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.

In preparation to receive the new M4 Mac mini which supports at least two screens1, I decided to rework my desk setup and bring back the LG UltraFine 4K display on my desk. Once the migration from the old Mac mini is complete, I’ll be using a two-display setup. My Synology NAS was moved to a separate table to make some room for the LG display. My Elgao StreamDeck+ was relocated too, this time on the desk shelf.

  1. Three displays, actually. ↩︎

As I’m getting ready to receive my new M4 Mac mini1, I’m starting to think that my decision to go with a 1TB model was not really future-proof and probably downright a mistake.

  1. Remove unused apps, delete useless data (using Daisy Disk). ↩︎

At Fort Lauderdale Airport: I was really impressed by the scanner they use at the security gates. The operator uses a big screen similar to a big iPad and uses touch gestures to tilt and rotate luggage in 3D, uses a slider to see slices of the bag’s internal content. Really cool.

Many tech reviewers are discussing the unusual placement of the power button on the M4 Mac mini. However, none of them, to my knowledge, mention the size of the power light. It is much larger than before. Could this be annoying? Are Apple designers failing again? Is Apple doomed once more? These are serious questions. Why am I the only one asking them?