14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has launched Apple Software Customer Seeding, or AppleSeed, a program where customers are invited to test pre-release software products in order to provide Apple Software Engineering with real-world quality and usability feedback.
Unfortunately, the program is only available to those who receive an invitation via email, but there’s always the Apple Developer Program which you can enroll with and download all the pre-release Apple software you want.
“This program is designed for customers, not developers,” Apple outlines.
“Software seeding is not for everyone. Participants testing developmental software must tolerate the unpolished nature of a pre-release product. There is always the risk of data loss,” Apple adds.
If you’re selected, you are promised a first look at new and upcoming software products while empowering you with the ability to provide feedback directly into Apple’s engineering team.
This time around, you’ll get to test out Lion, Apple’s latest desktop operating system that builds on Snow Leopard and adds specific iOS elements most common to the iPad builds.
Apple is doing this because it needs the feedback “to improve the overall quality of our products by testing it in many different environments.”
“Your experience with our products impacts our future success and this program will help us facilitate that goal,” the Mac maker adds.
Cupertino promises to roll out appropriate forums based on the product team's needs, so expect a dedicated Mac OS X Lion discussions board to emerge soon.
In addition to the upcoming forums, Apple will put the existing web forms, discussion lists, mailing lists, engineering questionnaires, and bug reporting tools at customers’ disposal.
Testers are to receive specific instructions for each software seeding project, Apple said.
It is unclear how the process of downloading and installing Mac OS X 10.7 will unfold for non developers (i.e. what does Apple provide them with in order to do so?), but we trust our readers to shed some light on that.
Those who receive their invitations are encouraged to share the information in the comments, before they proceed with signing Apple’s confidentiality agreement.