Tuesday saw the famed ‘Download Day’ as Firefox 3 was released. They racked up 8.3 million downloads despite server problems and rumours of a security loophole. Great press coverage, a success all round. And a big chunk of the success was taken up with a “yah, boo, sucks to Internet Explorer” approach.
Which seems to be the same across the technology world. We can’t merely like something and dislike something. We have to love things and despise things. A couple of months ago we loved Twitter. Now it’s had a little bit of downtime we hate Twitter, but we love Friendfeed. Macs hate PCs, and like to patronise them. People aren’t just loyal to brands they are LOYAL to brands, to the extent of reacting aggressively and rudely to their competitors.
The only other medium that I can think of that provokes such strong feelings is music. You don’t see people looking down on others because of the cereal they eat. We don’t laugh at morons who drink Snapple instead of Mountain Dew. Yet for some reason – and we’re talking about mere tools here – we can’t extol the virtues of a computer, a browser, a social media service without denigrating another one in return.
But it doesn’t matter what we’re talking about.
Browsers can all…well…browse
There isn’t much difference between Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Opera. All are perfectly fine for browsing the internet and taking pretty much full advantage of its functionality.
They have their strengths and weaknesses. Internet Explorer is more widely supported by corporate sites (e.g. the Citicorp owned Egg online banking site still has limited non-IE support), but IE6 and 7 fail to adhere to standards. Firefox is extensible, has great add-ons, but is resource heavy (even with version 3) and…for me anyway…is the least stable browser in terms of crashes. Safari looks pretty. Opera is perfectly capable but has little market share.
Actually, I even have a pretty PC
There isn’t that much difference between a PC and a Mac. PCs aren’t the incredibly user unfriendly tangles of code and crashes that Apple suggests. They have more software, tend to have more power for the price. Macs are a bit more user friendly, significantly more stylish (generally) and have a “cool” image.
Twitter still does what it’s supposed to
Twitter was good before, and it’s good now. It went down a few times, it’s not the most reliable free service around. But it’s still great. Friendfeed is also great. Its possible to like one without liking the other. It’s possible to like Plurk and like Twitter. It’s more interesting to state your hatred for Twitter and how you’re going to abandon it (…especially if done so in 140 characters!).
Passion is good. Crazy…not so much
It’s good that we have passion for products and services in the IT world. Passion leads to excitement and further developments. But seriously, people need to chill out a bit sometimes. I look sometimes with jaw dropped at the incredible aggression and strength of feeling in a debate on the merits of an operating system, a browser, Twitter’s merits.
Be happy that we have a choice. Be happy that there are options for people who don’t think that it’s somehow morally wrong not to use Firefox! Be happy that Twitter and Friendfeed can coexist, and that Twitter and Plurk are forced to excel to compete. Competition is good, competition between more than one perfectly capable product is even better.