In a world of open development and perpetual beta, the concept of a launch has become a fuzzy one. I can’t recall the date that Windows 7 was released, for example.
It feels funny to write that a product is launching today, if thousands or millions have been using the code for months.
This isn’t entirely new, of course. Movies get previews, buildings are inhabited before ribbon-cutting. But the world of software feels even more loose when it comes to soft launches.
There was a build yesterday, a build today and a build tomorrow. Yet today’s build is special.