Anything to Make non-Microsoft Products Look Bad

Jeremy’s a trip. He has a very predictable pattern about him and he has for years. Microsoft is the best thing since sliced bread is the mantra - until someone or something makes a real difference and makes Microsoft look bad. Then the song and dance is more one of “I’m not going to knock it because I’m sure to get crucified in the blogosphere because I’m wrong, but I’m sure not going to admit egg on my face either”.

Now I like Jeremy. He’s a good guy, business partner, blogger, and friend. But I find it so ironic that as soon as somebody does something that is noteworthy that Microsoft has already done, it’s big news to him and he wants to point the finger and say, “See! I told you so!” He did this today as it pertains to the new Firefox release.

He complains that the features in Firefox are minor. “They’re incremental improvements. And the ones that aren’t? Have been in IE7 for more than 6 months.”

True enough, but let’s be honest:

1. The “who’s copying who” argument is so 2005. For real. No one cares anymore.
2. Basing anything on a public beta that a slim slim uber-slim minority have actually seen and used and is still changing is like comparing apples and oranges. So Firefox 2.0 hits gold before IE7 hits gold. If we want to be semantic, Firefox wins that race. But I refer to point 1 - who cares?
3. Incremental, version changes are inconsequential with Firefox development. To be honest, the Firefox team doesn’t really follow the rules on release numbering structure. Jumping from 1.0 to 1.5 was as big as jumping from 1.5.0.4 to 2.0. Again, nitpicking at feature lists is a little…umm, grasping? Firefox’s development cycle takes it through an ongoing feature list enhancement. Every incremental release is as big as a major release. I simply don’t see the complaint unlees Jeremy is trying to just make Firefox look bad.

I don’t think this is a very effective complaint. It just seems… lacking teeth.

Tagged as: firefox, ie7, microsoft, Op-Ed