> how the heck could something so obviously not ready for production ever be shipped?

The widespread bar for software quality these days appears to be: "The lowest quality possible to release, such that the customer does not sue us or reject it." It's absolutely the bottom of the barrel. Everything is rushed and the decision to release is based on the chance of the company being able to keep the money they charged. If the project has the required profit, after factoring in the cost of mass end user rejection due to poor quality, the software gets released.