[pwg]

Originally Posted by Forrest

It doesn't seem like the final version to me. Still lots to do.

No doubt there's still lot's to do. But I'm one of those who suspect that 5.5 sneakypeek is pretty much 'done'. This is purely subjective, I conceed and it's really a matter for Omnigroup.

The cash-value of 'done-ness' for me is that I can dump Safari because for some reason the Devonthink Service menu-keys are now working in OW 5.5 Sp16 (hooray). I'd like to have other things too, like date-sorted downloads. But I'm now back to OW on a permanent basis (fingers-crossed), having paid for but not used my OW license for quite some time.

About 'done-ness': I'm bemused by the response I see on many software support forums (never here, I think, from the OW support team) from developers who tersely discourage speculation about progress with: "when it's done, it's done".

I think complex software like OW is probably never 'done'; only more or less ready to 'serve up'. Look at BBEdit. How many years have they been issuing 'fixes' to actual bugs and glitches? Even Don Knuth's TeX (than which nothing sucks less, imho) is some distance into the 'pi' expansion (3.141592 at last count).

[Handycam]

The main reason not to rush to public beta is that the team gets inundated with "bug reports" and general gripes from people who are not really prepared to use beta software. One only has to look at the posts on a place like MacUpdate for various betas where people trash the software as "junk" -- when it's CLEARLY labeled as pre-release and likely to be full of bugs.

Perhaps Omni would follow a model like Opera 9 or Camino, where there are weekly betas (like the SP's) and much more infrequent public "previews"? Regardless, I'm happy to be using the SPs and see no rush for public beta.

And I agree with PWG that even SP16 for me is faster and better than other "finished" browsers. But there are holes in the feature set that still need fixing, as Forrest points out.