I disagree. Fifteen years ago, we were actually beta testing. Nowadays, all we see is a limited distribution and it is called a beta. The testing is all negative confirmation; if no one says anything, it must be okay. When I tested software years ago, we actually TESTED it. I tried to break it. I sent in a report form. It just does not seem to be the way things are done any longer, even with wide releases like OSes. It is not just Apple.
The luxury of electronic distribution for fixes is a beautiful thing, but it has made the x.0 releases just a public beta. What we call beta now was the alpha of the past. I am not expecting bug-free.
There is no excuse for Apple to have buggy releases, especially with Lion. Lion is running on such limited hardware (only Core 2 Duo machines and up) and Apple controls all the hardware. When was the first Core 2 Duo machine released for Apple, mid-2006? Even the peripherals are limited because of limited availability. Has any operating system so widely distributed ever been so limited in the hardware it can be installed on?
Apple tends to get it right, but it takes some time. I still have my 10.6.8 partitions for booting into my production environment. My recommendation is if you need vetted stability, go with 10.6.8 if you can. Wait for 10.7.2 or 10.7.3 until you jump in.
What you say, about how beta testing used to be, is true. I agree that "open" beta testing is a better way to do it. Microsoft did the exact same with Windows 7, and that turned out to be a solid OS from day one of public release. However, as it stands now, open beta testing would be nothing but cumbersome for Apple. In their eyes, if they release an OS that is
stable enough (that be open to interpretation), and work out the kinks in the months following the release, it is as good as openly beta testing. Whether that will yield good results, or whether it is at all good for the consumer is arguable. It has worked generally well in the mobile space, with iOS, and, clearly, Apple is moving to the same model in the desktop (and laptop) space; whether it'll work, or be as successful, only time will tell. This is precisely my point though, that Lion is surpirsingly solid OS (compared to SL, when it first came out), considering the fact that it, for all intents and purposes, hasn't been beta-tested properly (i.e. openly).
That being said, I am using Lion right now, and apart from a couple of apps acting up, everything else seems in order. That's not to say that Apple should go to sleep on patching Lion - I'm still waiting for an update that'll improve battery life and decrease boot times, but other than that it is fine. Overall Lion offered Myself, personally, a much smoother upgrading experience than Snow leopard did, in retrospect.
