Beta And Prerelease Os's

[bigred]

okay as a beta tester for both Apple and Microsoft, I keep hearing about people wanting to run OS X x86, or Vista or some other OS that isn't out to the public yet.

 

you can WANT, but most people are just incapable of using such an OS. there is so much to BETA testing and bug reporting that many of you just don't understand. for example there is this part about system requirements... sure you mean the minimum for OS X but that doesn't mean you're getting on the web or burning CD's. why not? you didn't read the hardware requirements!!! you need a different NIC and CD burner for those things. and what did you do until someone slapped you upside your head and told you? you went off ill informed ranting and raving about how bad the OS is to even lower noobs on the food chain. now instead of submitting valid and intelligent bug reports to the OS maker you're making thier product look bad because YOU didn't read directions they provided. now the public thinks the product is crap cuz you didn't read!

 

or I hear about people whining that the OS is unstable... NO CRAP! it's not perfect, even the retail releases are flawed and need fixing. and again people go off ranting about how bad the OS without regard for the true reason they are running the OS... to give feedback to the company to HELP them with thier product, not bash it. you will hear me discuss work arounds and the possitives about OS's, but you will NEVER hear me publically bad mouth a product I'm beta testing (even ME waited till the public did that first before I gave it the kick to the balls it diserved).

 

these are a list of the things you must be 100% dedicated to:

 

READING

PAYING ATTENTION

READING (yes I said it again for a reason)

TIME

PATIENCE

TIME (yes this one is important too)

TIME

TIME

READING

READING

TIME

FEEDBACK (I send between 20 and 30 emails to mac and microsoft a week on issues, many of which they fix or give me work arounds for)

 

if you're not willing to do these things, and you start whining about how the OS crashed, corrupted your work, or didn't wipe your rear end... I will the be the first person jumping all over your case about it.

 

Beta's and prereleases are NOT noob friendly. you should not e putting a BETA OS on a first or second build (heck not unless you do this stuff for a living and have been for some time). Noobs you've now been warned. so dont' cry to me about it if you have issues and / or publically cry about the troubles you're having... I WILL eat your lunch if you do.

 

however if you have a question, or want some help without being an impatient clown about it... ask in a manner that you would ask about your own product. don't say "product X sucks how do I make it work"

now with that out of my system I can go to bed

Edited November 27, 2005 by bigred

[ccokeman]

Sleep well!

[IUMaestro]

bigred, i was gonna read your post and give some feedback on it, but i decided to say (before reading it) that it sucks.

 

if you try reading this post, it won't work, the syntax is unstable, and when you try to copy it, your flux capacitors explode in the case.

 

that and when i tried to scroll down a bit to skip to his signature, the text went too fast and that's just not right.

 

^^^^DONT READ THIS POST it's got too many bugs.

[cold_snipe]

You know bigred, what I like about you is that your rants are useful to the peoples.

 

I agree tho, and also what I hate is people using beta's who have lets say a bug that is not common and only a few instances of it have been seen, and all he will do is complain, but will NOT send a bug report to get it fixed (Maybe the beta software company needs more data about that bug). So I hate beta users who dont submit bug reports. (When they have to )

[Hypnogaja]

This reminds me, anybody remember Rhapsody?

 

Special points if you do.

[LobbDogg]

I agree with you Red. I find that there are a lot of people who will bash an OS without even having a full understanding of what is going on. I see it all the time with XP. And I've got to say XP is a pretty dang good OS, and there is a lot of people who will have 3rd party sofware/virus/spyware related issues on their machines and instantly blame the OS instead of trying to submit feedback or narrow down the issue to finding out it isn't an OS issue, but something they installed a while back.

 

And yes the whole Beta thing, there is a reason why they don't just give out the beta's to the general public. Because I think they would end up with alot of negative feedback, and not constructive feedback that would help the project. Instead they would be sorting through tonnes of useless crap.

[danyo64]

you got a good point there.. ill be sure to think of that next time some1 is bashing a beta version of an os.

[aaronamd]

word! it's about time that someone said this! I run ~amd64 gentoo linux and constantly see people whine about ~amd64 builds failing to compile/useing the wrong header file on the gentoo forums there IS and always WILL be a reson that something is called beta, or even alpha.

[General912]

god advice...

 

Also you wana know why MS, Apple, etc only release their beta's to IT professionals? Its because IT professionals do things differnetly then Ethusisits. Ethusisits just want the best and most powerfull stuff, and want to try all the new things. While IT professionals have to go and learn each new thing... Thats the difference. If you arnt willing to learn a product you have no business testing it...

[OptikaliLLusion]

Good advice.

 

I remember I tried the Apple Developer Conference beta of I think OS X Tiger... god was it hard to use, although I must say it was very compatible with my then three-year-old iMac.

[Muddy]

my dad has an MSDN and he went to the Microsoft LA Conferensce, only idiots complain about BETA products.