Developer Preview - Good idea or bad?

[Great deal]

I was responding to a different thread and I thinking about the 8.1 DP, is it a good idea or not?

The good is ironing out the kinks before release.
We can also see and hold MS accountable, to an extent with their Apps (XBM, etc)
They come across as listening and caring.

The bad IMO is that the competition can see what's happening
People install it with the kinks and issues and take to the forums and vent frustration, create a negative cloud which can poison opinions.
People start comparing ios7 with latest Android and 8.1 DP - very dangerous for MS

MS (I pray) have features they are withholding, as under promising and over delivering are key to winning us over and telling others about how great MS and the platform is = increased awareness and market share. With a DP and no nice surprise its actually a disappointment when its officially released.

What do you think?

 

[Pete]

It's good for developers, good for consumers, and good for Microsoft

* Developers can get their new apps out into the wild and get good feedback from actual users (not just their mum)
* Consumers get to use the new system early
* Microsoft get to test their server and services infrastructure and get time to squash a few bugs/add a few more servers

The arguments about competitors getting early information doesn't really hold water - a few months back we saw some select developers being given super-early private access to the APIs - within hours, details were leaked.

It doesn't matter what gets released, people will complain about things on the internet. Being positive about anything doesn't really seem to be that popular.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

I was responding to a different thread and I thinking about the 8.1 DP, is it a good idea or not?

The good is ironing out the kinks before release.
We can also see and hold MS accountable, to an extent with their Apps (XBM, etc)
They come across as listening and caring.

The bad IMO is that the competition can see what's happening
People install it with the kinks and issues and take to the forums and vent frustration, create a negative cloud which can poison opinions.
People start comparing ios7 with latest Android and 8.1 DP - very dangerous for MS

MS (I pray) have features they are withholding, as under promising and over delivering are key to winning us over and telling others about how great MS and the platform is = increased awareness and market share. With a DP and no nice surprise its actually a disappointment when its officially released.

What do you think?

The dev preview is just a preview in name only