I was reading an article in IT World Canada in which a San Francisco based software development company is critizing Microsoft for not having a faster update cycle for IE9. The nutshell is they believe that not having continual updates is a drawback and makes IE9 behind the curve. The use the example that the UK government is sticking with IE6 instead of moving to IE8 due to the costs to test and deploy the new version.
I disagree with the company that continual updates are optimum. In fact, I uninstalled Firefox from my network computers for that reason. Every other week the browser had a minor updates was needing to be installed and there was no easy way for me to deploy that update. Google also seems to agree with me and they are releasing an admin friendly version of Chrome which has the ability to block updates all together. Having to deal with updates to the web software on a continual basis makes it tough to manage. Major or minor updates mean checking compatibility and ensuring your apps continue to work. Having planned updates makes it easier to manage and control your environment.
Really though, Firefox only does major updates once in a while. It could be argued for Internet Explorer that updates are continual and done on patch Tuesdays. The reality is IE is updated in a controlled, methodical manner; but of course, that wouldn’t sound as good or make good reading.