Please sign my petition, Apple, commit to never again wilfully excluding disabled people from public betas

I can't agree. There is a feeling floating around, something that, in my opinion, is growing like an urban legend. The premise is: recently, Apple's accessibility is getting worse. And in my experience it's not true at all. It seems to me that some users don't remember what happened with older ios versions, or they never tested beta versions.
That said, from my point of view, a lot of users think installing a public beta is just the fastest way to the next ios version, and it is not. Sometimes developers cannot stop the complex betatesting process because of a feature. We must assume that voiceover is a feature' not a priority" Perhaps it should be a priority, but some users have no complains against the accessibility of their cities, their goverments services, their new microwave or whatever, while every new ios release seems to be the end of the civilization.
It's only a bug that will be fixed, possibly in one or two weeks, don't waste all your energy fighting the wind. The paradox here is as follows: the more a company works on the accessibility of their products, the more complains from the users because it's not perfect. However, companies that simply ignore accessibility seem to be free of complains, campains and groups of people standing up for their rights.
Just my opinion, respectfully.

I would care about this if we treated mainstream companies like Apple and Google the same as VFO, Humanware, and others. Quite frankly these companies that quote make things for the blind give us something then never really fix major bugs with the software. Yet we don't stomp our feet and act like children. I'm not saying that's what your doing here, but reflecting on what I normally see here on this forum. I use a Braille Note Touch plus I can make it freeze where the only way to fix it is to pull the battery I've reported this for years, because it was also reproducible on the touch and HW hasn't fixed it. I don't like being excluded from things, but at the same time they did put out a warning and let us know. I think there are far more challenges for me to get involved with this just isn't one of them.

Will do so. Unlike some people here, I do believe that Apple did not consider those blind people who are doing beta testing. They do not get it and will not.

Thanks Jonathan for this, I got your email message yesterday and have already signed your petition.

I fully agree with you and Holger, that although VoiceOver is considered by many a feature, in my mind it's a crucial feature to many blind users.

For Apple to willingly release a Developer and Public Beta that completely breaks VoiceOver and prevents blind users from providing critical feedback to Apple in order to improve the experience for all blind users was, in my book, completely unacceptable.

It seems to me we forget history, and also how much better this was handled than the status sell incident of iOS 8 mentioned in this here fine post, noting of course that was a public release all those years ago. Let's be thankful we're a month or 2 away from the official release of this software, as dictated by history. Also, the issue was noted quite clearly, even before the public build was out, and could be found quite easily in the feedback assistant without the need for this being posted here and causing a bigger commotion than it's worth. The apple accessibility team has pulled through bigger messes in the past, so i'm sure this nasty little bug will get the hammer of bug smashing in at most a couple weeks.

Thanks for this Jonathan. I posted an entry over at my journal last night about this. I think the entry is pretty self-explanatory, but I will reiterate that I was rather surprised to see this. Here's hoping the issue will be rectified very soon. P.S. That is a good song indeed.

Yes, it sucks that VoiceOver is broken in this beta release.

We will never know the specifics of what caused VoiceOver to be broken. But, unless you think that Apple did it on purpose because they hate blind people, the most likely explanation is that an unintended/unexpected consequence of a code change was to either break VoiceOver support or introduce issues that made it practical or necessary to disable VoiceOver support for this release.

If this is indeed the case, what would we reasonably expect them to do?

Option one is to do what they did - issue the release as planned, but with a warning to VoiceOver users.

The only other option I see would be to simply not issue another beta release until VoiceOver is working again.

Who does the latter benefit? It doesn't benefit me, as the more beta releases in the hands of testers, the better the finished and complete software should be.

So, those of you criticizing Apple for issuing this release, what do you think they should have done when faced with broken VoiceOver support and are working to a deadline to get watchOS 7 released?

As I said right at the start, this doesn't mean that I am happy with broken VoiceOver support, I just don't know what people expect from Apple based upon the likely reason for it, the fact that it's a beta release, and the reality that Apple is working to a deadline.

For days I have seen tweets saying "Do not install the latest watch OS because it breaks voiceover." "Voiceover is broken in the latest watch OS do not install!" You are a well connected individual who should know better than to install the update. This petition is a waste of Apple's time.

