Developers and people with access to developer accounts have already been able to try out the OS X Yosemite in beta form for more than a month, but soon Apple will make the beta version of its new OS available to a much wider audience. As promised at WWDC 2014, Apple will roll out a free Yosemite public beta release this summer, so anyone who’s interested in running Apple’s latest operating system on a Mac can test drive it before it’s released this fall.
The company told The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple that the public beta will be released on Thursday, July 24th.
FROM EARLIER: Why it makes sense for iOS 8 and Yosemite to launch separately
Regular Mac owners will get the same beta version that was released to developers on Monday alongside iOS 8 beta 4, although future beta releases may not reach the general public as frequently as developer versions.
To download Yosemite and install in on their Macs, interested users should be part of the Yosemite beta program, and can sign up for it from Apple’s site. Once Yosemite is ready to be installed, users will be contacted via email with a download link.
Dalrymple warns users not to install Yosemite on their main OS X machines even though Yosemite is apparently stable, as things may always go sideways with a beta version. Furthermore, not all Yosemite features will work as shown at WWDC, particularly the Handoff continuity features that will require an iOS device running iOS 8 in order to function.
