I was going to pull some quotations from here, but the whole interview is great. Go read it. I’ve just become a Ross fan. (And that would be true if I was still using Safari; I switched for reasons that had nothing to do with browser preference).
One of the great things about Ross was that he didn’t take every shot he could at Microsoft. However, he did make it sound, at one point, like Microsoft’s consistent faults were inevitably permanant. But surely the company can learn a lesson and change tactics. We ought to keep an open mind that such a thing might happen. Right?
Again, read the interview.
There is a fundamental difference in approach to software developement. That being closed source vs. Open Source. That makes it very hard for Micro$oft to change to the degree necessary for them to compete. You are talking hundreds of people working on IE vs thousands working on Firefox. And when it comes to security patches, who knows what is going on inside MS? You have to trust that they are looking at things and offering all of the patches when they learn of them. But, just a few weeks ago, they came out and said they do not. They rely on security through obscurity to a degree.