I don't much like the petition either. As has been said here multiple times, Apple did, in fact, issue a warning to VoiceOver users to *not* update to this beta, and that if they went ahead and took the plunge anyway and still enabled VoiceOver, there might be a massive hit on battery life. You are a well-connected accessibility advocate and should definitely know better than to post a petition like this. Seriously man, do better next time around.

You have the tools, the training, the voice, and the knowledge needed to make accessibility become a more wide-spread thing. Petitions like this don't do any favors for anyone in the long-run. And we wonder why a lot of companies tend to look at us as ungreatful or whiny. I will certainly not be signing this, nor will I be installing any of the public betas on any of my devices. I can wait until the software is formally released to the public to install it.

I feel that this is really a one-sided petition. When high sierra broke VoiceOver on the Macintosh computer there was not much the people ever did about complaining to Apple about accessibility and how voiceover works. I will sign the petition if it is changed to include how voiceover works on the Mac and the iPhone otherwise no one should sign this petition.

Deliberate exclusion? I don't think what they have done can be called that. Perhaps something very important was wrong with voiceover, so instead of keeping voiceover with that extreme wrongness, they prefered to get voiceover out of the system to fix it. I'm sure they will put it back in the next time. You don't want such brokenness? Don't test the betas.

there isn’t anything I can add to this which hasn’t already been eloquently stated, however, I do want to lend my voice in ascension to those who are apposed to this petition. As has already been pointed out, Apple made it very clear that voiceover will not work with watchOS beta 4 for developers, or public beta 1. Alternative for this is simply to uninstall the beta profile from your watch app, wait for the next release, which will undoubtedly bring us a fix, and get on with the business of living. With betas come broken pieces and parts for everyone, hence the nature of beta testing. Does it suck, of course it does, but I’m one of those who just uninstalled the profile, and still have VO running smoothly on my watch. This is a good thing, because I need it for a rowing challenge which is due to continue tomorrow.

As for the petition itself, and the seeming motivation behind it, had Apple not warned us about the existence of this voiceover conflict, we’d have every right to be upset, however, the message has been in the beta release notes since beta 4 Dev version first went live. As far as I’m concerned, and thankfully those of you who also think and acknowledge the reality of a situation before tossing out such knee-jerk reactions, that’s all they could have, and should have done to prevent unintentional installations by VO users.

Lastly, in response to Jonathan being an accessibility advocate, and one of this community’s figureheads with regard to technology, if this type of response to an issue Apple has already acknowledged *is an issue and will doubtless provide us a fix for in a few days, I for one cannot say I am happy about owning this method of so-called leadership as it relates to what the blind community represents for me. Again, thank you to those of you who wrote well-considered responses to this issue, and who can see reason and obviousness amid all the me too responses.

If the petition was proposing a rational, logical argument, something along the lines of "Apple would delay the release of a beta if the screen wasn't working, ergo, we're requesting that in future, issues that prevent Apple's screen reader from running be treated with the same priority", I'd have signed. Instead, I'm being asked to sign another petition that's choc full of unnecessarily divisive language (the word "willfully" in the title to take perhaps the most egregious example), and I'm not willing to do that. I'm tired of divisive language representing me by proxy. If you want this to achieve anything, I'd strongly urge you to consider a rewrite. Good advocacy isn't only about the number of signatures you can muster.

