Comment 849 for bug 1

I have a friend who is a very bright but nontechnical user. She is scared of Windows update because it occasionally very slightly alters the way her computer works. She consequently didn't install any updates until I pointed out that in addition to these very slight tweaks, it also theoretically would make her computer stop misbehaving. In MS-Land, that's only theory, and the frustration makes her care very little about making any changes at all. She knows from experience that no change to her computer has actually been for the better. But here, we have the potential to turn that theoretical improved reliability into actual improved reliability.

This is not a usual opinion, but I think the single biggest draw we can ever have for regular users is Stability and Predictability. 5 years ago, no one was mentioning that because (1) nothing ever crashed, and (2) we practiced specification- / documentation-driven programming. However, in our rush to beat MS, this "nothing ever crashed" has degraded to an "almost nothing ever crashes"; the specification driven programming has degraded into a innovate-innovate-innovate model. We need to hold on to our roots.

My point is: don't lose sight of our strengths in trying to work on our weaknesses.