Beta Rollout of firmware to developers

[FlyBoyJIt]

Just read about the changes and kudos for the new firmware update. I love that nice new features are still being added.

Logged into my fitbit app, and sadly I am not one of the lucky 10% to get the update yet, and it got me thinking.

I understand that the progressive rollout is to make sure that the update is good (doesn't cause any major damage to devices) and at the same time mitigates server load (I'm guessing), I was wondering what the reason was for not still having a developer only release. I was part of the developer beta,  which is no more now, but what was the reason for it's removal. Surely it would be the best way to ensure product control and at the same time let established developers get access to the SDK before end users do (like iOS developers get betas week before so that apps can be updated).

Just a thought, and I'm sure there's a valid reason for it. Just wondering.

[JonFitbit]

The original beta was incredibly useful, and we may run public betas for future updates. Will see what can be arranged for the next release!

[Giampi71]

Just to highlight that, as a developer, I'm quite frustrated that the progressive rollout didn't hit my Ionic and my wife Versa.

I strongly support @FlyBoyJIt suggestion.

[harry6789]

I also support this idea. Firmware updates should be rolled out to developers first, and they should be given at least 2 weeks to check that their apps work fine on the new release, and report any bugs back to Fitbit. 

An example of a developer being impacted by this can be found here: https://ozibyte.com/ozibyte-faq/ 

"Fitbit has rolled out a new Firmware update which appears to be causing problems with clock faces."

It's not great that the developer of this app probably found out about this issue when their customers started getting in touch with them.