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Microsoft Kills Off Mac IE, Blames Safari
aliebrah writes "CNet reports that
Microsoft will not release any more major upgrades for Internet Explorer on MacOS. They cite competition from Safari as the reason for this decision, and say that Safari is a better browser for Macintosh systems. Ironically, they also say that they can't compete with Apple, because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system."
Yeah, that must be rough. Today's SlashDotFunQuiz is to predict the order in which, impact when, and years until these other Mac products get the axe: Media Player, MSN Messenger, Office, Outlook, and Virtual PC.
I think they are confusing Windows and Mac OS X. The underlying operating system, Darwin, is open source. Or are they referring to the window manager? Why would they need access to the Window manager source???
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
This move by Microsoft could be the beginning of standards acceptance by web developers. Too many sites require Internet Explorer to work. Maybe web developers will wake up and start supporting standards, instead.
Alternately, this could spell big trouble for Apple. How will my Mom feel when she can't check her mutual funds using her Macintosh because the browser isn't compatible?
Is this an example of a development community unwittingly aiding and abetting Microsoft's abuse of monopoly power?
Microsoft felt that customers were better served by using Apple's browser, noting that Microsoft does not have the access to the Macintosh operating system that it would need to compete
When is Microsoft going to realize that tying their products into the operating system isn't synonymous with competition.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Not all of Mac OS X is open, though. Microsoft will never get access to QuickTime's source or Quartz's source. The second one is the problem, you see, because Safari uses low-level Quartz calls to render text. Safari's faster because of that, but unfortunately, only Apple has access to this.
/think./ I might be wrong. Any ADC member out there who has more information, hit the reply link down below. ;-)
I
Anyway, it's still a bullshit excuse from Microsoft. Look at how fast Camino is, for example. The Camino team has the same level of access to the DOCUMENTED APIs that Microsoft does, and yet their browser doesn't blow monkey dongs.
But that's Microsoft for you.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
MacIE was the best browser Microsoft ever made: it was nearly 100% CSS1-compatible, and shared none of the WinIE's vulnerabilities.
Not to mention it had far better HTML (standard) support than WinIE, better PNG handling, a good DOM level 1 implementation, and support for ECMA 262, not "Javascript" or "JScript".
Tantek Ãelik and team did a wonderful job, and it's a real bad decision by the Seattle Moloch to axe their one product you cannot complain about in all fairness.
Microsoft should have based WinIE 6 on MacIE5.
I hope the people that worked on MacIE are the ones that will build the next-gen IE, and not those incompetent hacks who made the Windows versions.
As soon as they can make more money doing so than continuing as they are now.
I'd actually kind of hope that MSOffice goes sooner than later... If it does, than you'll see a mad rush from Apple to update OpenOffice to have Apple's legendary smoothness. Don't get me wrong, I use OpenOffice, but it's not quite there yet...
Alternatively, they may already have something like this up their sleeves... Just look at Keynote...
They say competition from Safari, but I believe the most important statement is "Some of the key customer requests for Web browsing on the Mac require close development between the browser and the OS, something to which only Apple has access,"
This is the argument that they made about their browser and their OS. What better way to bring credibility to their argument that stating that another OS will be better served with a browser that closely integrates with its OS.
Hah. A little competition.....and Microsoft bails out.
Does anyone really believe this? If you do then I've got a couple of landmarks and bridges for sale if you're interested.
Safari, and Apple's access to the OS, is just lip service done by a PR rep looking for some reason to excuse themselves from the Mac market. The Mac port of IE simply makes no business sense anymore -- In the era of the struggle between Netscape and Microsoft, when Netscape had the monopoly on web browsers basically by giving it out for free, it made sense from a PR perspective to get as big of a marketshare however possible, even if it meant dumping millions into developing software for users who don't add a penny to your revenue stream. Microsoft won the browser war quite handily, now capturing some 90%+ of web browser clients. That's old news, and the web browser wars don't get media or investor interest anymore, so it isn't even justified via indirect reasons.
Indeed, the last major browser update from Microsoft was, what, 3 years ago? Clearly Microsoft either has something very large underway (just as Mozilla catches up), and again the Mac market doesn't represent revenue potential, or the arena in general just doesn't hold much interest right now.
I disagree. There are myriad things that MS could do to please the Slashdot community. They have simply never done any of them.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Wow, I can't believe you said that.
I do agree that the end effect is that one proprietary standards compliant browser has been replaced by another (but this one also has an Open Source html engine). It also reduces diversity.
