The "Beta Culture" in the article may be derived from or justified by the release early and often mindset of open source software. This makes sense for open so

The "Beta Culture" in the article may be derived from or justified by the release early and often mindset of open source software. This makes sense for open source and web 2.0 products which are easily updated. The product testing is crowd sourced and reduces development costs. Economically this still works for less flexible products. Apple can release an almost finished product(iphone) and count on it's users to find the bugs and happily download updates without losing too much mind share. A television manufacturer can't release a patch, but the cost of replacing broken televisions must be less than the cost of thorough product testing. This is annoying to consumers but as long as we put up with it little will change. Consumers 30 years ago were less tech savvy, and consequently less tolerant of having to troubleshoot a new tv. Today we deal with computer crashes all the time so we aren't as offend by a tv that crashes. We have developed a tolerance for faulty technology.