What's the Purpose of a Beta OS & the Job of Beta Testers?

Video by Conan AKA the Crates Motel

Many people seem confused about what a beta OS is meant to be & what the responsibilities of a Beta testers are. Conan tried to clear this up, tho, this is really a video Akai should have been made like a year ago. Now, just for doing his job as a beta tester, he's getting people wishing him & his parents harm/death!

B-Wise wrote:Video by Conan AKA the Crates Motel

Many people seem confused about what a beta OS is meant to be & what the responsibilities of a Beta testers are. Conan tried to clear this up, tho, this is really a video Akai should have been made like a year ago. Now, just for doing his job as a beta tester, he's getting people wishing him & his parents harm/death!

I didn't watch the video, but the message of the underlined text is pure insanity. People are weird

BackOnDaMPC wrote:I didn't watch the video, but the message of the underlined text is pure insanity. People are weird

Very weird & not in cool way. This is part of why I made this post & think that Akai should make a video telling people what this beta thing is all about. I just heard a YT dude say that a beta shouldn't have missing features.

I think part of the issue is Akai does not seem to be doing private betas anymore; they are just doing public betas.

I pretty sure they used to do private betas first; and then progress to public betas but it seems since 3.0 the private beta has process has shrunk, so the public beta seem to be even more shoddy then previous.

jpeg wrote:I think part of the issue is Akai does not seem to be doing private betas anymore; they are just doing public betas.

They are still doing private (closed) betas, they also have a beta/alpha group working on stuff before the closed beta group.

But IMO there's no way they should have gone public with MPC Software 3 in its current state, it's too buggy and incomplete and definitely more suited to a smaller group of private testers.

Akai also have a 'flexible' definition of what qualifies as a 'stable release', the NAMM standalone 3.4.2 'release' was clearly anything but stable nor complete, and the latest 3.5 standalone is still IMO a 'beta'. I really think they have far too much on their plate ATM, they should go back to ignoring all the whiney social media rants and just hold back on stuff until the bugs discovered by the closed beta testers have been addressed, otherwise there seems little point in having a closed beta stage.

jpeg wrote:I think part of the issue is Akai does not seem to be doing private betas anymore; they are just doing public betas.

I pretty sure they used to do private betas first; and then progress to public betas but it seems since 3.0 the private beta has process has shrunk, so the public beta seem to be even more shoddy then previous.

The Force new 3.5 OS was in private beta since like February, now it in public beta. It seems more stable than MPC3.5, but the Force was always more stable from what I've seen being on both MPC/Force sites.

They shouldn't release an OS with so many problems & missing major features unless they're really trying solve most bugs section by section before they add more features. This would kinda make sense if that's the strategy. They need to be more clear on whatever their strategy is so we can all be on the same damn page!

B-Wise wrote: I just heard a YT dude say that a beta shouldn't have missing features.

Every new day, reality becomes closer to a Sacha Baron Cohen prank

I went to the zoo and there was no extinct animals at all... Why can't they have some extinct animals?

Akai has a couple of beta teams in place. I'm positive, there is one above the 'private beta testers', and likely an alpha group above that (unless its just Andy Mac saying its good because his quantize button works just fine)

The odd part is, the 'private' beta team we signed up for, makes no sense to me anymore. They will put out a release, people will **** about it for a few days on the beta forum, then Akai releases it straight to the public. No fixes, nothing. Like WTF are we even doing this for? If you're just going to go from the internal team to the private one, then immediately release that same BETA to the public, what is the entire point of the 'private tester' team when we can just wait another week and get the same build that still doesn't work because they don't listen to shit and just release stuff heh? Its not like any of us have gotten any free plugins or ANYTHING out of it aside from getting to watch the OS go to shit about a week before the rest of the public does. I gave up. I finally got my 'expanded sampler' I asked for since 2019, and it was a day late, a dollar short. It didnt show up until OS 3.0, which was fine, but the OS itself is a shitshow, and none of this stuff was backported to OS 2. I don't have time or the patience to tell them their OS is broken anymore, when they don't even listen and release it anyways.

