Apple- Please Don’t Make Us Beta Testers Again

I’m excited about the upcoming announcement of Version 3.0 of the iPhone firmware but I am also more than a bit nervous. I lived through the iPhone 2.0 upgrade fiasco last summer and I never want to repeat that experience.

When iPhone 2.0 was released I was as excited as anyone else. There was no question in my mind that the new operating system and the opportunity to add 3rd party apps would be transformative for the device itself and for handheld computing in general.

Those first weeks were indeed transformative. They transformed my rock solid, super stable, long- running 1st gen iPhone into a device that, more than once, almost went sailing across the room. It was terrible. The number of times that I had to soft reset my device each day was beyond my ability to count. Moreover, at least every other day I had to wipe the entire device and reinstall everything in order to make… A FRIGGIN’ PHONE CALL!!! Time and again I would lose all of my applications. I would lose my data. I would lose my mind!

It was not pleasant and I was, at certain points in those early days, quite tempted to revert to an earlier version of the operating system or jump ship entirely. Yes, I would have given up those beautiful 3rd party applications but I would also have given up the instability that had become my iPhone. After all, what good are 3rd party applications if the device constantly crashed?

Apple had to rush version 2.1 of the operating system out the door in order to keep people from jumping ship. (And I won’t even begin to go into the whole MobileMe nonsense. What a mess!) Sure 2.1 took care of most of the issues, and by the next update I had my rock-solid iPhone back but the whole thing left a bad taste. I haven’t forgotten that there were some weeks when I absolutely hated my iPhone. I don’t want to return to those days. I won’t return to those days.

More than anything, during that period of time I felt that we were all beta testing the operating system for Apple.

I did it once. Never again.

And this time around the stakes are MUCH higher now than they were last year. And not for one or two but for at least three reasons.

First, we rely on our iPhones EVEN MORE now than we did then. Your success at turning this device into a true handheld computer makes you EVEN MORE vulnerable. It was difficult living with my flaky iPhone 2.crap0 during the second half of July. Now, however, it would completely wreck my work-flow. I rely on my iPhone far too much (and so do many many others) for my phone, my hand-held computing and for so much more now. I can’t afford a repeat of last summer.

Second, there are many more iPhone users now than there were a year ago. You pissed off a lot of people last year but this time around there are a whole lot more. At any time, but especially as the world continues to fall apart around us YOU CAN’T AFFORD to alienate so many new iPhone users.

Third, the landscape is VERY different now than it was in July. Back then it was the iPhone or… the iPhone. The initial iPhone 3G ad (revealing the first device to actually challenge iPhone domination) worked because the 3G really was the first handset to challenge the original iPhone. No longer. Now there are a slew of new Android devices (edit: okay maybe not a "slew" yet but that train has left the station and will pick up steam this year…), the Palm Pre and (gasp) even some decent looking Windows Mobile Devices. Sure the iPhone remains the best of them all but the monopoly is over.

And so I make this request…

Apple, if you can release version 3.0 having built upon the stability and power of the current operating system, I am all for it. If, however, there’s even the slightest possibility that version 3.0 will initially have the hiccups and crashes of last July, I beg you… take that extra month or two to get it right.

We deserve nothing less, we expect nothing less, and we need nothing less. And we’re not going to Beta test this time around.