
Bad Technology: A Call for Revolution Against Beta Culture - makimaki
http://gizmodo.com/5083371/a-call-for-revolution-against-beta-culture
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danw
A tale from an usability consultant I know. They were running usability tests
on a web app by a big corporation using normal end users.

The user stopped and asked _"What does 'Beta' mean?"_.

 _"What do you think it means?"_ , asked the consultant.

 _"Well, does it mean they think they're 'better' than everyone else?"_

Unfortunately, as the article points out, it actually means it's more buggy
than the rivals products

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ruslan
The guy just complaining, but has nothing to propose. As a hard-core C/C++
programmer I'm sure he knows nothing about development process. He's just an
end-user who wants to receive all-perfect device/software with version 1.0 for
no money, no delivery delay and which never fails. Naive dreamer. It takes
years if not decades for every piece of technoloty to get polished and turned
into product, but no consumer nor marketers can wait. Another thing is, you
cannot make product perfect just by lab-testing it, you have to put it into
user's hands to find out all lurking issues. You cannot guess all possible
features user might want see in your product without receiving feedbacks. It's
all about cycles, AKA evolution.

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sh1mmer
It's seems like there is a lot more complexity in modern products but there is
also not the same kind of engineering attitude to products. Working in the
Internet industry I've met so many people without formal backgrounds,
something unthinkable in more traditional industries.

I think that the primary problem is managing complexity and that requires more
rigor and more considered product cycles. Less about feature packing and more
about reliability.

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vaksel
the problem is that now-a-days products are so complex, you can no longer
afford to wait for the product to be perfect before you release.

The guy gives an example of an old TV...but thats the thing, it was an
extremely simple technology by today's standards. Now even the simplest
products, requires you to mesh together dozens of different technologies to
work together.

And since the web, is pretty much full of nothing but startups, they just
can't afford to spend the time w/o launching asap. If they wait for their
product to be perfect, someone else will release a similar product and leave
them out to dry.

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quantumhobbit
The "Beta Culture" in the article may be derived from or justified by the
release early and often mindset of open source software. This makes sense for
open source and web 2.0 products which are easily updated. The product testing
is crowd sourced and reduces development costs. Economically this still works
for less flexible products. Apple can release an almost finished
product(iphone) and count on it's users to find the bugs and happily download
updates without losing too much mind share. A television manufacturer can't
release a patch, but the cost of replacing broken televisions must be less
than the cost of thorough product testing.

This is annoying to consumers but as long as we put up with it little will
change. Consumers 30 years ago were less tech savvy, and consequently less
tolerant of having to troubleshoot a new tv. Today we deal with computer
crashes all the time so we aren't as offend by a tv that crashes. We have
developed a tolerance for faulty technology.

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neeson
There's also the survivorship bias to consider...

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Maascamp
I generally agree with the article, though I find it a little disingenuous
coming from Gizmodo. I mean, these are the guys that are feeding the fire and
lambasting companies for holding products back to fix buggy software/hardware.
It's partially because of blogs like Gizmodo that there is such a rush to
market.

~~~
michaelneale
Indeed. Its far easier to criticise then create.

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mapleoin
/me goes off to replace my ubuntu partition with a debian etch one and my
fedora partition with a CentOS

~~~
dimitar
I am currently using CentOS on my laptop. I've never experienced weird bugs,
and everything works as expected. Isn't that boring. ;-)

CentOS is usually well supported, there is lots of tested software for it. I
couldn't find an Emacs 22 rpm, but I compiled the editor myself and it took me
5 minutes.

I've tried newer distros, but I don't miss any features from them. I feel I
use beta software when I try the newer ones.

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mixmax
Very telling - I use a Nokia phone that's around 20 years old. It's not very
fancy but it just works. Every time.

~~~
mixmax
Sorry, it meant to say 10 years, not twenty. It's a Nokia 6210 and it has
served me well for many years.

My bad..

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aswanson
Works for evolution.

~~~
swombat
I really do wish my knees weren't a beta version though.

~~~
aswanson
Likewise, as well as my eyes.

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Dilpil
Yeah, I also wish it was possible to imagine what you want and instantly
create a perfect version of it.

~~~
WarTheatre
This is not really about perfection - which, after all, is impossible - as
it's about creating high quality products, no matter how simple or complex
they might be.

If the wheel was invented with today's manufacturing mindset, it wouldn't
actually roll in first couple of years ("available in the 2.0 release!") and
probably set half the cave on fire when actually doing so ("You did read the
EULA, didn't you?").

~~~
corentin
Do you actually think the first wheel was perfectly round and that it didn't
break into pieces after some time?

All those early planes that crashed, those zeppelins that took fire were the
works of software engineers? What about the Titanic?

~~~
bmj
Sure, there are examples of spectacular product failures. But the software
industry seems to be particularly bad in this regard. We all use software that
is buggy, and most of us just shrug our shoulders and say "oh, well" or post
on our blogs about it. And, of course, we can tolerate these sorts of things
because if my phone drops a signal or an app freezes, it's unlikely it will be
as catastrophic as a zeppelin bursting into flames.

Product management would tell you that they have no choice but to rush these
things to market. And maybe that's true. Also consider that some "important"
software came from academic/research settings, where the pressure to bring
things to market was much lower (though there is considerable pressure to
publish in some cases). As an example: my employer, who writes software for a
highly regulated industry, recently hired a new product manager. We have been
preparing a minor update release for a core product, and he has been tasked to
manage this update. He comes from a company that offered non-critical web
applications. When our QC department gave him estimates for testing, he became
visibly pale, and pulled me aside to ask how, exactly, they needed that much
time to test. I responded that he would understand the first time he is pulled
into an audit by one of our clients and is asked to explain the validation
process for the software. Quality just isn't the first thing management thinks
about--it's all about getting something to market.