So if I may ask, since you created the patition, it means that apparently Apple is not listening to us or treating us equally and you want this to change. So your opinion is that 100 to 500 signatures will be enough to change Apple's way of thinking? You do realize that this number means absolutely nothing to Apple? In fact, I would say they get 100 hate mails every day that have to be dismissed. Now, I would like to write some more about the entire situation. When you are beta testing, you are signing up for a build that is potentially completely broken and unusable. You are saying that if this was an issue for sighted users, this would be fixed and the beta would not be released, which is 100 percent factually incorrect. Would you like a proof of this? Here it goes...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/28/apples-ios-132-release-bricks-homepod-for-some-users
if you read this one carefully, you will notice that this bug affected the stable release of iOS 13.2, not a public beta, not a developer beta, a stable release. The update completely broke home pod for some users, which is a very, very serious issue. So I would ask you to please never mention that Apple is doing this intentionally again. Apple has made the watch accessible from day 1, you literally had Voiceover support in the first generation, while most other competitors bring completely inaccessible watches, or accessible but with major issues and inconveniences. So you are trying to tell me that we should petition Apple for breaking a beta release, yet be fine with products which are completely inaccessible? Can you name 5 brands of smart watches that can be used completely independently without any sighted help that are not Apple? I know I can't.
Now, let's focus on the bug itself and Voiceover being broken in the current beta of Watch OS. How many blind people use a watch? Do you know what is the total percentage of blind watch users for Apple? Now, out of all those people who do use a watch, are all of them beta testers? I would say no, in fact that percentage is even lower. So you are telling me that Apple should not release a beta until a bug is fixed that affects 1 percent of users, if even that? By that logic, Apple should never release a single beta, because almost every beta will be unusable for somebody. I'm sorry, but how beta testing works is that bugs affecting larger groups are prioritized, this has nothing to do with Apple, it's how Microsoft, Google, how everybody does it. Even then, bugs slip through, unusable betas are released for literally everybody. There was an iOS 13 beta that literally bricked IPads, and I didn't see petitions about that. It makes me very sad to see such a petition. Apple is giving us so much, yet we always cry and want more and are never happy. Instead of spending your time on this, I wish you spent the time to petition Google and make their Wear platform (the Android smart watches) a lot more accessible then what they are now, because that is when I feel excluded. I feel excluded when I hear that Talkback is on them still an experimental feature and works well only on a few models, not when I cannot use a public beta release. I understand your arguments that the time for reporting bugs is limited and that we should have the right to do the same, but this argument works both ways. So if let's say Apple avoided releasing this beta because of Voiceover, 100 percent of watch users would not be able to report a single potential new bug. I'm sorry, but if I was Apple, 99 percent of beta testers being able to report bugs is certainly more important than excluding all that and focusing on the 1 percent of blind users. This feels extremely ungrateful and unreasonable to me, and I am very surprised to see a petition about pre release software. Again, whenever you think Apple is deliberately doing this, just go ahead and tell me what other smart watches can successfully be used. Apple could have also went with the logic of oh well, watches are not so common amongst blind people, nobody else seems to focus too much on the accessibility, so maybe we could release Voiceover a little later, but no, they did it right away. Thankfully, somebody else already pointed out the tone and the language used in this petition, and I felt it necessary only to point that the same can very well and has already happened in betas for sighted users.
With that, I look forward to the release of next beta, which is most likely going to be in a matter of weeks, and about which I am 100 percent sure the bug will be gone. Not because of the petition however, but because Apple is probably very well aware and is working hard to resolve it. All we are doing is making their job even harder by sending complaints about a bug they already know and wasting the time of everybody who has to deal with our bug reports.

I think some folks are missing the point here. Regardless if Apple issued a warning to not update to the public beta they were aware of this issue during the developer release. Would we want Apple to release an official build of IOS knowing that Voice Over would not work? Would a warning advising Voice Over users not to update be acceptable simply because it would not coincide with a release timeline? The bottom line is that Apple would not release a developer beta or public beta if doing so meant that general users could not see their displays. Warning or no warning the message this sends is that Voice Over users are expected to take a back seat. Obviously, I know that this is not how Apple feels about equality but we are not guaranteed that this issue will be fixed during the next developer or public beta release. We should praise Apple when it is warranted and we should take them to task when it is warranted as well.

We have been warned not to update so I won't be signing this.

Apple didn't leave us out, in fact;they included us by writing what they did.

As for Rob asking if i'd be ok with apple saying don't install the latest version of IOS because voiceover doesn't work on it, I would. I might want the latest features but at least I'd be warned and then if I do the stupid thing and install it, that's on me.

Last I knew, this public beta cycle is optional. There was a warning from Apple that VoiceOver is problematic and not to install the beta if you rely on Voiceover. Therefore, your device is still usable if you don't install this particular beta. VoiceOver is software built into the operating system. When there is a beta cycle of the entire operating system, every part of that operating system is considered to be in beta, including VoiceOver. There will be bugs during a beta cycle. To say it is acceptable for certain bugs to exist while others shouldn't exist doesn't make logical sense to me. After all, that's why it is called a beta. If VoiceOver itself was flawless, bugs elsewhere in the OS could cause unexpected and undesired issues to occur with VoiceOver. Such undesired side affects could potentially cause VoiceOver to be unusable, even though the problem might entirely lay elsewhere. Should other accessibility features in the OS be excluded from bugs during beta cycles too? This seems completely unrealistic to expect certain parts of beta software to be bug free while thinking it is reasonable too expect bugs from other areas.

