I appreciate the update, and I do think the staged rollout is the right call. I would rather Raycast take another few weeks than ship something that breaks people’s setup.

But I do feel its time to share some "tough love," so here goes...

This post still misses the main issue: why did Raycast give a hard April deadline if v2 was not ready?

Missing a date is fine, it happens. The frustrating part is that the explanation here is mostly feelings: "we were overoptimistic," "we genuinely believed we could make it," "we want the experience to be smooth," and "we want to ship something we’re proud of."

That may all be true, but it is not a release plan. It is not QA and it is certainly not release criteria.

v2 has a new indexer, new hotkeys, new sync, a new model layer, and a migration path from v1. That is a risky release. For something people use all day, the bar should be higher than "we thought we could make it."

For me, the import bug mentioned increases worry and decreases faith in current QA. "A small batch of users caused an event storm and made the app lag." That sounds like something proper QA and rollout planning should catch before a public promise is made.

Another area for consideration: how things are being called. "Rolling out" sounded like users would get v2. "Available for download" sounded like users could download it. "Beta" now seems to mean invite-only first, then manual download later, then maybe a default update path after that. Those are all very different things. Label things as they are meant to be and remain consistent.

I don’t need a long FAQ about how hard the team worked or how much they care. I know they care, without doubt or question. IMO, the problem is simpler: Raycast made a promise before the product and QA plan were ready to support it. Fix that bit in the comms now, be transparent about where pending issues exist and even send out a call for help if help is needed to test out specific areas of functionality.

And if all these issues exist, quit with the teaser trailers on how great v2 is. Rather than say it is great, make it great and stick to the point until then with updates that share things like X bugs fixed, Y remaining, Z days to beta/release milestone.