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Tests are guaranteeing that the product doesn't fail under the test conditions. Formal verification is guaranteeing the product doesn't deviate from the formal spec under a given set of assumptions. Both of them are useful but depend on how well the thing being checked actually correlates with what you care about.

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Interesting definition of guarantee....what about the people who run millions of them? Well Microsoft: "AS IS." Apple: "WITH ALL FAULTS" Adobe: "no guarantee of error-free operation."

Apparently their lawyers never got the memo that the tests already guaranteed the software...

Well yeah, why would they offer an legal guarantee if they don't have to? They could have a watertight proof that their software works perfectly in all situations (lol) but the lawyers still would prefer to disclaim as much liability as possible.

And even if they did, all the test guarantee is that the tests pass, of course the main limit is that they don't actually test even a small fraction of what the customers actually want to do.

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