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IE might have improved a lot performance wise, it is still way behind implementing many parts of many of the specs the other browsers already supported in their previous versions like Firefox 3.6.

Here an example list:
http://caniuse.com/#compare=y&b1=ie|9&b2=firefox|4
http://caniuse.com/#compare=y&b1=ie|9&b2=firefox|3.6

IE 9 is still crap. I can't run it on my Linux, OS X or even XP box!

MS claims that it's standards compliant. Well, it might be better than IE 8 but it's no where near the competition. Checkout the summary of at the bottom of this page: http://caniuse.com/

"Compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers"

IE 9.0: 62%
Firefox 4.0: 87%
Safari 5.0: 79%
Chrome 10.0: 92%
Opera 11.1: 77%

ie9 is only 59% compatible with HTML5/CSS3/modern javascript: http://www.caniuse.com

IE6 was fine when it was released. Nothing wrong with it now except that it is based on 10 year old tech and standards. MS did not update it. That's the real problem. They had a lot of opportunity. Even when they did update it they did all the wrong things and for all this time the Windows default browser has been holding back the web in all kinds of ways and still is.

Go here: http://www.caniuse.com/

Scroll down and see how IE stacks up. Then think about the installed base of IE 6/7/8 users.

It will be another 3-5 years before we can implement many of those methods because IE is so far behind.

Here is a better listing of specific capabilities for different browser versions: http://caniuse.com/ It's still unclear how competitive IE9 will be at the time it comes out, but it will clearly be a huge leap forward from IE8. (The big problem will be getting all the existing IE6, 7, and 8 users to migrate to IE9 or other modern browsers.)