I make my kids upgrade their iPads first then test them thoroughly before I do my wife's iPad and iPhone. With respect to OSX I go for a major release straight

I make my kids upgrade their iPads first then test them thoroughly before I do my wife's iPad and iPhone. With respect to OSX I go for a major release straight away and test it for a couple of hours. If it's broken, I'll restore the machine from Time Machine. All the Apple users I know do roughly the same process. They're quite conservative and pick guinea pigs before they upgrade.