Dave Winer on Mozilla and Firefox

Dave Winer:

The problem for them, if they choose to view it as a problem, is that web browsers are done. Feature-complete. No one can think of anything to add that anyone wants, because there are no more features to add. Sadly, this happens to product categories. It happened with word processors twenty years ago. Spreadsheets, around the same time. Windows was done when XP shipped. Mac OS, yeah it’s done too. I haven’t used any of the new features. And by “new” I mean features introduced in the last eight years or so.  

Software products have lifecycles. They reach a point where all they need is maintenance. Make sure it runs on new hardware. Fix security issues as they arise. Optimize. (Firefox could sure use that!) Teeny little tweaks that are almost unnoticeable.

A bit hyperbolic, for sure, but there’s a lot of truth here. I’m more interested in the new stuff in iOS 5 than I am in the new stuff in Lion. iOS still has major holes. It’s a new frontier. Mac OS X is settled territory. That’s not to say that major changes and additions can’t be made to settled territory, but it doesn’t bring the same sort of excitement.

★ Monday, 27 June 2011