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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.
It was bound to happen. IE hasn't been updated for ages, and it's embarassingly out of kilter with standards, even in comparison to Internet Explorer for the PC.
I suppose they want everyone to get MSN for Mac OS X if they want the Microsoft "experience."
Woohoo! First post!
iqu
By dropping support for earlier versions of Windows and Macs, IE will not forever be hailed as a "standard." People are still using Windows 98, 5 years after its release. Microsoft is betting its IE market share on its DRM.
Wait... when MS doesn't have unfair control over a market, the better product wins out?
Too bad the goverment isn't going far enough to make them allow fair competition in the Windows market place.
I don't want MS to be taken apart. Just that other companies need to have equal access to the underlying OS and protocols so that they can make products that compete.
did you forget the part where MS used undocumented Windows APIs to make them run better? take that away, and you're left with shit.
shit like, for instance, MSIE for OS X.
to quote the article
"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."
I believe that in truth they mean they don't have access to the Macintosh customers that they need to compete. MS is so used to having people get Ie on their computer, (and on their own OS whenever they want to upgrade their OS they go to windows update and get it pretty much automatically) that when another browser is geared to come with the OS they don't see any advantages to their browser (its only advantage currently being that it comes with the OS) so they decide to discontinue it. That's my take anyway.
The other thing that kills me is that the article mentions sites that require Internet Explorer compatability... Since when did Mac IE have the same rendering engine as windows IE? From what I recall if the page doesn't work in mozilla, it prolly won't work in Mac IE either. Oh well, I say no loss here, I'll take safari over IE any day.
Entourage isn't bad, really. If you've ever used Outlook Express and liked it, Entourage is right up your alley.
I was an old OE user in my pre-X days, and now that I'm on this UNIX-BASED SYSTEM (fuck you, Open Group), I use Entourage all the time. The downside is that, just like the Windows version, Office for Mac is ridiculously expensive. (Yay for various discounts. I'd never pay full street price--$400-$500--for Office. Sorry, fellas.)
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Sort of, Microsoft calls it "Entourage X," and it's essentially Outlook for the Mac. The downside is that it (of course) doesn't support Exchange--you've gotta set up a Terminal Server with Outlook on it for a Mac to have access to Exchange-native features...
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
The article states that an issue for Mac owners:
Microsoft's decision creates a conundrum for Mac users seeking maximum compatibility. Many Web sites are designed to work best or, in some cases, only with Internet Explorer.
However, I work at a Big 10 university where we've upgraded our Macs to OS X and I checked this morning and my simple homepage with some basic CSS tags won't even work correctly in IE. I think this is a good thing, and Safari will help out Mac users much more as far standards compliance than Microsoft ever would...
Something clever...
because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system
*Right*. Last I looked, the underlying OS was open source.
Jimmy Grewal, the lead developer for Mac IE, is leaving Microsoft. He's an interesting guy, and a real Mac fan. Even his web site is running on an OS X server.
His blog is pretty interesting, if you're into such things.
http://www.jimmygrewal.com/
The death of IE, to be honest, shouldn't be much of an issue. Apple would have killed it in Panther anyway, surely...
:s
The more concerning thing is Office. Office v.X is excellent and all, but what happens when the new PC version comes out and Microsoft decide that they're bored of updating Office for the Mac - will they just kill that too? One of the key points of the Apple sales strategy is that Macs have Office - without it, things will become more challenging, I'd have thought.
One could point out that anything different in file formats will break compatibility with older versions of Office on the PC too, but so what? It's all part of the Microsoft upgrade strategy anyway. PC users will always have the choice (albeit expensive) to upgrade. What if Mac users don't?
Zealots will, of course, talk about OpenOffice and the Aqua port, which Apple could of course assist in the development of, but it's got a fair way to go before near-perfect, nearly-all-the-time compatibility is achieved.
Will be interesting to see how this all plays out...
iqu
Sorry, lead guy quit and moved on. Read his weblog at JimmyGrewal.com.
Are they complaining about a lack of test macs at Redmond, or they actually admitting that you need access to the underlying system to be competitive?
The latter is one of the things they've been saying isn't true in court, no?
...is that Apple needs to get their act together regarding Safari, even more so than it is already.
The number of people they have working on Safari is substantially less than what Microsoft has working on IE. Granted, the way IE is designed requires more people to begin with (it's tightly integrated of course and it is a highly sophisticated piece of software), but more developers means a better product made in a shorter amount of time, assuming their priorities aren't skewed (hint: security). Except for a difference in the level of integration with the OS, Safari is now to OS X what IE is to Windows, and Apple needs to treat it as such--a product as vital as OS X itself.
