NYT IE Smackdown | The Coffeehouse

WayneB
Got my own Far Side comic.

Finally, an objective view from a real reporter: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/business/yourmoney/19digi.html

The end of the article is the best. Once again, the automobile analogy fails for Microsoft: I can fix my car myself (a Chilton's manual is my source code, can you get that with Windows?).

Heh, I haven't heard one complaint from my neighbor since I installed Firefox for him (he used to complain that his homepage kept getting taken over). I bet you'll see a big jump in FF usage after the holidays too (I know one program that my parent's computer is getting for Christmas Wink

LarryOsterman

WayneB wrote:
Finally, an objective view from a real reporter: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/business/yourmoney/19digi.html

The end of the article is the best. Once again, the automobile analogy fails for Microsoft: I can fix my car myself (a Chilton's manual is my source code, can you get that with Windows?).

You can fix your car? Funny, I can't fix mine. On almost every car built in the past 10 years, everything's solid state. Unless I invest in a huge amount of diagnostic equipment, it's a black box.

Simo
With me it's a full-time job.

I think the automobile analogy always works quite well.

I have a car too, it's a beemer, and it's stuffed full of 21st century technology. I certainly can't fix it myself but that doesn't worry me because I wouldn't have the time, the inclinantion, or the basic knowledge. I gladly take it to the dealer to be looked after. Although... it doesn't travel many miles, so most years the dealer has shoo-ed me away telling me the car's fine as it is.

My car suits me, it'll probably suit quite a lot of people. But it wouldn't suit everybody. I'm glad we all have a choice.

Rossj

Simo wrote:
I gladly take it to the dealer to be looked after.

Do you get the choice of which dealer or garage to go to, or do you have to take it to the one where you bought it?

NYT wrote:

Mr. Schare of Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer.

I'll have a couple of pints of whatever he's drinking please.
Mr Scoble, is this your new Microsoft?

Jaz
From the depths of Wales I come

who else makes patches and official updates for firefox rossj?

Simo
With me it's a full-time job.

Rossj wrote:

Simo wrote: I gladly take it to the dealer to be looked after.

Do you get the choice of which dealer or garage to go to, or do you have to take it to the one where you bought it?

well... if i want lovely stamp in my service book any BM dealer. I bought it from BMW Heathrow but they gave me quite bad after-sales service so I took it to BMW Sytner and they sorted out my initial issues. I use them now. But, as i mentioned earlier, in the past they've shoo-ed me away as the cars only need servicing every two years if they're doing low miles.

Rossj

Jaz wrote:
who else makes patches and official updates for firefox rossj?

Why want me to send you my rates? Which bug is it you want fixed without waiting for the FF guys to do it? Actually I don't but I could.

eagle

The folks at firefox paid for not just a full page ad, but TWO FULL PAGES in the New York Times this week"inviting" everybody to download their product.

I use Firefox and IE, but still mostly IE, where does Mozilla.org get the money to pay for big spreads in the NYtimes?

Foxfire gets pleanty of FREE Marketing here on channel9 and elcewhere, but what is their plan for survival?

Rossj

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Rossj

eagle wrote:
I use Firefox and IE, but still mostly IE, where does Mozilla.org get the money to pay for big spreads in the NYtimes?

User donations. More than a quarter million dollars worth.

[quote user="eagle"]Foxfire gets pleanty of FREE Marketing here on channel9 and elcewhere, but what is their plan for survival?[/quote]

If they actually need a plan, then I would guess corporate sponsorship in terms of salaries and resources, akin to IBM sponsoring Apache.

eagle

$250,000? Well then that have spent it all, how do they pay their developers?

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Beer28 wrote:
and is only really, really good for text documents.

That's okay then, that's what it was designed for. Wink

harumscarum
out of memory

I never touch my car. I expect it to work and if it doesn't I bring it in. If it is an industry wide problem I expect the dealership to contact me and provide details on how to fix it. I think the attention for FF is great because it means the IE team has to work that much harder to stay above 90%.

Tom Malone

Eagle the mozilla project was left a pile of money by netscape, to build mozilla, but when the majority of your programmers are employed by other companies like novell, redhat. Why would you need to pay them.

Tom

eagle

Liz, your queen got “a pile of money” from her dad the king yet you still have to pay her year after year. How are the folks at Mozilla going to pay for firefox 2.0 pray tell?

Tom Malone

The same way that gnome, kde, the linux kernel, x.org etc. etc.