So I normally don't comment on here, but reading through all of these comments has compelled me to give my two cents on this.
I think this petition is absolutely valid. Apple, as awesome as they are (and I promise that is a genuine observation from me, not mocking) are not above reproach. Just because they are, in many respects, a leader in accessible mainstream technology doesn't mean they're faultless or get it right every time. The fact is: Voiceover users took a back seat. We were seen as less important than getting the beta out there on their timeline. And yeah, it was great that they warned us; that's more than other companies would do, but that should have never had to happen in the first place.
The issue is, so many of us see accessibility as a feature, a perk, or something a company provides out of the kindness of their hearts. That's not true. Accessibility is a right. It's not a privilege; it's not a charity service, and it's not something we should have to beg for. Like many have pointed out, if this beta broke the touch screen interface for sighted users, it would have never seen the light of day until this was fixed. Look at the bigger picture. Sure, it's not a big deal to some now. But will that change when the official release comes out and there are a hundred accessibility bugs that could have been found and squashed in the beta if it had been accessible? The change starts with us, truly. When we stop seeing our access needs as subject to the whims of the non-disabled, the more power we will have.

While I'm seeing both sides, I against the petition myself. Look, if apple wanted to make this disabling of voiceover deliberate? The only thing they would have needed to do, iis not put on the notes that voiceover was broken on watch os 7.4. As simple as that. I'm guessing the voiceover breaking was a bug or something. One thing is forsure though; this was accidental. If it was deliberate, the same thing would have happened on mac os and ios betas, and, to top it off, they wouldn't fix it; if they did it deliberately. The evidence that apple warned; and clearly warned; I might add; about voiceover beeing broken on watct os 7.4, and the fact that they will fix it; state against this beeing deliberate, although yes, it sucks that voiceover has taken a backseat, and that most people have the misconception that accessibility is a feature. However this petition... I really get the why it was made, but I believe there are better ways to handle this and claiming that apple is excluding users. What i'm going towards is, the breaking of voiceover was not deliberate. The fact apple released the beta even with this... I'm trying to be neutral on this. I see why some think this was deliberate, that they knew and still chose to release it, however the argument that there could've been a major problem and they had to resort to disabling voiceover in order to fix it, is also just as valid. The truth is, we'll never know why apple went ahead and released said beta with voiceover beeing broken. Nntil the reason is known though, all this is speculation. Who knows, maybee the ones saying this release was deliberate are right; maybee not; but until we know more, jumping to one extreme or the other... is kind of rash without having more information.

How those developers who release beta of apps can continue to make accessibility for apps such as Weather Gods to be accessible? This mean that WG will have to wait until next week Cross finger for the next release of OS with VO to continue to make sure that the app will work well for the watch along with the phone. I know those who were doing beta are not able to contribute to any beta program of apps that they sign for it until VO is added again in the beta 5. They lose 2 weeks of making sure their apps are accessible. Think about it. So if Bella the cat has an app and was tested in OS 7, bugs will not be address ASAP. So those who may cry about the app not working well, think Bella the cat lost 2 weeks to address this. Lucky all of you she is not interested in developing apps.

2 weeks means nothing for app developers for one simple reason, they test their apps with each new beta and make sure it works as advertised, or at least that is something they are supposed to do. That is the reason it is called a "developer" beta. Even more importantly however, it happens very, very rarely that a developer needs to modify their app so it is accessible in the next beta. If an app follows accessibility standards, it will most likely remain accessible without any issues, so I am afraid this is a non issue.

hi Jonathan, I'm with you.
I already signed.
this should have been done a few years ago.
but patience has limits.
and limits demand rights ...
thanks for the courage good friend.
God bless you.
cheers.

I've started using an IPhone just over an year ago. still, I feel the following with due respect to everyone.
in my opinion, voice over or any other accessibility feature is not just a feature. it is what allows blind and other disabled people use a Tec independently.
if voice over was not working, why release the public or developer beta? this just proves we've a long, very long way to go before accessibility is mainstream. apple did not mention any accessibility feature in WWDC 2020 as well. why? probably they think it'll be too boring. accessibility isn't yet mainstream and we should change this.
I have never signed any petition before, but I will sign this one. just because I want to live in a world where accessibility is not an afterthought but something which is mainstream.
again, disclaimer, these are my own opinions and I do not want to disrespect anyone.
in fact, I don't even know why I posted this comment but I am doing it hope that's okay :)

As a blind beta tester who has been testing beta software (both public and development betas) for years, this reaction from the community is simply absurd, and its clear to me some have zero experience with this.

