This is Technology Bytes, episode 175 for July 12, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I want to talk about the latest beta of all the OS’s that Apple released in beta 3.
And we’re approaching the time, and Apple said that the public beta would be released in July.
They never say beginning, end, middle, but many people are thinking as stable as the betas have been that the public beta might be coming sooner than later.
And some people I listen to think that this beta 3 might be okay for a public beta.
But I don’t believe that to be true.
In fact, since I’ve started on the betas, and of course I started at the very beginning, I believe each beta release has made steps backwards.
Now they’ve added things that are good, they’ve released some of the things they talked about at WWDC, but the stability has gone backwards.
And I don’t believe that this beta is yet ready for the general public or the advanced public in Apple’s eyes, because there are just too many failures, too many things that just don’t work very consistently.
And I understand that betas make that happen, but still, when Apple releases a public beta, I think the public is expecting a little more stability than what I see in beta 3.
So many times I have to reboot my devices to make them work.
Almost every morning when I’m doing my Apple Fitness workouts, I have to reboot my Apple TV so that the Apple TV will connect to my Apple Watch and I can do my workouts.
Every single morning, every single day of the week, except I don’t do it on Sunday, so not on Sundays.
But the reality is that I have to reboot my watch all the time to get double tap, to get wrist flick, to get those types of things to be available.
I use focus modes for when I’m at work, for when I’m at church, for when I’m at home, and they are terrible.
It just randomly switches between focus modes.
Almost every morning when I get up and start to my day, my phone switches into work focus mode, and I’m at home.
It doesn’t make any sense.
So what the idea of the betas is is to give Apple feedback on the things that are not performing properly.
And I haven’t done that, and so maybe that’s my fault.
I should give them more feedback, but I often think because I’m on the developer beta and I’m not a developer, that they have their hands full responding to developers who need things fixed so that they can actually update their apps.
And the things that I’m dealing with are maybe minor in perspective to that, but I’m really waiting for the public beta.
Once the public beta is released, I will stay on the developer beta, but because I know the public beta is out, I will provide Apple feedback for the things that I don’t think are working properly.
And at times I’m not very good at that, but I always think, okay, this year I’m going to do a little bit better.
But there have been a number of times where I’ve provided feedback and Apple has responded and said the next beta should fix this.
And so I know that somebody is reading those feedback information things that I provide.
And so once the public beta is out, since I am really a public beta type of person, not a developer, I will be providing feedback in that realm, in that time frame.
But I’m really hoping for beta 4 to come out.
I don’t know if it’s going to come out this next week because usually there’s a bigger gap, but maybe that one will be ready for the public.
But at the moment, I wouldn’t expose the general public to beta 3.
I know I’ve been complaining a little bit, but I really am enjoying the beta.
Some of the things that they offer are really cool.
Siri AI is still really cool.
There are times in my car now that I don’t have to remember exactly what to say and the response is proper to get me to where I want to go, those kind of things.
And in the beta 3 release, they have released the Siri app for the Apple Watch.
And now you have to have a phone nearby that is capable of running Siri AI, but I used it last night to ask a general knowledge question, and it came back and responded well.
It actually spoke to me and said this is what we think the answer is, and it was correct.
And it was really cool, and I hope to use it more, but it does speak when you use that app on the watch.
So I have to be in an environment where speech-to-text is something that I am willing to accept as feedback for questions that I have asked.
Super happy that it is on the watch now, though, and looking forward to using it more.
Still impressed with it, still really like it, still recognize that anything is better than where we were at, and I’m comparing the Siri AI to something that was not good.
And so anything makes it seem like it shines in that light.
But still, it is good.
It knows my personal things.
It doesn’t know some, those things I’ve covered before.
But at this point, I think that the public beta is probably at least a week and a half out, and Apple needs to fix some things before they get the public involved in a beta release of the iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, all the OS 27s.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at maricfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