Conan summed it up real well. The goal is to find the problems, make problems, and point them out to aid the developers in their task of clearing up quirks in the code. When we sit here and completely crap on the software it's not a strike against us or them, we are doing exactly what we should be doing as users. I know from my own dev projects, sometimes things dont become apparent until presented in the proper scenario or context. Having a wide base of users who are willing participants in that process really helps. A brutal critism is more valuable to that process than anything else.

However, if i was part of akai's team I wouldn't allow stuff to go to the beta testers until it passed through my own set of tests. If some large portion of the software is incomplete or broken, it would never go to the beta testing stage. By that point you should be past the idea stage and looking to have people test the version just one step away from release. By that point you should be showing people a fairly solid outline of what's to come. MPC still has a lot if's to it. clips? no clips? matrix record? matrix midi clips? mtc? no mtc? multi note off bug, wtf are we even doing here? etc etc. if that's planned for the future, they shouldnt be rolling out betas to their public testers.

I believe akai does this to keep people interested or content. If they left users in the dark for 2-3 years during the creation of the software I believe there may not be such a fan base. The roller coaster ride is a double edged sword. Maybe we owe it to akai to give them some breathing room to churn out a beta worthy piece of software to test. It's one of the reason my public works have ended, I want akai to have the room to just dev good software and they can't do that when everytime they post a firmware i give away their plugins and a free version of the force (which basically has been abandon, also i dont know why but could be my fault for all I know but i wont conclude anything so grandios, but if im giving it away for free on MPC why bother continuing its lineage? I feel like "hakai" stole the force from them, but ultimately it stole the force from me.. The guy who wants one the most.) I hope other people read this and go "hmm maybe he's right maybe we should let off the gas-pedal a bit."

B-Wise wrote:I just heard a YT dude say that a beta shouldn't have missing features.

Of course a release should be feature-complete before beta. Especially public betas.

OTOH, given the way people dive into these betas and try to immediately do production work with them*... maybe we shouldn't have public betas at all.

Me, I'm quite content to stay with 2.13 forever, though I really would like to be able to reorder effects.

* and occassionally work themselves into a killing frenzy...

jamos wrote:

B-Wise wrote:I just heard a YT dude say that a beta shouldn't have missing features.

Of course a release should be feature-complete before beta. Especially public betas.

A 'public beta' should be pretty close to a release candidate. This is simply for finding last minute bugs. It shouldn't be missing features, or be half functional, it should be just about ready to go.

They're supposed to find all the hardcore issues internally before it goes out and about. Akai has chosen to simply get free testing out of it by making you folks do it instead.

This is how Akai is doing their public beta for whatever reason. They did tell us that it's early & limited. I would suggest that when it comes to their "beta" we shouldn't have high expectations nor expect them to do anything normally or use industry standards.

Seem like their method is to just release it so that many people can test out sections of features at a time & focus on that before adding more. Maybe they have a small team & this the most efficient way. But this is something they would/should explain to us. Where's Andy Mac?

They should emphasize that if you're not beta testing, you shouldn't even waste your time getting it. I've heard too many users using the MPC3 standalone beta when it came out as if it was official os, in situations that's not ideal like shows & pro work. Then get upset or surprised because of issues.

Really can’t see how it can be efficient to roll out software to 1000s of people that’s riddled with issues. With no form of bug tracker and no way to check what’s been reported by others they are going to get hundreds of identical reports. This wastes everybody’s time. Maybe it suits them but it’s rubbish for the testers.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Really can’t see how it can be efficient to roll out software to 1000s of people that’s riddled with issues. With no form of bug tracker and no way to check what’s been reported by others they are going to get hundreds of identical reports. This wastes everybody’s time. Maybe it suits them but it’s rubbish for the testers.

They need a better system for sure. As of now, it is what it is. Like it or not.

they should remove the “pro” from the name AKAI pro and all will be well...