Big Sur beta installation question

Software
1

I enrolled my mid-2013 MacBook Air in the beta program and downloaded the beta installer. I’m now on latest Catalina beta, but I didn’t see an option to install Big Sur and nothing popped up to walk me through that. I rebooted and tried again, and nothing. Big Sur supposedly will install on my MBA, and I’m not getting any error messages. Any suggestions on what I might be doing incorrectly?

2

Did it download via Software Update? It’s a big installer so it may take a while.

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3

The installer did download and took a long time. I’m now on macOS Catalina Beta 10.15.6. But I don’t have the rounded icons or the translucent look of, for example, iPhoto.

4

The public beta of Big Sur is not available yet. It is still listed as coming soon on beta.apple.com.

2 Likes
5

Thanks, that would explain it. I was going by stories published in the past day or two that seemed to imply the public beta was now available, but perhaps it’s still too soon. So I’ll wait.
Example story:

Quote from story:
“The first public beta builds can be acquired from the Apple Beta Software Program website, after signing up to take part in the initiative.”

6

The public betas are currently only available for iOS 14, iPadOS 14 & tvOS 14 (per the headline from AppleInsider). The public betas for both MacOS 11 and watchOS 7 are not out yet.

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7

Guess I saw what I wanted to see! Thanks for clarifying.

8

It was initially announced then corrected in a lot of the media coverage.

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9

I installed the developer beta on an external SSD. You have to install a profile on your Mac, and then the profile allows the Mac to install Big Sur. Then when you’re done experimenting with it, change the startup disk back to the internal disk and reboot.
The one problem with this approach is that when back in regular Catalina you still get prompted for software updates to Catalina betas as well as updates to Big Sur, so you can’t just let your Mac install every available update as presumably those would go on your internal disk.
Are we hearing anything about issues with the Big Sur beta?