Tom

eagle

Oh, Santa’s little elves. Ho Ho HO

sbc
GW R/Me

Still a while before 2.0 is out. But I expect it will get more donations and corporate sponsorship (IBM, RedHat, Novell, Sun) as these companies see the potential it has - cross platform browser, extensible via extensions and XUL. Customers get a browser that does not tie them to a certain OS or platform so they have a lot more freedom.

Nokia has even invested in it (the Minimo project) and I wouldn't be surprised it Google has donated, or is working on an extension for it (after all, the homepage is provided by Google).

Why are some people so anti open source? After all, if it didn't work Firefox wouldn't exist, Linux would no longer be worked on, big corporations wouldn't invest in it. Companies that open source is good for are those that don't make money on it, but on support and services (like those aforementioned companies). This site may not even exist.

Tensor
Im in yr house upgrading yr family

Using analogies as a way of proving your product is better is laughable, as you can always come up with an analogy to prove your point. The car one used here is particularly stupid - Who is really going to try and poke around with the code?

I'm a programmer with a Software Engineering degree and I would'nt mess around with the source. 99.9% of people a browser is aimed at are less capable of messing around with it than I am. they are never going to mess with the source. Why should they? As long as it works most of the time, who cares?

The ability to mess around with the source is a marketing ploy aimed at the beard-and-sandles brigade most of whom probably allready run Firefox - and if they dont its because they are attached to Opera, or Konquerer, or whatever, with a fanatical zeal that would make most people shudder, and they are never going to swap.

You want to get people to swap to Firefox, the "you have the source" thing is never going to fly. You have to make it so cool, that people will go out of there way to replace there existing "free"* browser.

Our website still gets >>90% usage from IE. In the days of the browser wars it was 50-50 IE and netscape. Firefox has a way to go to even get close to that.

*(I know, not really free, paid for in the OS - but to the end user who bought a box of the shelf with an OEM copy of Windows thats "free").

eagle

Reading the forums on channel9 you would think most people use firefox.

sbc
GW R/Me

Perhaps they should put up the browser stats for this site?
Stats for registered user, unregistered users (or lurkers) and both will probably have different results.

Rossj

Tensor wrote:
the beard-and-sandles brigade ...

Careful. Thin Ice. Tongue Out

Tensor wrote:

You want to get people to swap to Firefox, the "you have the source" thing is never going to fly.

Well people are switching to Firefox and I don't think its anything to do with the availability of the source. I think its to do with the price and the feature set, and the fact that it is *visibly* in development. Not only is the source available, in some cases so is the roadmap ... and the list of known bugs. Can I get either of these things for any of the other mainstream browsers?

Tensor
Im in yr house upgrading yr family

Rossj wrote:

Tensor wrote: the beard-and-sandles brigade ...

Careful. Thin Ice.

Offending parts of your own cultural sub-group can be thought of as endearing Wink

Rossj wrote:

Tensor wrote:
You want to get people to swap to Firefox, the "you have the source" thing is never going to fly.

Well people are switching to Firefox and I don't think its anything to do with the availability of the source. I think its to do with the price and the feature set, and the fact that it is *visibly* in development. Not only is the source available, in some cases so is the roadmap ... and the list of known bugs. Can I get either of these things for any of the other mainstream browsers?

Yeah of course they are. FF is good. I use it at home all the time. Tabs rock. Dont get me wrong, I think it is superior to IE in most regards.

As for "people" switching.. well yeah people I know are. People who work in the computer industry, who give a damn about roadmaps and bug lists, are switching.

My point is that the difference between now and the first browser wars is that the market has changed. Its not just us geeks on the internet anymore - in fact we are in a tiny minority. The vast masses of un-tech 'net users could not give a fig about bug lists, as long as they can browse, check there email, etc.. This really hit home to me when I looked at the stats for our own new website just ;ast week, expecting to see a sizable chunk of FF users - say 20%, only to be confronted by figures which show a huge majority of people still on IE.

Rossj

Tensor wrote:
This really hit home to me when I looked at the stats for our own new website just ;ast week, expecting to see a sizable chunk of FF users - say 20%, only to be confronted by figures which show a huge majority of people still on IE.

I guess people are just using what's pre-installed then, hardly fair but that's another argument for some other time.

eagle

People in computing are not as browser centric as the general public. Most of the people using firefox are the same people who didn't use IE in the past.

I use firefox but don't find it in any way "superior" to IE, but at least the hackers are not targeting it.