Version 2.3.6.4.27.5 - With over 1,000 new features!

You probably haven't noticed but Firefox 5 was released this week, exactly 3 months after Firefox 4 was released. Now you may be thinking, big deal? Isn't this a good thing? How does this even make a blog-worthy topic? Let me give you one more point before I race into my discussion: Firefox 3 was released in June of 2008, 3 years before Firefox 4 and Firefox 2 was released 2 years prior to that in 2006.

So what? they've sped up the release dates of Firefox? Surely this is a good thing! You get new features, bug fixes and a new number! But to me I think, why didn't they just release these awesome "1000 new improvements" that came with Firefox 5 (You can read the press release here) with the previous version only 3 months ago? Sure they may take a bit of time to implement but surely they could have delayed the launch of 4 by a month and implement a majority of these "improvements" then, or even release a small patch later on to implement them but not a whole new version number! It seems to me that companies are almost purposefully releasing new applications with missing functions so that they can generate new hype for this program only 3 months later with a new model number or service pack. Look at Windows Phone 7, the move from 6 to 7 left out a lot of useful features that were already implemented in 6 (copy and paste, actively syncing etc.) and now they're being put right back in with mango, why? Is it that hard to put these features in the operating system to begin with?
Microsoft aren't the only ones that do this, apple are particularly bad. Copy and paste took 2 major operating system updates before it was implemented, over the air syncing is still to be released and multi-tasking wasn't until iOS4!
Google chrome has now moved to a new 6 week update cycle, and Firefox now do nightly builds for those keen beans...

What really frustrates me is apps on apple's app store, it seems that now people are so used to patches that developers just want to push out their app as fast as possible and deal with all the pesky bugs afterwards. Some apps are slow, buggy and regularly crash and it then takes the developer two months to realise and fix these annoying bugs. Apple themselves aren't innocent of this either, a couple of months ago xCode 4.0 was released, with a whole array of cool new features, however you go and read the reviews on their app store and you get comments like this:

"I've already downloaded the software at 4.5Gb, and I updated it when there were some minor bug fixes by downloading another 4.5Gb. Now there is ANOTHER update that is 4.5Gb!"

"Slow, buggy, UI unresponsive when compiling"

"Disappointed to find that the simulator crashes every time you open it, would have helped if Apple could deliver a stable developer platform."

And there are plenty more. This is just one example of how quick release times can back-fire: developers start pushing out applications that are buggy and not fully tested because they need to beat the competition to it, or they want to be on the "cutting edge of technology."

So with updates coming thick and fast is being on the cutting edge of technology a good thing for us users or are we being constantly plagued with temperamental applications or useful features being left out so that the next release has something to shout about?

To be honest, I love Google's new release cycle, mainly because they only push small updates and are never buggy, I really only wrote this to have a rant at Apple about xCode and iOS updates and Microsoft about mango, oh and those annoying app developers that make me update their application every morning...

Petey