As a business IT support service in the London area, we worry whenever any company thinks it might be tempted to upgrade some of their Mac or Windows PCs to the latest operating system beta.

However, the betas that Apple and Microsoft now offer to the general user base are a lot more stable than such tests used to be, and generally behave well with most software. Also, applications that don’t work are soon upgraded, in part due to the pressure of millions of users complaining that their product doesn’t work. There is also a lot of community support to help you identify common issues before you upgrade, or how to solve them if they occur.

So, there are benefits to running a beta operating system in the office: to help find any potential bugs, and to see how your business can take advantage of any of these features in products for customers or apps for users. It also encourages users to find out about the technology and new features, to improve their knowledge of systems.

With the release version of OS X, El Capitan, about to be made available, it won’t be too long before another beta for the next version of the OS arrives. At that point, it is probably worth putting your upgrade plans on hold, and letting all your users get used to the current OS. Not only is that good for office stability, but when the first beta of the next version arrives, it is likely to be a more radical change.

That will particularly be the case with iOS 10 (or iOS X, if Apple sticks to its naming traditions) when the company adds radical features to the next generation operating systems. Bear that in mind if you plan on sticking to the upgrade trail.

The same can be said of Microsoft, with the automatic update feature in its Insider program that will update the beta for you in Windows 10. At some point, these updates and betas will go wrong, break important apps and incapacitate a few devices – such is their nature. Of course, if something goes wrong, we offer computer support and Apple Mac repairs across London.