[wreising]

The developer preview of Tiger has been given to more that 3500 developers and is readily available to anyone on the net who is willing to look hard enough. Therefore, the idea that the preview is only intended to be available to the select few that have signed an NDA is silly.

Apple has always had the opportunity to enlist the beta testing services of its loyal followers, and this 9 to 12 month development process is no different.

Now, given the pre-beta status of Tiger, it would not be wise for Apple to let it loose without some legal protection. That being said, there is no reason that Apple couldn�t send prospective testers a contract of sorts that makes it very very clear that Tiger is pre-beta and cannot be guaranteed to not destroy all data that comes close to it.

Apple gets thousands more testers ready and willing to push Tiger to its limits and submit reports and suggestions, and we get access to new toys without having to resort to less than scrupulous tactics.

I have submitted this idea to Apple, and if you are interested in playing with Tiger in the next 9 to 12 months, you should to.

Bill (wish I was still an Apple Developer) Reising

[Chuckit]

...and Apple gets bad press because suddenly everybody's reporting that Preview can no longer save to most image formats, the system seems less stable than it used to be, and the UI is inconsistent.

As cool as I think it would be, I don't really think giving out buggy software to the general public is in Apple's best interests. If you want to get an early copy of Tiger, you can pay for it by becoming an ADC member. Or, as you say, it's "readily available to anyone on the Net who is willing to look hard enough."

[dampeoples]

Who wants the support nightmare. Right now if it hoses your computer, and you're a developer, you probably signed something, or agreed to something saying it's all your fault. Too bad, and apple is off the hook.
If your some joe schmoe who downloaded it, and it breaks, too bad.

[wulf]

Probably because Apple would prefer to have a reasonable amount of focused, useful feedback and bug reporting, rather than a deluge of (mostly) vague useless whining.

[ambush]

Welcome to the never ending Mac OS X dev. seed programme debate.

Have a seat.

[x] in before lock
[x] in before sandsl's nonsense

[RooneyX]

They did a public preview called OSX 10.0 and it pissed off a lot of people because Apple didn't say it was a preview.

[JKT]

Originally posted by wulf:
Probably because Apple would prefer to have a reasonable amount of focused, useful feedback and bug reporting, rather than a deluge of (mostly) vague useless whining.

Don't they get the latter anyway... certainly seems like it!

[moki]

Originally posted by wreising:
Apple has always had the opportunity to enlist the beta testing services of its loyal followers, and this 9 to 12 month development process is no different.

Apple does not want beta testing services currently; that's not the point of the Tiger release. The point is getting the APIs in the hands of developers.