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I'm not a fan of the tactic either but MS does the same thing all the time. Also FF, Chrome and Safari ARE upgrades to Edge/IE by any reasonable metric. You'v

I'm not a fan of the tactic either but MS does the same thing all the time. Also FF, Chrome and Safari ARE upgrades to Edge/IE by any reasonable metric. You've probably never had to write a non-trivial cross browser app. Try it and then let's see how you feel.

kbenson 8y ago
Yeah, picking on the upgrade wording is tricky, and cuts both ways. It has a common, semi-specific meaning with computers, but has also been used for far longer in the more general way it's used here. If you say "I upgraded my stereo system", I would consider the chance you meant that to imply you got better versions of the same devices from the same manufacturer to be essentially nil. I'm that respect, it may seem misleading if you do a lot of work with computer or have for many years, buts maybe it isn't much to a layperson?
- veridies 8y ago
  If you said you upgraded your stereo, though, I’d expect you bought something pretty clearly nicer, eg by moving from a pair of PC speakers to a professional hifi. I wouldn’t expect that you’d have moved from one well-respected hifi manufacturer to another with different tradeoffs. Admittedly IE is pretty awful, but Chrome and FF are effectively comparable; “upgrade” is too strong a word for switching between them.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > I wouldn’t expect that you’d have moved from one well-respected hifi manufacturer to another with different tradeoffs. I think you either have more respect for manufacturers and how they advertise, or have a higher estimation for people's ability to successfully wade through marketing bullshit than me. Here's a question, is replacing your stereo cables with gold plated monster cables an "upgrade"? What do you think the average person thinks. > Chrome and FF are effectively comparable that depends quite a bit on the criteria used to judge them. If you value your privacy, I don't think the are comparable (as a synonym for similar) at all.
saagarjha 8y ago
I don’t use Edge, but it’s unfair to characterize Edge as a “downgrade” for all people. The average user cares much more about being able to annotate webpages (for example) than having access to the latest web standard. So the “upgrade” you’re talking about is only from the point of view of the web developer, which is usually the wrong way to think about this kind of stuff. If you go far enough along the path of prioritizing the developer over the user, you end up with stuff like Electron, which penalizes users for not “upgrading” to Chrome and deciding they wanted a native app instead.
- hueving 8y ago
  >The average user cares much more about being able to annotate webpages You grossly overestimate what the average user wants to do. The average user doesn't even know the difference between browsers, rarely (if ever) uses bookmarks, and considers printing a web page an advanced task. Annotating webpages is something that a tiny sliver of power users will use.
  - LaGrange 8y ago
    Are you from 1999? You sound like you're from 1999. It's 2018, and a significant chunk of users are younger than the browsers we use, and especially people still in the education system often use browsers - and computers in general - in fairly fancy ways.
philliphaydon 8y ago
Chrome isn’t an upgrade to edge anymore. Chrome is the new ie6. But I’m on FF now so I don’t care.

kbenson 8y ago

Yeah, picking on the upgrade wording is tricky, and cuts both ways. It has a common, semi-specific meaning with computers, but has also been used for far longer in the more general way it's used here. If you say "I upgraded my stereo system", I would consider the chance you meant that to imply you got better versions of the same devices from the same manufacturer to be essentially nil. I'm that respect, it may seem misleading if you do a lot of work with computer or have for many years, buts maybe it isn't much to a layperson?

veridies 8y ago
If you said you upgraded your stereo, though, I’d expect you bought something pretty clearly nicer, eg by moving from a pair of PC speakers to a professional hifi. I wouldn’t expect that you’d have moved from one well-respected hifi manufacturer to another with different tradeoffs. Admittedly IE is pretty awful, but Chrome and FF are effectively comparable; “upgrade” is too strong a word for switching between them.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > I wouldn’t expect that you’d have moved from one well-respected hifi manufacturer to another with different tradeoffs. I think you either have more respect for manufacturers and how they advertise, or have a higher estimation for people's ability to successfully wade through marketing bullshit than me. Here's a question, is replacing your stereo cables with gold plated monster cables an "upgrade"? What do you think the average person thinks. > Chrome and FF are effectively comparable that depends quite a bit on the criteria used to judge them. If you value your privacy, I don't think the are comparable (as a synonym for similar) at all.

saagarjha 8y ago

I don’t use Edge, but it’s unfair to characterize Edge as a “downgrade” for all people. The average user cares much more about being able to annotate webpages (for example) than having access to the latest web standard. So the “upgrade” you’re talking about is only from the point of view of the web developer, which is usually the wrong way to think about this kind of stuff. If you go far enough along the path of prioritizing the developer over the user, you end up with stuff like Electron, which penalizes users for not “upgrading” to Chrome and deciding they wanted a native app instead.

hueving 8y ago
>The average user cares much more about being able to annotate webpages You grossly overestimate what the average user wants to do. The average user doesn't even know the difference between browsers, rarely (if ever) uses bookmarks, and considers printing a web page an advanced task. Annotating webpages is something that a tiny sliver of power users will use.
- LaGrange 8y ago
  Are you from 1999? You sound like you're from 1999. It's 2018, and a significant chunk of users are younger than the browsers we use, and especially people still in the education system often use browsers - and computers in general - in fairly fancy ways.

philliphaydon 8y ago

Chrome isn’t an upgrade to edge anymore. Chrome is the new ie6. But I’m on FF now so I don’t care.