Beta, to the best of my understanding, is a level of completion concerning software development.
There’s the alpha stage, which loosely translates to "this is the very early stage; it’s very rough around the edges".
Then comes the beta stage which usually means "almost everything works but its still somewhat buggy".
After that there may be several beta versions. Beta 1, 2, 3, 3a, etc.
Then comes the release candidate, often abbreviated as RC. The latest downloadable version of Windows 7 at the time of this writing, for example, is an RC. There may be a few versions of that as well. RC 1, RC 2, etc.
Some software titles skip the RC development part altogether and go straight from beta to release.
Speaking of which, the official release is the final version. For example, on my XP computer box I am running Internet Explorer 8. Not 8 beta. Not 8 RC. It’s the official release of 8, period. The long version number is 8.0.6001.18702, like this:
And with Firefox it looks like this:
You get the idea.
Beta to me means unfinished. I have never defined beta as "cool", because anything "cool" is worthless when you’re trying to get things done.
If Apple released an "iPhone 4G beta", the first question by iPhone users would be, "Why would Apple release an unfinished product?"
Upcoming Linux distributions that are in beta stage make it quite clear that everything doesn’t work like it’s supposed to and to expect that. This is perfectly okay because, well, betas are supposed to be buggy.
Generally speaking, the only time beta is misused as "cool" is when it comes to web sites such as Gmail. And in fact this may work against Google, because in all honesty, who wants to subscribe to a service for enterprise use that has "unfinished" tacked right on the title of the product?
Not exactly a confidence booster.
What do you think?
I personally never use Betas. I learned that after trying IE8’s Beta: It completely screwed XP. Everything slowed down. And indeed, everything worked fine after I had to use System Restore.
But then again Gmail is still in Beta and it runs divinely!
I am amazed at how long Gmail has had beta written next to it. But I guess when you are Google you can get away with that. They are pretty much at that unstoppable point where no one seems to question them. Even though they probably have the worst customer support ever. Wait do they even have customer support?
So I would imagine that is where Apple feels that it is and is probably correct. They could not only release a beta to their cult members but I bet they could charge double for a beta than the release version and would not get any complaints. All the fanboyz would be happy to pay!
Could you imagine if Microsoft tried half of the stuff that Apple or Google do? I guess that’s the price for being #1.
I personally never use Betas. I learned that after trying IE8’s Beta: It completely screwed XP. Everything slowed down. And indeed, everything worked fine after I had to use System Restore.
But then again Gmail is still in Beta and it runs divinely!
One message here is that alpha, beta, release candidate, etc. can mean whatever the company that releases it wants it to mean. As you have already mentioned, why is Gmail still considered Beta, yet another company may release something that is full of bugs and call it a final release?