…”Beta” Is Bulls@#t
1. By definition, the “beta” version of hardware or software is a pre-shipping release that has gone through early developer testing (alpha) and is supposed to be very close to the final product. In reality, technology companies have use this moniker as a way to get users to test early versions in the first place under real-life conditions. They call it “beta” testing. We call it crowdsourcing. If you think about it, it’s brilliant. Take all the money that would be dedicated to Quality Assurance and User Acceptance Testing away from your product development costs. It’s costs essentially nothing, not even reputational risk because it’s in “beta,” and the upside is free resources.
2. “Beta” tags seem to last forever. Google is the poster-child for the perpetual beta, with Search being in beta for over a year and Gmail still yet to come out of it. While it is often used by developers to allow for the constant release of new features that might not be fully tested, the truth is that it’s a cop-out. Are they trying to cover their ass by deflecting blame or avoiding accoutability for a poor product experience by putting “beta” on it?
3. What’s the point of a pre-mainstream version of anything if it’s released to the mainstream right away. Shouldn’t they call them “gamma”, “delta” or “epsilon” releases?
4. ReadWrite/Web made a great point today - who needs “beta” products anymore? Why not release a product that isn’t fully baked and then offer users crappy freebies until you fix it? Evidence - Apple’s bug ridden MobileMe. Not only did they extend initial subscriptions by 30 days after the inital launch in July, but they have followed that up with an extra 60 days of free service. Wonderful! 60 extra days of a bad user experience. Great strategy! As some have already pointed out, this is a chink in Apple’s armour, yet they still seem to be getting away with it. Apple gets press for this, but I’m sure there are more than enough examples out there to exasperate even the earliest of adopters.
5. Daniel Terdiman nailed in years ago in Wired - ““The term ’beta,’ once used to describe a brief, private final round of software testing, is these days being bandied about by seemingly every publicly available Web-based service that thinks it may someday add or modify a feature.” What everyone has to realize is that a lot of technology, especially web sites, are never-ending works in progress. A fancy, greek letter isn’t going to change that.