I've had macs and iOS devices completely crash on me during beta releases. But you know what? I don't go and complain about how VoiceOver constantly crashes on web pages, or how it sometimes has serious performance issues. I developed my own process for beta testing instead. I keep weekly backups of my devices, download the necessary files to downgrade in case something goes wrong with my devices. I chose to take a risk, and ultimately, I am responsible for what happens to my devices, so I keep myself safe, which is what most should be doing anyway.

hey! why don't we ask apple to push the apps and gaems developers to make their games accessible.
especially the game on apple arcade.

I agree. A petition like this in my humble opinion is not necessary. Apple have fixed seveal accessibility bugs I've reported in fact i see the now in the release notes especially if there is an issue and they know it. I believe this petition will, in fact, fail.

This petition should not be supported. It misses the purpose of public beta programs. And, I would argue, makes our community look ignorant and uneducated. There are better places to focus our attention.

Public betas have two main purposes, one marketing and one engineering. The marketing one is to get people excited. I won’t comment on that because I am an engineer who has real world experience with dozens of major time critical cyclical product releases. Engineers want to get feedback on new features. That’s why we do public betas. It’s not to make the end users feel good. And what the petition author fails to realize is that in order to get that feedback, it’s often more important to release working new features sooner so that feedback on those new features can come in as soon as possible. This behavior is not a slight on voiceover users, but simply a desire to get data on the newest features in time that it can be acted upon to make a better final product.

Apple’s operating systems are date-driven releases, there is no such thing as a stop ship bug. Features will be cut if they are not ready in time because new hardware demands the new software be ready. We have seen this many times in the past iOS releases as announced features aren’t made available in the initial release, but are added in point releases later.

I would also like to point out that the public betas are always the prior dev release. There was no additional work made in the week between the dev and public beta releases. A better test is what does the next dev release look like and has it advanced? But even then, what ultimately matters is the final release.

It all boils down to this basic game theory of two options:
Option 1. Release a beta without all parts working to get early feedback on feature complete parts and be able to iterate on that feedback.
Option 2: Wait until it’s totally working before releasing a beta even though parts are already feature complete.
How does the game end depending on what option you chose?
If you chose option 1 you get more time to squash problems on feature complete units thus making your final release more stable. If you chose option 2, you lose time and risk an inferior final release that could have been better had you only the time to address feedback that came in.

The only logical choice is to pick the option that gives you the best final release. Unfortunately this time it meant VO was not supported. I’ll take that every time if I get a better final product, and you should too.

That said, there are many areas where we should pressure Apple. Two come to mind. First, I would focus energy on getting Apple to fix the backlog of VO bugs across the board and make that a priority. If the mouse or keyboard or display had as many glitches as we deal with using VO, Apple would have been out of business long ago. Let’s keep an ear on the ball and concentrate on what truly will make a difference to the final release. Second, get Apple to reject any apps that don’t pass basic accessibility tests that are available in Xcode. That alone would assure we never hear the dreaded button button button label as we flick through the UI. Now that would be worth a petition.

Thanks for your time.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchos-release-notes/watchos-7-beta-release-notes

Who's to say this wasn't already coming out? I don't believe a petition online, even so many has supposedly signed, was the force behind this. Petitions are becoming like those old school forwarded emails you'd see. Send this to ten people and good things will happen, you'll make out with the person who you've had a wicked thing for forever... It's fixed. Next topic?

So the only question I would ask you Jonathan is why not have a petition for the Samsung watch which in its final release not all apps are supported by voice assistant? maybe it’s a simple as you don’t use that platform but that infuriates me much more than what Apple did with beta software. That’s why I think this is misguided.

