Both governmental and private; I'm entirely glib about this one since I suspect it's there as legal boilerplate* and, dead serious here, to make participants feel special, part of a "secret club".

Given that the product is entirely compiled, finished, complete software that has exactly the same access restrictions as the release version (an Apple ID), I doubt there's much in there that Apple would, or even could, go after a user for sharing; sure, it's all technically walled off by the agreement but the gate in the wall barely has a latch, let alone a lock. Can't really say the product isn't "general public knowledge" when the general public has unfettered access to it.

* - Ok, so if the beta of 10.10 has some nifty new core technology like launchd, Grand Central Dispatch, or timer coalescing (most of which are open-sourced anyway) and somebody went through the trouble of decompiling and working out the details, I could see Apple dropping Mjolnir on them, and that probably is why the NDA is there, but that's a pretty specific and implausible situation.

[47of74]

4. Hmmm...might do that.

I'm thinking of getting a Mac Mini to put everything (photos, movies, documents, etc) on and keeping my 2011 MacBook Pro around for when I need a laptop. Maybe I'll go for the beta program then and use that on my MBP.