The WWDC 2013 hall in San Francisco with a large iOS 7 banner above the crowd. Photo: User:glwx, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
On June 24, 2013, two weeks after unveiling iOS 7 at WWDC, Apple released the second developer beta for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. We reported it in a short news item. It is worth revisiting, because the way Apple handles betas has changed a lot since then.
2013: betas behind a paywall
In 2013 iOS betas were officially available only to members of the paid Apple Developer Program. Each device had to be registered by its unique identifier (UDID). A grey market grew up around this: websites sold "UDID registration" to non-developers, and plenty of people installed early builds of iOS 7 on their main phone, only to discover broken apps and poor battery life.
iOS 7 beta 2 itself fixed many bugs from the first build, added an iPad version and brought small design changes. The final iOS 7 arrived for everyone on September 18, 2013.
Today: anyone can test
- Public betas. Apple's Beta Software Program, which reached iOS with iOS 9 in 2015, lets anyone with an Apple Account test upcoming releases.
- Free developer betas. Since 2023, developer betas have been available with a free developer account as well.
- A switch in Settings. Since iOS 16.4, betas are turned on in Settings > General > Software Update > Beta Updates, with no profiles or UDID tricks needed.
Should you run a beta on your main phone?
Usually not. Betas can break apps, drain batteries and, now and then, cause data problems. Apps that check the integrity of the system can behave oddly too. Banking apps sometimes stop working on early builds, and licensed betting apps may refuse to log in until the developer certifies the new version, a point we touch on in our guide to casino apps and App Store rules.
If you want to try a beta, use a spare device, make an archived backup first and remember that going back to the public release means restoring the phone. For jailbreak fans in 2013, betas were also a way to see which holes Apple had quietly closed. These days that cat-and-mouse game happens mostly between Apple and professional security researchers.