Siri went down yesterday. It went down hard and it stayed down for a few solid hours. Many users were outraged. There was rioting in the social media “streets.” Many fiery tweets were thrown at Apple. Initially, I agreed with Adrian over at ZDNet, where he says:

See, Apple doesn’t slap the word ‘beta’ on things lightly unlike Google. When it went to great lengths during the iPhone 4S launch to call the service a ‘beta’ this was a clear signal that it wouldn’t be perfect. Calling something a ‘beta’ means that you can expect things to be a little temperamental and unfinished. You can expect it not to work right. You can expect things to go dark for a while … BECAUSE IT’S A BETA!

via “Siri, why do some people not understand what beta means?” | ZDNet.

Why did my thoughts change? Because we’re talking about average people here. We’re talking about people who have no ideas what iOS stands for, did NOT wait in line to get the latest iPhone 4s so they could block about it, and actually watch commercials (DVR? What’s that?). Do you know what they saw on those commercials? Here, let me refresh your memory:

WOW! Wasn’t that some magical stuff?! Holy crap! Makes you wanna run out and buy a damn iPhone 4s right now! Man, I’m sure glad they added that footnote about it being in beta and how it may or may not work. Oh! It’s also a good thing they mentioned that it requires a data connection in order to function properly.

Wait, no? They didn’t set the proper expectation of Beta software for the customer? They just put out a series of commercials that basically show a phone doing something tantamount to witchcraft without specifying that it’s only in testing and often won’t even work? They didn’t touch on the frustration one might experience after expounding on this or that to Siri, only to have her hit them with a data connection error? Well dang. No wonder customers don’t understand the situation.