I explained it already. They can give a date. What does that mean? Jack
shit is what it means. If it isn't reeady by the date, then they miss the
date. Period. That happened with the date they gave for the first V.90
beta.
If it is ready before the date, they'll release it early. So the date is
again meaningless. In other words - it will be ready when it is ready.
Maybe they should come out and say "December 1st, 1998" as the expected
date just to shut everyone up. Then they can ship it months early and brag
about how they but the ship date. People so insistent on dates would
probably eat it up.
Dates are for small-minded schedule freaks who need a security blanket,
or are too blind to realize they are being handed a bill of goods which
means nothing in concrete terms. I'm trying to think of one, but I can't
think of a product date announcement which really meant anything...
No matter what you do, the code is ready when the code is ready. You can
have as many dates, deadlines, projections, tarot readings, or what have you
as you'd like - and that simple fact will never change.
Nearly every time some date is given by a company one of these things happens:
1. The product isn't ready in time, and the date is 'moved'.
2. The product isn't ready in time - but ships anyway.
3. The product is, by some miracle, ready early, and ships early.
#3 is rare, rarer are products ready early that the company sits on. Unless
it is tied to some big marketing push, or a companion product, etc that is
not ready yet. And rarest are products that are some how miraculously
ready the exact date given.
Microsoft is guilty of #1 AND #2 quite a bit. Slip the date to complete
the product, and still ship crap that isn't functional without upgrades
and patches. Xylogics used to do #2 to often for my comfort while I worked
there.
-MZ
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