Or ... more facts before you get confused by another weird article somewhere ....
I was reading a piece last night on a prominent tech site that made me stop and think. The author (I really try not to 'call people out' so I won't) was saying "Don't download Firefox 3.0 because it's not time tested yet".
Huh?
While this may hold true for some operating systems (I used to wait out some new stuff for clients while testing it myself and reading .... before deploying them) ... If a well-known company or organization goes through one or two Betas THEN one or two Release Candidates, you can pretty much rest assured the stuff will work on most boxes.
Firefox went through three RC's (all reported here :) and is already in development of Firefox 3.1.
No Operating System is perfect.
The same author noted 'his prediction to wait out Windows XP SP3 was right'. Huh? There were one or two problems with SP3, mostly having only to do with AMD based motherboards. The percentage was very small and it was fixed.
This stuff is normal.
XP SP3 is an excellent Service Pack, introduces some new and important improvements, and rolls up all the previous patches and Service Packs into one.
There will always be new security challenges. They will be discovered and patched quickly .... whether it's Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, or the thousands of cool freeware and shareware developers out there.
Microsoft has been criticized for these 'problems' for years. Have we seen anyone else come up with an operating system that runs on so many different hardware configurations? There's a reason.
Next: Everybody makes mistakes.
Read the release notes or 'known issues'. It's possible the developer already knows about the flaws. There are ALWAYS flaws.
Worried? Back up your stuff. You should be anyway!
Every once in a while someone will come out with something 'new' that will start crashing things, yes, even in the final version. The good news is we have so many developers now watching, it's reported to the company or in the media much faster than in the past.
Whammo ... "Fix issued by Microsoft".
So, to all the editors out there. Please read the stuff your people are writing before you let it 'go to press' and get shared to tens of thousands of people. That's where we're going and it's not stopping any time soon.
Have a question?
Post it on Friendfeed. It's not just for early adopters. It's for you. Join the discussion and don't ever be embarrassed to ask anything. You know the old saying, and ....
... if you don't ...
ask! :)
Update PM June 18 - New Firefox 3.0 page with just about anything you want to know about it.