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This week: how to train Apple Music to dish up better tunes; Microsoft calls it quits on the phone game; iOS 9 and El Capitan betas go public; awkward stories from Disneyland; and the REAL REASON Apple is building a “Spaceship” campus…

Our thanks to Bushel for supporting this episode, the simple-to-use cloud-based tool that anyone can leverage to manage the Apple devices in their workplace. Get Bushel for free for up to 3 devices when you sign up at Bushel.com/cultofmac.

Show notes ahead, my friends.

As you may have heard, Apple released the public beta for OS X El Capitan yesterday. Since I tend to ignore the risks of beta software in favor of all the new features, I downloaded it on my mid-2011 MacBook Air. Do yourself a favor: don’t be like me. Understand and acknowledge the risks of beta software. It’ll save you time and data.

The third big beta update for Apple Watch is here.

Two week after Apple released the second watchOS 2.0 beta, the third beta version of the Apple Watch operating system is now ready for developers to install through the Apple Dev Center.

The iOS 9 beta has been out long enough for me to give it a fair test drive and discover all that it has to offer. So in today’s video, I’m going to give you a rundown of all the new features coming to your iPhone this fall.

Apple seeded iOS 9 beta 2 to developers today and while there aren’t any groundbreaking new features or drastic improvements, the company did manage to add a bunch of little changes and tweaks across the OS.

Most of the improvements are small design changes, but there are a couple really useful additions too, like adding Handoff to the app switcher, search improvements are more.

Take a look at everything that’s new in iOS 9 beta 2:

Apple’s second OS X 10.11 El Capitan beta is now available to download for registered developers. The release comes just two weeks after Apple previewed the big update at WWDC and made its first beta available for testing.

Apple just unveiled the future of OS X with the developer preview of El Capitan, but it’s still trying to squash some bugs in El Yosemite with the fifth beta of OS X 10.10.4.

Apple may have announced iOS 9 at WWDC yesterday, but it hasn’t forgotten about its iOS 8.4 beta. A fourth release is now available to developers ahead of this month’s public rollout.

The fourth beta of iOS 8.3 was released to developers today, less than two weeks after Apple dropped the third beta.

Previous betas have added new features like racially diverse emoji, two-factor authentication support for Google, and an option to download free apps without entering your password. The second public beta of iOS 8.3 was also made available to participants of Apple’s public beta testing program.

Along with the iOS 8.3 betas, Apple also released Xcode 6.3 beta 4 with Swift 1.2. The betas are available in the iOS Dev Center or as an over-the-air update if you already have the third beta installed. The release notes don’t mention any major new features, but we’ll let you know what we find once it’s installed.

Here are the direct download links:

Apple has released the fourth beta of OS X 10.10.3 to both developers and the public this morning, less than a week after the company seeded the third beta.

The new beta is pretty much identical to the third beta released last week, but adds a fix for the new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that prevented it from working with those machines previously.

Apple’s second iOS 8.3 beta, which was pushed out to registered developers on Monday ahead of a public release later this year, enables Siri to speak seven new languages, testers have found. It also brings more performance improvements for older iOS devices like the iPhone 4s.

If you’ve been interested in trying out Apple’s iWork suite of productivity apps for yourself, but don’t have an Apple device to try them on, you’re in luck: Anyone can now create an Apple ID and sign into the iCloud Beta website to use Pages, Numbers and Keynote for free.

Apple has today increased the annual subscription cost of its Mac and iOS Developer Programs in several countries across Europe. While the prices remain the same at $99 in the U.S., Europeans can now expect to pay anything from $96 to $121, depending on where they live.

A crucial part of making apps involves the beta testing process, and Apple has released a new tool to help streamline the process for everyone.

After initially previewing TestFlight for third-party developers alongside iOS 8 at WWDC in June, Apple made it available for use today. Developers can now invite up to 1,000 beta testers, including non-developers, to try early builds of their apps before they hit the App Store.

A neat trick that allows old console emulators and other unapproved apps to be installed on iOS devices without jailbreaking is set to be wiped out with iOS 8.1. Apple has finally taken action against the “date trick” many users have long been taking advantage of, and it’s going to make playing your favorite SNES and Game Boy games much harder.

[UPDATE: Lots of readers report that the new option to activate iCloud Photo Library isn’t showing up on their devices. I’m looking into it. So far I know that the GM version — the one I used to write this guide —  and the final version are identical, build number 12A365. My guess is that Apple turned off the beta already]

iCloud Photo Library is rad. The idea is that all your full-res photos (including RAW photos) reside on Apple’s servers, and you access them from all your devices.

That’s a change from Photo Stream as it is now, which stores only the last 1,000 photos you took, not your whole collection. Apple has also introduced new tiers of iCloud storage pricing to cope with all your photos (and videos). This is now live, and I signed up for the 200GB option ($4 per month) to test it out.

Let’s take a look.

Apple’s software testing partners have reportedly received a new iOS 8 beta build that fixes a whole bunch of bugs present in beta 5. It seems the Cupertino company won’t be making this release available to registered developers, but sources say a GM seed is right around the corner.

The sixth developer preview of OS X Yosemite is upon us, and like always, Apple has made some noticeable and not-so-noticeable changes. This time around, there are some new wallpapers included alongside general design tweaks.

So in no particular order, here’s what’s new in OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 6:

Apple has seeded the third beta of OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 build 13F14 to developers this morning, just six days after the previous beta and all its bug fixes were released.

In today’s video we take a quick look into the revamped Apple TV software – 7.0. Which was released to developers earlier this week, which gives us a good indication to what the final software will look and feel like when released to the public this Fall.

Take a look at the video above to see the 7.0 beta for Apple TV in action!

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The fifth beta of OS X Yosemite was released to developers a few days a go, with the operating system getting closer to a general release, in today’s video we take a look at the subtle changes Apple has made in the latest beta.

Take a look at the video to see the changes in action.

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Google today rolled out a new Chrome beta for OS X — officially dubbed Chrome Canary — which finally takes advantage of the 64-bit processors built into the latest Macs. The change should mean better performance when browsing the web, but it isn’t quite ready to become your daily driver just yet.

The impending fall release of OS X Yosemite has been on the minds of most developers since WWDC, but Apple is continuing to make improvements to OS X 10.9 Mavericks with the release of the first OS X 10.9.5 beta that’s slim on new features, but big on bug fixes.

Alongside the fall release of OS X Yosemite, iTunes will be getting its own new look and feel. In today’s video, we show you exactly what to expect in the upcoming iTunes 12.

Check out the video above to see the sleek new design of the latest iTunes beta and some of its new features in action.

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Nearly two months after Apple announced it would release a public beta of OS X Yosemite, participants are finally getting their download notifications, allowing non-developers to access the new Mac operating system for the first time ever.

The initial public beta is the exact same build that’s currently being tested by registered developers, but Apple is giving 1 million people access to OS X Yosemite on a first-to-sign-up basis.