I'm sure mechanics feel the same way about the rest of us when we bring our car into the shop. Browsers are important to us but they'll never be important to "most people".
I do agree that the industry plays a large part in the continuation of bad practices. I'm always amazed at how apathetic some browser developers have been in responding to developer requests. It seems that, ultimately, the browser developers would benefit from more websites working on their product.
At the same time I'm optimistic that as users become aware of some of the great plug-ins that are available for Firefox and the great speed and usability of Safari and Chrome, they'll be more inclined to finally make the switch.
The thing is, it's not important for the users. I still have to use IE6 occasionally while at college (although this is only the case on the ThinClients, everything else is on IE7) but apart from lacking tabs there's not a lot (on the face of it) from IE7.
Important for web developers and those that use the internet frequently but not for those that only use the net occasionally.
