But Is It *Safe*?
September 24, 2007
I try not to ramble on too much about my work, except for a little “I love the people I work with!” post every few months, but I did want to point out one satisfying bit that I was enjoying today. You see, when you work with a team that makes great applications, you get to actually do some of the things that you wish all of your software would do.
Case in point? Well, we’ve had a ton of people who are really excited about Movable Type 4 since its release, and as is usual with a huge .0 release of any application, we had to make some little performance and bug fixes, and those just came out as MT 4.01. Pretty standard stuff, and after the release went out last week, I wrote a little blog post about it.
But what I got to do, which was absolutely delightful to me, was answer all the questions that drive me nuts every time I upgrade my other applications. It seems like each of my computers, every time I turn it on, either wants me to upgrade Office or iTunes or OS X or Windows. And the questions I have with each of those updates are always basically in the same few categories:
- Do I really need to do this?
- Is this going to break shit?
- Are you going to take away features?
- How much is this going to cost me?
- Am I going to have to redo all my work?
- Will this slow everything down?
- And when I finally do get all this crap installed, are you just going to put out another update tomorrow?
Basically, what I want to know when I get a software update is is this safe?
In our case, I was lucky: All our answers are exactly what you’d hope for. So, thanks to the fact that the MT team kicks ass and makes good products and does a good job of really thinking through the customer side of stuff, I was able to pretty much answer all of those questions when writing about this little minor version upgrade. And I even got to put little green checkmarks next to all the good news.
Now I want this for all my other applications. I’m looking at you, Firefox. (Update: I inadvertently made a playful jab seem like a much more pointed criticism than I’d intended. Check out the comments for some thoughtful feedback and my apology.)
7:20 PM
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- Earlier: iZines, not eBooks
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Maybe you should be more specific about those Firefox upgrades that you dislike. For example, I'm not aware of a Firefox upgrade that included a monetary cost or a license restriction. Does it take you days to install a Firefox upgrade?
No update process is perfect, but you should probably be specific if you're going to claim perfection and then fling stuff at other people.
If you're wondering what each update brings, please take a look at our release notes. The release notes for 2.0.0.7 are here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0.0.7/releasenotes/
Aw, you guys make me feel bad -- I just get frustrated because I
The worst part about having friends who make good stuff is I forget that I'm stepping on your (great!) work while offhandedly bitching on my blog. Sorry for that, and by *no* means am I claiming we're perfect.
I will claim that green check marks make me happy. :) And at least we can all agree: iTunes updates suck.
mmm, well, you should really file a bug, even if it is just "the update experience sucks".
Having zillions of extensions on tons of platforms is great, but it creates quite a QA matrix.