2 things...

[Jonathan Tyzack]

The alpha was released to a select few last week - we only had it for 
about 4 to 5 days and the major focus was to critique the UI as it was 
then. Only a few things changed between the alpha and the beta, so to 
be honest, you didn't miss a massive testing stage. I don't know why 
they selected the people they did - they could very well have just 
stuck twenty pins in a board for all I know but, personally, I have 
beta tested OmniGraffle beforehand, was a religious user of the 4.x 
sneakypeeks when they ran that style programme, and I have also sent a 
fair amount of feedback and (as) detailed (as possible) crash reports 
to them for their apps which might be the reason I was one of the lucky 
chosen. I wouldn't feel bad about not being selected - I imagine it was 
just a case of let's pick twenty odd people at random from a list of 
the regular posters at the mailing list/feedback senders.

Cheers,

Jonathan