I sent your petition, and I do agree that Apple needs to be aware of these issues. They need to test the software internally before releasing a public beta to the public

Hello Jonathan,
I am most definitely not signing your petition. It is clear to me that while you may have worked in quality control, you have little to no first hand experience with software development. While at first this bug may seem rather serious, because you're taking things a bit personally; it's really important to realize that while developing software, especially software that sells money is what's coming first. Like it or not, we're a fairly small percentage of the population. Those of us with apple watches? Yet a smaller percentage. THose of use with apple watches who install beta software? We're at such a small piece of the pie now it isn't even worth counting. If as you keep coming back to, the screen or crown stopped working? That prevents a lot more people than us from using the thing,. They gave us a warning, and it's already being fixed in the next beta, and this is honestly already more than I'd expect from most companies. Yes, we were prevented from installing one beta by a bug, nobody forced anybody to do so however and the fact that it wouldn't work was made very well known. If this had started becoming a trend, I could definitely think differently. It didn't though, so it really seems like you're choosing a kind of odd place to stand your ground. I'm ashamed that the world listens to you, and that you represent our community. Thanks for proving everybody right.

I do not understand the purpose of this petition. You know that a beta should not be installed on a product that is used daily.
This is a bug that will be fixed. The beta is not used to brag about having the latest system, but to fix bugs, on a product used only for that!

Useless petition in my opinion, create petitions against other companies that need it more!

I guess I can't help but hope someone reads this and actually learns something interesting about how software is made, at least in the context of a large multiple team project.

When you develop projects, there are going to be competing factors that ar in conflict. This usually comes up because different teams do different things and have dependencies on one another. Some work takes longer than other work. Also, some areas of a project are considered higher risk than others. Those areas receive extra attention from QA and code reviews. Those areas demand more time in testing. Areas that have not changed much get less attention from QA, but everything does get tested. You need to remember that the ultimate business goal is to create the best final release that meets product requirements. Nothing, let me repeat, nothing else matters. The good news is that VO is a product requirement and will be in the final release. But, it's just a piece of the whole. And you need to realize that other parts are even more important that VO. Yes, there I said it. VO is not important unless there are other parts of the product that VO works with. Put simply, if there ain't no screen,there ain't no need for a screen reader.

I can imagine how the project meeting whent that day and here is my fictionalization in the form of a play script:
Scene: zoom meeting with the Big Boss and team leads discussing the project at Apple.
Boss: (sounding happy) Excellent. iOS, iPadOS, TVOS all look good for the beta release, what's the current watchOS status?
WatchLead: (reluctantly) Well, all our stuff is on schedule, but as you can see on the project plan,VO support won't be finished for another week so theres some issues there.
Boss: I know, can it be released partially as is?
AccessibilityLead: I can answer that, no, it's very dependent on this last piece and it will be totally unstable if we do a partial.
Boss: Can we release with it disabled?
WatchLead: Yes, VO has a compile flag and we can build with it off without much risk. Heck, we could compile with a flag that removed all vowels. (awkward snicker)
Boss: Give me your assessment of risk if we delay a week for VO??
WatchLead: We need the feedback for the new complications framework. We need to get battery info on that one and the sooner we get it to masses the better. I still see that as our biggest risk.
Boss: Ok, this is a no brainer. Disable VO for this one. I don't want to do anything that will jeopardize the final release date. That cannot slip. Ok, let's move on to the critical bug list.

What the petition author and signers fail to understand is Apple's actual goal of the public beta does not depend exclusively on VO. The petition's position reflects a narrow, shallow, self centered view. It fails to see the goal is to make the best final product. VO cannot be taken in isolation. I fear that this type of frivolous petition devalues real issues we face with accessibility and makes it easier to dismiss valid concerns we have in the future.

As a project manager, I'd dismiss this petition in a heartbeat. I find it analogous to someone giving a product 1 star because it was lost or damaged in shipping.

For the record, I'm not arguing here, I'm just explaining why I'm right. Smiley.

Think before you post, and more important, think critically.

I wish people would stop making hot takes about how we don't understand what the purpose of beta builds is, or that we're just entitled and expect preferential treatment. It just tells me that people haven't actually read the petition or taken the time to consider what two weeks of being shut out of the process could mean. I do think there are genuine arguments that can be made against asking them to hold off on releasing a beta build. Maybe the beta that broke VoiceOver also fixed another issue just as critical to a different group of testers. Maybe it contained features or fixes they just couldn't delay getting in the hands of beta testers. Maybe there was going to be damage done no matter which way they went. That's valid, and we can debate that. But chalking it up to blind people being stupid and entitled is disrespectful. Even if the above are all true, we aren't wrong for being concerned or for wanting Apple to be aware of just what their actions are responsible for, even if they had to take them.