Q&A: how do I become a beta tester for Microsoft's Mac applications?

From the open question thread comes this question:

How do you get into testing Microsoft-Mac software, I have beta tested many Windows programs and was even in the "Butterfly" program.

Well, you're ahead of me, since I have no idea what the Butterfly program is. :)

There are two flavours of beta: public and private.

Public betas are just that: public. We did a public beta when we were working on v2 of Remote Desktop Connection, and we've announced that we'll do a public beta of Messenger v8. When those public betas open, we'll post on Mac Mojo with details for how to participate. We've used Microsoft Connect for our betas in the past, so you could get ahead of the curve by registering there.

Our private betas are by invitation only. I've written about this before, so I'll provide a link to that post: Q&A: How do I get into a MacBU private beta? In short, there are three groups of people who we invite to take part in our betas:

• Microsoft employees
• MVPs
• large companies

Another way that you can see early versions of our software is to take part in the usability studies that my team conducts. Right now, since we're doing a lot of studies, they're mostly held at our offices in either Redmond, Washington, or Mountain View, California.

This only applies to the applications that are made by MacBU. There are other groups who make apps for the platform, such as the Silverlight team, not to mention our web teams who have increased their support for Safari and Firefox. I can't speak to how they do their beta programmes. Whenever I hear about a beta from one of them, I usually post about it here if it's something that anyone can sign up to participate in.