However, I don't believe the message is 'don't bother to compete with Apple', it's the message 'don't bother to compete with Microsoft, or we'll pull support/development resources'.
The reason I/we use Safari isn't because it's bundled and isn't because we're loyal. We are a crowd that use (and love) Camino, Omniweb, iCab, and Safari, not because we're loyal, but because each of those web browsers does something better than the others. Before Safari, I used Mozilla; not IE. Even without Safari, Mac users had already been looking for replacements, such as Mozilla, Camino/Chimera, Omniweb, iCab, and Opera.
However, a message this does send to developers (big or small) is that if you want the Mac market, you have to develop the best product; we are a known proven market willing to pay for software and good product; Macs are, after all, more expensive than PCs, arguably justified on grounds of aesthetics and ease of use. If Microsoft made IE faster, more capable, and easier to use than Safari, we would switch in a heartbeat; it's not loyalty, but *quality*.
Yes, it's arrogant to say 'we', but I do think I understand the mindset of many Mac users (not all).
GPL Deconstructed
This is part of an interesting pattern of MS killing off competing products, esp. on competing platforms.
I submitted a story (which was rejected) about this little gem:
Microsoft has purchased the RAV antivirus program, and will discontinue the Linux version.
Now this is interesting: they kill IE for Mac. They kill a product that allows a Linux/Sendmail based system to scan for viruses before they are delivered to the end user.
Question: has MS lost all fear of anti-trust action, and begun the final offensive against all competition?
Do bears excrete in the forest?
Do trolls post on Slashdot?
www.eFax.com are spammers
1) You can write programs in pretty much what ever language you want. There's Java programs, there's C programs (Carbon), heck there are even Python and C++ bridges to call the Cocoa API. There's also RealBASIC too. Objective-C maybe the prefered langauge, but it's not the only one.
2) Would you really try to see a linux program ported from windows without first try to figure out how the system works? I think your 1 to 2 year learning curve to be way too steep - OS X doesn't have that many nuances.
3) What cost of development? You mean the free development tools? Yeah, that's hard money to make back. Plus, mac users, IMO, are much more likely to pay shareware fees than linux users.
I am so confused. Why is it starting to go around that it is hard to program for Mac OS X? My theory: FUD being thrown around because people are starting to realize that it's really really really easy to program for Mac OS X... but it's just a theory.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
I'm thinking you're right.
I don't think that Apple has the numbers of developers necessary to create an Apple office suite from the ground up. I suppose an alternate possibility would be to beef up AppleWorks into an industrial-strength office suite, incorporating Keynote and re-assimilating FileMaker Pro.
However, Steve has opted to take a best-of-breed Open Source solution (KHTML *is* best-of-breed when compared to Gecko, the solid, time tested *BSD *is* best-of-breed compared to the still-evolving Linux) and build Apple software around it. MacOS X is the result of uniting NextStep and *BSD open-source code, Safari is the result of uniting the GPLed KHTML browser engine with in-house code.
An Open Office completely tuned to use Quartz, Quartz Extreme, Display PDF and all the other goodies available to MacOS X developers would rock the house. It would have full compatibility with MS Office from Office 97 to Office XP, something AppleWorks never had. And Apple could give back a nice polishing job that nobody at Sun has the time, inclination or will to do.
As far as an Outlook-killer goes...I could definitely see Apple taking Evolution and running with it in a similar fashion to what I am suggesting they might do with Open Office. They might even hire some of the people who worked on Entourage back to make it happen.
The take-home message here is this: Apple does not need Microsoft anymore. Apple is no longer the teetering, smoking hulk that needed Bill Gates' checkbook to shore up while Steve Jobs did all the things he had to do to revitalize the Apple brand. Apple is now very content to have its niche. The comparisons to BMW and other luxury car makes is very apropos. Neither BMW nor Mercedes nor Rolls Royce nor Jaguar nor Ferrari nor Acura nor Infiniti nor Lexus have a very large chunk of the automotive market. But all do just fine for themselves.
Bill Gates is going to have to just suck it down.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Apple has been notorious about giving little or no access to the OS to develop software."
Hate to break it to you, but a majority of OS X is open source.
"This has been a major reason for most companies not porting software to the Mac platform."
So, what you are saying is that developers are/will not port software to OSX because Apple does not provide enough source... I guess that is why all the developers flock to Microsoft - Microsoft loves to provide Windows source.
Ha. You are a moron. Name me one significant application that is not avalible on OS X...
Keep clicking on that Start button!