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This week, Firefox 8 was released. Six weeks earlier, Firefox 7 was
finalized. And six weeks before that, Firefox 6. Any doubt that we'll
see Firefox 9 six weeks from now?
I remember when version numbers meant something. When the Mac went
from System 6 to System 7, there were some real changes -
multitasking was no longer optional, a new 32-bit mode was added,
balloon help was just a mouse click away, and those ever-so-useful
aliases were introduced. System 7.1 streamlined the System Folder by
moving Fonts into their own folders. System 7.5 gave us desktop printing,
Extensions Manager, WindowShade, and a menubar clock, along with a
hierarchical Apple Menu.
Mac OS 8 brought us spring-loaded
folders, contextual menus, and a multithreaded Finder. OS 8.1 gave us a
new, more space-efficient file system, HFS+, along with support for
volumes larger than 4 GB. And Mac OS 9, specifically designed
for compatibility with Mac OS X. Likewise, each major revision of
OS X has brought significant change as well.
The same could be said of Unix, Apple DOS, CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows, iOS, and Linux, not to mention word
processing, spreadsheet, database, image processing, and other types of
software. A change in version number meant some significant changes in
the software.
It used to be true of browsers as well. As the Netscape
browser progressed from version 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 to 4.0, lots of
things changed. As Internet Explorer
continued its march from version 1.0 through today's 9.0 and tomorrow's
version 10, there are significant changes at each stop along the path.
Ditto for Apple's Safari
browser, good old Opera, and OmniWeb, a browser first
developed for NeXTstep and since ported to Mac OS X.
Firefox Rapid Release
Firefox began at version 1.0 in November 2004, reached version 2.0
in October 2006, hit the 3.0 mark in June 2008, and didn't make it to
version 4.0 until March 2011. Those numbers represented significant
milestones in the evolution of the browser - but that's no longer true
with Mozilla's rapid release program. We got Firefox 5 on June 21,
2011, Firefox 6 on August 16, Firefox 7 on September 27, and Firefox 8
on November 8. And Firefox 9 is already available for testing.
What significant changes did these versions bring?
2.0: Tabbed browsing, extensions (plugins), session restore, and
anti-phishing
3.5: Significantly improved JavaScript engine, support for HTML5
video and audio tags.
4.0: New user interface, faster page rendering, and a bookmark sync
manager.
5.0: First rapid release. Wikipedia doesn't note any significant
change from 4.0.
6.0: Permissions manager, quicker startup.
7.0: Reduced memory usage.
8.0: Third-party add-ons disabled by default.
In the old days, version 5.0 would have been 4.0.something or 4.1,
and 7.0 might have been worthy of a full version number upgrade thanks
to improved memory management, a longtime issue with Firefox. Instead,
we get whole version number changes with relatively minor software
changes.
Special note to PowerPC Mac users: TenFourFox 8, a
version of Firefox 8 optimized for G3, G4, and G5 Macs running
OS X 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard is already available, so you
don't have to feel left behind. And with Adobe's announcement that it
is halting development of Flash for mobile platforms, having an
up-to-date browser with great HTML5 support will be more important than
ever going forward.
Partly Google's Fault
Why? Because that's the way Google does things, and Google's Chrome browser,
launched in September 2008 and now Firefox's primary competitor for the
#2 browser spot behind Internet Explorer, has a rapid release cycle.
Chrome has been available for Windows, Linux, and Intel-based Macs
since version 5 was released in May 2010, and it's already up to
version 15. That's almost five whole number revisions per year, and I
guess Firefox just wants to catch up with Chrome's number.
I think part of this is psychological. For quite a while, we had
version number parity between Netscape and Internet Explorer, so
whoever had the highest revision number seemed to be ahead of the game.
But that hasn't been the case since Nescape threw in the towel and
created the open source Mozilla project. Today's current browser
versions are Safari 5.1, OmniWeb 5.1.1, Firefox 8, Internet Explorer 9,
Opera 11.52, and Chrome 15. The revision numbers have no bearing
whatsoever on those of competing browsers.
The Problem
There are two real problems here. The first is that the development
cycle is so short that users tire of installing updates every two
months or so. The second is that casual users - who are really more
likely to use the default Internet Explorer or Safari browsers - are
unlikely to even look for updated versions of their apps.
For instance, our site logs show that 53% of those using Internet
Explorer are on version 8, 28% on 9, 14% still on 7, and 4% are using
still older versions. Among Safari users, almost everyone is using Safari
5.something. Firefox: 57% using version 7, 17% still with 3.6, 7.8% on
6, 1, 7% on 4, 3.3% on 5, and already 2.2% on brand new 8.
Chrome is even messier: 57% are using 14 (Sept. 9, 2011), 34.5% are
using current 15 (Oct. 18), 1.5% are trying 16, and about 1% each are
12 (June 7, 2011) and 13 (August 2).
With rapid release, version numbers end up becoming meaningless,
just a blur of numbers, no longer signifying the anything important has
taken place.
Software Updates
Still, it is nice to know that you are running the latest version of
your favorite and crucial apps.
The problem is one that has plagued users for decades -
software updates. Apple has built Software Update into the Mac OS for
ages, but in the old days you had to manually launch it, and even if it
pops up every week or month, many casual users are going to ignore it.
The same goes for iOS, where you have to launch the App Store program
if you want to be notified about software updates.
It's wonderful that most browsers can check at startup and tell you
if there's a new version you should update to - although that can have
its drawbacks as well, such as prompting you to update to a new version
of an app that may not be compatible with your older hardware or
operating system. Still, it's a big step in the right direction.
What we really need is for every app and every operating system to
perform startup checks as well as daily or weekly checks for updates,
since some computers and devices are rarely shut down or restarted. The
notifications should be meaningful - much more than "a security update"
or "improved stability" to grab the user's attention. Something like,
"This update to Firefox block an exploit that lets others remotely
control your computer. Updating is strongly recommended."
And then the update process has to be simple. Not like the iOS 5
update. I've had more people complain about losing their installed apps
or their photos while upgrading to iOS 5. It's got to be smarter on the
computer side because most users are not savvy computer geeks. It's got
to be bulletproof, so you don't end up with a bricked iPhone or
Mac.
If would be even nicer if there were a simple way to revert to the
previous version if the new one introduces new problems. For Mac users,
there's Time Machine, but even when you provide such a simple solution,
you have to convince people that there's a legitimate reason to invest
in a backup drive or Time Capsule - and you have to make it easier to
tell your Mac or iPhone you want to revert to the last version of
iPhoto or the Yahoo! app.
Every app should be written so it can download and install its
replacement, then quit itself and launch its replacement. Anything less
is more than the casual user wants to deal with.
Make it easy. Make it friendly. Give users a reason to want to wait
for the update to load and the software to relaunch itself.
When that's possible, I won't have to keep multiple downloaded
zipped versions of Firefox, SpamSieve, and other apps on my Mac's main
drive, and version numbers will become even less important - you'll
only want to know if you have the most recent version your computer,
smartphone, or tablet support.
Of course, I'll still make sure I have a bootable backup drive in
addition to anything backed up by Time Machine, because you just never
know when a drive may fail. But that's another issue.
Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986,
sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and
has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: Performa 630, introduced 1994.07.01. The first desktop Mac with an IDE hard drive could accept a TV or radio tuner.
The problem is one that has plagued users for decades -
software updates. Apple has built Software Update into the Mac OS for
ages, but in the old days you had to manually launch it, and even if it
pops up every week or month, many casual users are going to ignore it.
The same goes for iOS, where you have to launch the App Store program
if you want to be notified about software updates.