Be strong, let everyone else risk their devices and data with the new betas

Apple has now released the first developer beta versions of its iOS 26, macOS 26, and more, but it cannot be over-emphasized they will break some devices, and data will be lost. It doesn't have to happen to you.

There is now not one single iPhone app developer in the world who is not downloading and installing iOS 26. Developers of all types will be grabbing the right betas for them.

But hopefully not one single developer will be installing these betas on the devices they use for their day to day lives.

Developers have to install them on some devices, but this is why developers generally have separate iPhones and Macs expressly for testing purposes. If — actually when — a beta goes wrong in some way, it is a pain to reset that test device but it usually isn't critical.

Whereas if your main iPhone stops working, or your Mac, or your iPad, it's always critical because you will be out of action, and unless you've been methodical with backups, your data may be gone too. A developer might be able to get their device working again, or put up with the inconvenience of switching to yet another one, but you may not have that luxury.

We do this for a living, so we're going to have devices with the beta by the time you finish reading this article. Over the years, more than one AppleInsider writer has made this mistake and paid a heavy price for it.

For one of us, it seriously looked as if their iPad was permanently out of action and getting to briefly use the new features was not worth seemingly losing a thousand dollar device. That writer was lucky and managed to revivify it, but it took days and myriad restarts and resets.

For others, including the co-author of this article, Mike Wuerthele, betas have crashed macOS hard because of RAID driver software installations. Betas, especially early ones, are very twitchy.

So while it is true that completely bricking your device remains rare, it happens. The risk of losing data, or losing access, even temporarily, to a piece of mission critical hardware or vital data is simply not worth it.

With the Mac, you used to be able to just very simply restart from an external drive and undo some damage. Now you can still restart from an external drive, but it's more complex — and you have to have done a lot of work before anything went wrong.

Mac problems are the most likely

We know most of our core readership, we've spoken to many of you on the forums. This article is for some of you, but not all of you.

Who it is for, is your friend who is not as well-versed as you, and will probably come complaining to you that this beta software ate their Candy Crush data, or that very old educational app doesn't work anymore and their toddler is hunting them down because of it.

Then, too, the Mac is perhaps more prone to the other type of problem that using beta software brings. You could find that macOS Tahoe is blissfully problem-free and yet may still be in trouble.

That's because an operating system touches every part of the Mac, there is not one single app that does not rely on it. So even small changes are big, and it is close to inevitable that there will be Mac apps that do not work with the newest version of macOS.

This is in fact one reason why there are beta versions at all. Developers get to try out their apps and as well as exploit new features, also make sure that they simply work before the public gets their hands on the new macOS.

In theory those developers have time to make changes before the public release of macOS Tahoe but in practice, many won't do it. They won't because it's time-consuming and they're just not ready by September, or they won't because they know they may have to keep repeating the work.

That's because there will be changes in the beta between now and the public release. Those changes could even be significant enough that a developer will find their apps broken again.

So every year, there will be apps that do not work even at the launch of the new macOS. This means every year, across the three months or so that the software is in beta, you have to be certain that you've checked that the apps you depend on will work as you need them to.

Test pilots and other military folks have used a term in the past, we're not certain that it's still in use, but it is descriptive. When a plane crashes in test, or there's some other catastrophe, it's called "flaming data." Let other people get that flaming data about your software and hardware combo, before you risk it.

It's already clear that Apple's new updates with their Liquid Glass design are both attractive and have very many useful features. It's already clear that they will be a boon to all of us when they are officially released.

Just don't let them be a problem now by installing the betas when you don't have to.