tampa tech solutions

 
Being a technologist to the bone and a lucky dad of twin girls, I often have "flash forward" moments where I can imagine talking to my kids about technology.  You remember the old "walked to school uphill, both ways" stories we used to get from our parents.  Well, I imagine technology conversations like
 

• "I used to have to do research papers WITHOUT Google."
• "I had to go to the library and look things up in the card catalogue."
• "I had to connect to the internet over landline phone lines" (then explain what a landline was)

 
Thing is, I can imagine Google being here in 10 years, along with a plethora of other companies.  However, I recently had a flash forward that went like this:
 
Me: Girls, there used to be this browser called "Firefox" that was so great.
 
Eva: You mean there was something other than Internet Explorer and Chrome?
 
Me: Sure there was.  And there still are.  There are many browsers that are less popular, and Firefox is still around, but it's not what it used to be.
 
Ella: What happened?
 
Me: Well, they had a fast browser, WAY faster than Internet Explorer.  They had a lot of great plugins and support ... all this right before Google Chrome came out.  Then, all of a sudden, the Firefox update process became the most long, arduous, annoying and loathed of tasks. 
 
Girls in unison: Wow.  That SUCKS.
 
And ... we're back.  Whew ... those are hard conversations to have.
 
Seriously though, Google Chrome is the browser to have.  Firefox is so close, but that damned update process is vexing.  Chrome seems to magically update with zero user intervention.  I double click the browser and Chrome opens.  Seems like all browsers should be this way right?
 
Well, to me, this is unacceptable.  It's small things like this that drive users away from computing all together because they think that's just the way things are.  The fact of the matter is it's not like that.  Not at all.
 
I forsee a day when software developers are going to be forced to be more accountable for speed and core functionality and less accountable for things like plugins, as the user community will develop, support and realease (for free or for a few bucks) self-created plugins.
 
I may be wrong about Firefox, and I hope I am.  There may even be a way I can configure the updates to happen more automagically, but really I shouldn't have to.  I should have the option to make updates more verbose if I need to, but by default, I want things to just happen.  I don't think I'm alone ...