Apple today released the third beta of macOS Ventura 13.4 to its public beta testing group, allowing the general public to try out the software ahead of its official launch. The third macOS Ventura 13.4 public beta comes two weeks after Apple seeded the second public beta and a day after the beta was provided to developers.
Public beta testers can download the macOS 13.3 Ventura update from the Software Update section of the System Preferences app after installing the proper profile from Apple's beta software website.
The macOS Ventura 13.4 beta adds a new beta installation method where developers and public beta testers can opt-in to receive beta updates without the need for a profile to be installed. For developers, an Apple ID needs to be associated with a developer account to get access to a developer beta, while public beta testers need to sign up on Apple's public beta website with their Apple ID and then elect to receive beta updates using the System Settings app.
Work on macOS Ventura is winding down as Apple prepares to shift its focus to macOS 14, the as-of-yet-unnamed next-generation version of macOS that we expect to see introduced this June at WWDC.
Friday January 9, 2026 8:17 am PST by Tim Hardwick
2026 could be a bumper year for Apple's Mac lineup, with the company expected to announce as many as four separate MacBook launches. Rumors suggest Apple will court both ends of the consumer spectrum, with more affordable options for students and feature-rich premium lines for users that seek the highest specifications from a laptop.
Below is a breakdown of what we're expecting over the next ...
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Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
Friday January 9, 2026 4:24 am PST by Tim Hardwick
The Unicode Consortium has published a draft list of emoji that could come to smartphones and other devices in the future. The list shared by Emojipedia outlines 19 emoji candidates under consideration for Emoji 18.0, which is expected to be finalized in September 2026.
Among the proposed additions are a squinting face emoji, left- and right-pointing thumb gestures, a pickle, a lighthouse, a ...
Friday January 9, 2026 10:08 am PST by Eric Slivka
Back in late 2022 and early 2023, Apple rolled out a new architecture for its Apple Home platform to deliver improved performance and compatibility, although the rollout came with some hiccups that forced Apple to pull and later re-release the upgrade.
Three years later, Apple is now on the verge of ending support for the old version of the Home architecture, which may result in access to...
In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, U.S. Senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Lujan, and Edward Markey have requested that Apple and Google remove X Corp's X and Grok apps from their app stores over recent incidents of "mass generation of nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children."
X has come under fire over the past week amid reports of Grok's AI image...
iOS 26 is showing unusually slow adoption among iPhone users months after release, according to third-party analytics.
Usage data published by StatCounter (via Cult of Mac) for January 2026 indicates that only around 15 to 16% of active iPhones worldwide are running any version of iOS 26. The breakdown shows iOS 26.1 accounting for approximately 10.6% of devices, iOS 26.2 for about 4.6%, and ...
Friday January 9, 2026 3:37 am PST by Tim Hardwick
The iPhone Fold will be the first Apple device to adopt a Samsung-made OLED technology called CoE (Color Filter on Encapsulation), which could make the display brighter and thinner than previous panels, reports The Elec.
In a traditional OLED panel, a polarizing film sits above the display to cut reflections and improve contrast. The drawback is that this film also absorbs some of the OLED's ...
Will upgrade to Ventura in October, Monterrey is stable and super reliable. Thank you all for continued beta testing, carry on!
This year was the first time I never updated any of my devices to the "current OS". Every device is a generation back, and I have no issues or problems that I am aware of. When I sit down to work I work for me, not Apple by trying to debug something they have borked.
There's always the hope that bugs are fixed... There's a truly horrendous bug in 13.3.x on Apple Silicon that randomly ejects external hard drives.
That's the BIG one that I care about too. And it's been an ongoing problem since Big Sur, not just 13.3.x. Only some externals are affected, not all. It seems to be a greater problem for HDD-based enclosures than SSD (but SSDs are not immune). Age is not a factor as I've tested some ancient ones (pulled out of retirement enclosures to test this) that work fine, while some much newer ones will NOT stay connected. Many think it is connected to sleep, but I've seen plenty of ejections while actively transferring files to/from affected drives. It is not brand based as I have 2 from the same (good) brand and one works fine while the other "unexpectedly ejects."
Fans will visit every thread about this issue and redirect to cable, settings, user, firmware, etc- anything other than Apple/macOS- but same drive + cable hooked to an older Mac running macOS BEFORE Big Sur is typically just fine.
There are also plenty of posts by people who simply upgraded on the SAME Mac and crashed into this problem- fine with the prior macOS version, "unexpected ejections" on newer macOS. It mattered enough to some of those people to downgrade back to the prior version of macOS and all was fine again- no cable change, same user, no firmware change, etc. Particularly in those cases, it seems it can only be macOS bugs because EVERYTHING else remained the same.
There are LOTS of threads about this both here and elsewhere (including Apple's own support forums). For some reason, this (almost certainly) buggy port management code cannot seem to get attention at Apple (yet). Hopefully, THIS time someone finally got to it. I've got a great external temporarily retired because I can't keep it attached while using it... unless I hook it back up to any other Mac (or a PC I now own too) and all is fine again. Older Macs running older macOS? All just fine. Latest, greatest, "most powerful ever" Mac running latest macOS? "Unexpected ejections." I really miss "just works" Apple.
I'm kind of meh on Ventura. I haven't seen anything new that would have me champing at the bit to install it on my work machine. Apple's penchant of breaking two things for every one thing they fix isn't instilling a lot of confidence in me.
I will see about using OCLP to install Ventura on my 2011 27 inch iMac just to see how that goes. Just used OCLP to install the latest Monterey and everything is good, despite a slight hiccup with Safari.
