1. in the beginning, browsers didn't have download statusbars
2. firefox got a browser statusbar extension. it was configurable and worked well
3. chrome cloned it without options and it didn't work as well

4. firefox realized chrome was faster and more secure at everything and therefore dropped extensions
5. now firefox doesn't have a download statusbar either

6. someone reimplements download statusbars in firefox's new web-extensions format. it's terrible because of the inherent limitations of the significantly less flexible and powerful extension format

7. CHROME WINS! (with its terrible download statusbar implementation which can't be fixed by users, because No Options and No Skins and No Extensions)

this is where we are now

but I expect at some point we'll hit:
8. people complain that firefox doesn't have a download statusbar, like chrome does
9. mozilla points out the extension, but users either don't know about it or point out it sucks

10. firefox bites the bullet and implements a native download statusbar, because of the user feedback.
it's native and therefore works way better than the extension... but it clones the chrome one so it works terribly and has no options to fix it

now you may not care about the download statusbar or think the chrome one is "just fine"

but it kinda feels like this has happened a dozen times with different functionality in firefox

excited to be watching mozilla repeatedly radioshack themselves out of a job

so radioshack was a niche tech store:

they sold batteries and wires and transistors and computer parts. this was not a mainstream store, but you couldn't get this stuff elsewhere, so they had a small but dedicated customer base

they began selling more mainstream stuff in the tech area. cellphones and VHS tapes and DVD players.
it was a bit more expensive than their competition, sure, but it sold well for them

because if you're a tech geek going in there to buy a sound card or a geek buying a capacitor, you probably call people and watch movies, because everyone does.

but you don't have infinite floor space: you can't sell everything.
So Radio Shack starts stocking fewer capacitors and soundblasters and more Nokias and DVD players

eventually getting to the point where you can go into a radio shack and they're just selling all the same limited stock of electronics (basic computer parts, TV cables, DVD players, cell phones, RC cars) that you can buy at Walmart, Best Buy, or Target

at which point radio shack has completely lost their original audience (because they can't get those niche tech parts anymore) and traded them for an audience who only wants the more mainstream stuff... WHICH IS ALSO BEING SOLD AT FOUR OTHER STORES IN THE SAME TOWN

AT LOWER PRICES
AND THOSE OTHER PLACES ALSO CARRY THINGS LIKE BEDS AND MILK AND SOCKS

and then somehow radio shack goes out of business, with their brilliant model of being a more expensive smaller shitty version of four other big-box stores

meanwhile if they'd stayed with original niche-tech store idea, they may not have made a trillion dollars, but they'd still be in business.

anyway this slow decline of radio shack seems to have been obvious to every person I've talked to who ever went there, and yet exactly zero people in the retail management world seem to have paid any attention to it.

well, the retail management world, or the browser management world

excited to be typing this message on the walmart internet browser version 4.0

The weirdest thing about Radioshack, btw, is their parent company: Tandy.

So Tandy started as the "Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company".

In the 60s they were starting up lots of hobby shops for sewing and such, and discovered a mail order company in Boston, which had been around since the 20, selling electronics parts

they acquired them and turned them into a retail chain, and radio shack became a big hit, as well as influencing the parent company to make the tandy series of computers, sold in their radio shack shops

during this time, they were still doing leather. that's how they started , after all.

but in 1975 they decided to reorganize their businesses into separate publicly-held companies.
Tandy Leather Company was now completely different from Tandy Corporation and Radio Shack.

Tandy Leather Company didn't really work out. Charles Tandy died a few years later, the president of Tandy Leather Company left, and started up competing leather companies, hiring many of the same people who had been working at Tandy.