Paying to Be a Beta Tester? Really?

Paying to be a beta tester: is this a new trend? Glass Series was available to patron subscribers only while being in beta testing. RealMac Software offers Elements in beta as a subscription but at a reduced price. Active beta testers are actually paying of their time to use a software still being debugged and refined. Isn’t that enough? I understand that building software is hard and requires resources… but paying to be a beta tester seems to cross a line here.

I find this fascinating that according to what I’m reading here and there, I never cross paths with Trump supporters. I didn’t make it on purpose, but it might be because my interests, my online vibes, only attract non-Trump supporters?

Thought of the day for me: Apple Intelligence will take off with ChatGPT integration at the operating system level, in iOS 18.2 or later. Why? Become most people won’t see the difference and associate ChatGPT answers to Apple Intelligence / Siri1. Of course, it will depend on the way this integration is presented to the user.


  1. Something along the lines that many “ordinary people”, thinks that Apple is the one who makes all the apps in the App Store. ↩︎

I have a love & hate relationship with the US as a country. Going to Las Vegas today for a four-day business trip falls in the “hate” part because I think we cannot have those Las Vegas cities any longer. This city is everything but real. I hate to see our resources spoiled like that.