Tuesday, April 10, 2012

There is a reason It's Developers Only

Vidit Bhargava
Yesterday I was reading a blog post on the internet, it was talking about how early Mountain Lion users were facing issues and how the same would not have been in Steve Jobs’ era. Hardly anything different from What Apple critics would say, but it left me to ponder on something. Why do people download Developer Previews when they aren’t developers?
Of course there is a reason why developer only previews are released, they are meant for developers who want to make their apps compatible to new standards, evaluate or suggest changes which will eventually help their firms make their product better and provide ‘users’ the best experience.
Quite certainly developer previews have some glitches, errors and aren’t fit for consumers at all. There isn’t any problem with that. Obviously That’s why they are developer only, so that developers can help software companies iron out any kinks in the software, to make them bug free and more secure before the final product comes out.
The problem arises when every kid with a tech blog and access to torrents downloads these previews and berets the software for having glitches, which puts forward a negative image of the software. Why peep into the kitchen while the food is being made?
Part of this Problem is the extensive media coverage a developer preview gets. Just minutes after the arrival of a new operating system’s Developer preview, the world of tech news is filled with In-Depth Previews of the developer preview. That is bound to make users excited to download the preview and try it themselves.
Using a developer preview can be disastrous for the end-user. Me being a developer myself downloaded a developer preview of Windows 8 a few months back to help myself with web-app Development, while the preview helped me test my HTML5 apps on the New operating system, it also posed problems beyond my reach! For example the frequent blue-screen of death while shutting down was a major issue and I was hardly able to debug it from my end. Eventually I had to give up the idea of using a developer preview and use my good old Windows 7 instead. The same happened while using early builds of the iOS5, though the problems were more controlled then and there weren’t many crashes and it was a more productive outing, which helped my app Development team to be on track with the latest operating system and the latest frameworks, but A few really irritating software issues were imminent even in the later stages of the Beta Program.
Summing it up I’d like to say, Developer previews are not for download unless you are actually a developer and not some techblogging teen geek.

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