Apple Releases iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan to Public Beta Program

Apple began seeding the second public betas of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan to members of the public beta testing program today. The updates mirror the developer builds of iOS 9 beta 4 and OS X 10.11 beta 4 that were released to developers yesterday. Although the beta versions may be slightly buggy, and are not yet fully developed, they give users a taste of what’s to come with new features in the operating systems.

The iOS 9 public beta 2 addresses the complaints of many users with the re-introduction of Home Sharing in the Music app. The update also includes a new interface for Handoff, picture-in-picture support for the Podcasts app on the iPad, new HomeKit options under notifications, an improved photo picker interface for the web, and several other enhancements. The full version of iOS 9 is expected to become available to the public this coming September, along with quite a few new features and under-the-hood improvements.

The second public beta of OS X 10.11 El Capitan, on the other hand, doesn’t add any useful new features, but focuses more on minor bug fixes and improvements. The full version of the OS, expected to be released this coming October, will feature quite a few new features to enhance the user experience. The update will include the Split View feature, which allows two applications to share the screen side by side, a revamped Mission Control interface, a ‘smarter’ Spotlight, which searches several new sources for data, an improved Mail app, and much more.

Although the public releases of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan won’t be available for several months, users interested in giving the operating systems a test run by signing up for Apple’s public beta program. Users are advised, however, that these beta programs may be quite buggy and users may lose some functionality. Apple provides detailed directions on how to backup and restore your system on the beta program website.