Instead of the knee-jerk reaction witnessed everywhere about the price of Mac OS X beta, I want to tackle a much deeper issue, one that I think is much more important. After all, paying for beta software is a personal choice. If you want to pay for it, do so.
Public betas force writers and evaluators to walk a very thin line.
There are reasons why beta software is already hard to evaluate and to depict, not to mention the issues surrounding potentially facing hundreds or thousands of users who have their own conceptions and misconceptions on what the unofficial release is supposed to be like. At first, let us go through what I consider to be the biggest hurdles. These are the most annoying ones since they simultaneously allow companies to have their way and people to question your judgment without reservation. People will tell you that you do not know your stuff if you complain about anything related to usability since anything can be said of performance in a beta release. You cannot report any problem whatsoever since as this is a beta, people expect problems but will push this expectation to the limit to say that ANY problem is excusable because it is beta.