brandyshea - That is what I was missing... I thought
npm install -g ionic@beta
was updating the ionic-framework. So I was expecting "beta" to be in the version string instead of "alpha"...
{
"devDependencies": {
// List of devDependencies
},
"dependencies": {
"ionic-framework": "2.0.0-alpha.54"
}
// and anything else
}