IE7 non-public beta

I think I lot of people were expecting IE7 Beta 1 to be available to the public. Not so.

The beta versions of Windows Vista and IE7 that have just released should be interesting to developers and IT professionals. For this reason, the beta is available to MSDN subscribers and a pretty small set of pre-enrolled beta test participants.

I didn’t know you had to be an MSDN subscriber to be considered a developer or IT professional. You’d think they’d want to get copies out to all developers so they can build great new things and make sure their old code will still work. It might also help to create some buzz (via Scobleizer).

Here’s my theory. They originally intended for it to be a public beta, but aren’t as far along as they expected. Knowing that the first public release of IE7 is going to be heavily (to put it mildly) scrutinized, they chickened out and limited the beta to a less hostile crowd.

Regardless of the reasons, it’s really too bad. Just when Microsoft seemed to be letting in some badly-needed fresh air, they decide to close the windows again. Horrible pun intended.

7/27/2005 10:06 PM | Tags: Microsoft | Trackback

5 Comments feed

What, did you think MS was concerned with piddling little things like ‘interoperability?’ :-)

The restriction to MSDN members isn’t really all that surprising; Apple does much the same with betas made available through ADC. The difference is that at least you can get a basic ADC membership for free, whereas MSDN costs $$$ (though there are multiple tiers and I’m not sure which one is needed for IE7).

It’s a symptom of their positions in the marketplace. Hordes of developers are already tied to MS, so MS can dictate terms to them and hold things like this out as a carrot to try and get them to fork over some cash.

(I’m only seeing Vista itself in my available downloads, not the standalone IE7 package yet.)

heide | 7/27/2005 11:28 PM

We managed to get a hold of the IE7 installer already.

Matt | 7/28/2005 7:15 AM

People are more likely to complain than praise. Even so, it seems that the IE7 beta is not being well received.

Matt | 7/28/2005 7:30 AM

I wonder what would happen with Apple if Microsoft decided to pull out of the OS market, for whatever reason. Would Apple just become the new Microsoft since everyone would attempt to do hacks/virii with the new popular Mac OSX?

Wade | 7/29/2005 2:38 AM

[...] IE7 Beta 2 is now available. And, unlike the last beta, it’s open to the public. Since this version does not support many of the old CSS hacks, they’re encouraging developers to test their sites. [...]

Matthew Gifford - IE7 public beta | 1/31/2006 11:26 AM

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