Testing is not optional — unless your customers are desperate.
Why would the brilliant engineers in Cupertino forget to test the iPhone weather application for temperatures below zero? It seems basic, but a lot of important details were missed on the iPhone.
Thorough product testing is considered optional by most Web 2.0 companies and even Gadgets 2.0 product companies (Apple).
So go ahead, slap the words alpha and beta on any product and sell it to the masses. Smart co’s do it strategically though. Launching without testing is a good method of bootstrapping. It works only if you offer something customers really desperately want. Me Too products need testing, True New products can slide if they include something customers are really desperate to use.
If your product is only marginally better than what is out there, but at a better price or slightly improved service model – testing is not optional. The few switchers you can find will tell you the product sucks and move on, leaving a trail of suck tags in your products’ wake.
Apple’s customers complain loudly and so do Google customers, but for this list of good things they do, iPhone and Gmail are enough of a magnitude better that the Outlooks, Hotmails, and Blackberries of the world that loud complaints are ignored.
Anyway, at least I’m not in Boston anymore, so I really don’t need my iPhone weather to go below 0 degrees.
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