Apple Seeds Second Release Candidate Version of macOS Monterey 12.5 to Developers
Apple today seeded a second release candidate version of macOS Monterey 12.5 to developers for testing purposes. The new version comes six days after the original release candidate version of macOS Monterey 12.5 and three days after second release candidate versions of iOS 15.6 and iPadOS 15.6.
Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and after the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences.
There's no word yet on what new features or changes might be included in macOS Monterey 12.5, and nothing new of significance was documented in the beta testing period. It's likely this update focuses on bug fixes and other minor improvements to the operating system.
The release candidate update should represent the final version of macOS Monterey 12.5 that is expected to be released to the public as soon as later this week.
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Top Rated Comments
You haven't upgraded yet; how do you even know if it's horrible or not?
If you're basing your opinion of Monterey (the "mixed bag" comment) on the fact that there are lots of people in these forums that have posted issues they're having with Monterey, I'd suggest that's not the best indicator of how well Monterey would likely work for you.
A much better indicator (that doesn't exist, unfortunately) would be the percentage of Monterey users that are having a good experience with it.
You can't infer how many people are doing well with Monterey from forum posts here, unfortunately, because very few of them will create a new post to state that. Instead, people post when they're having a problem, in hopes that other forum users can give them ideas, or share a solution if they've previously encountered the same problem. (Sorry, I know you probably knew this already and I really don't mean to condescend.)
Of course there are lots of folks in these forums who know way more about macOS than me and are having legitimate problems (meaning, not "user error") with parts of Monterey. That doesn't mean you'll experience the same problems, and it doesn't mean Monterey generally sucks for most users.
I'd encourage you to give Monterey a try. (Though maybe wait until 12.5 is released to the public, which is likely imminent.) It might turn out to be a mixed bag for you, but I think it's much more likely that you'll have a good experience with it.
Best wishes.
Big Sur was the very first Apple Silicon OS and reasonable people would want to run from that to Monterey as soon as they are satisfied with it gone through several minor incremental releases. So IMHO run don't stop and install 12.5 MacOS when it goes public. Ventura in its earliest betas is like a more progression from Monterey, especially with Metal 3, Stage manger and other enhancements that make the OS more polished with AS support.