Safari always had the feel of a side project, a "just in case" plan. Well, "just in case" has arrived, and it's time for Apple to get serious.
The coolest voice ever.
Gonna play devil's advocate here.
I don't believe IE will ever play friendly with web standards when you have this.
"AOL Time Warner, for its part, has just ended its browser-related legal claims against Microsoft as part of a $750 million settlement that included a seven-year free license for IE."
AOL seems just as popular on the Mac side as it is on the PC side. Either AOL bought a license for a discontinued product, or they are planning on integrating IE into their AOL client.
Just my $.02
blue
That brings up a thought I had when I saw this story on macumors a little while ago. Is this decision the reason Safari exists? It kind of chicken/eggs the story... but is Microsoft cancelling mac IE development because of Safari, or was Safari created because Microsoft is cancelling IE development?
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I've seen the new version running on WinXP via a Microsoft tech. The best quote from him was "We would have bought VMware but, VirtualPC intergrated so nicely into our OS that we decide, what the heck". This was followed by a quote from a VM manager to us that up until recently, MS was their largest customer including running an unreal amount of ESX servers. For those of you not familiar with this product, it is a custom Linux install running some truly outstanding server software.
Since server integration is the next big money maker for a LOT of vendors, I'm sure that MS will use the "no one uses V-PC on Macs anyways so we're redirecting our R&D to the Windows version" excuse here shortly.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
The Mozilla team also doesn't have access to the OS, and they do much better than IE on Mac OS X.
Or maybe Microsoft just became so used to having access to the OS that now they can't do it any other way.
The only thing that botters me is the number of web sites that don't support anything other than IE. The company I used to work for even went as far as supporting only one single version of IE (5.5 if I'm not mistaken). Amazing.
its a free product, so why would a business compete over it.
Microsoft released IE for FREE to KILL netscape. Period. They have no one to blame but THEMSELVES that the browsers is a FREE product. They did it to get control of the browser market. NOW that they have it they are going to drop Mac support. Think about it.
MS doesnt have to make software for apple if they dont want to, there is no iLife suite for windows.
True to a point. They are a monopolist convicted of ABUSING that monopoly. See first answer.
Yes there is an outlook ported for OSX but it strictly works with Exchange servers, no imap,pop or anything else
You have it BACKWARDS. It supports the standard protocals but only works with Exchange on a limited basis. Again, Microsoft limitining the Mac access Windows infrastructture jus to make things difficult.
Welcome to the world of Microsoft.
This is very interesting since many web desingers still prefer mac.
If IE is history on mac we can expect them to make web pages that works in safari.
Now, remember that safari is based on khtml, perhaps we can get a larger percentage of websites that can be read in other browsers than IE.
This could be a very good thing.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
I started using Mozilla a long time ago on Mac OS X, even though IE came with the OS. It is FAR faster and has far fewer bugs than IE.
Then Chimera/Camino (which uses the Gecko engine with a native Mac front end) came along, and really set the bar for start-up, rendering speed and elegance. It was the most popular browser on the Mac for a brief period of time (until Apple released the first Safari beta).
So... the open source makers of Camino didn't need any private access to the OS to make a browser than blew IE out of the water.
I develop a lot of web applications- and just about every other web designer I know has the same problem that I do- Netscape 4.x.
Netscape 4 was horrible at rendering CSS- an absolute piece of crap. I still have to take it into consideration when creating pages, but it adds a lot of time to my work.
For anything that I do that is INTERNAL to my organization, I tell them right up front -"Use IE", because in reality that is the easiest way to say "don't use Netscape 4". Most of the cube dwellers have no idea there is anything else- and people that do know there are other choices ignore my suggestions anyway- which is fine.
Since I started doing this, I have only had one non-Netscape 4 person who had a problem. He was using a very early version of Opera, all he had to do was upgrade.
But on our public sites, I need to fully support Netscape 4, while it is breathing its last dying breath.
I don't care what browser people use, as long as it has good CSS support!
No reason to lie.
After all, Microsoft won't release another stand-alone browser for Windows either. They're really pushing for an operating system that let you browse the Internet instead, where perhaps the browser component of the OS might happen to be called Internet Explorer. The browser in Windows Longhorn will probably not be downloadable separately, and Microsoft will get complete freedom to do whatever they wish to do in that browser to make it necessary to upgrade to Longhorn to use certain services.
And according to this news post...
"Ironically, they also say that they can't compete with Apple, because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system."
I guess there's the proof; they can't integrate the browser into the OS on a Mac. So long, Apple.
Not that I think Mac users will suffer a huge loss. Perhaps it will even turn the tide in a positive way since webmasters will no longer have an excuse to make IE-only sites if they wish to make it run on Mac's. Sure, Mac users are in minority, but they're not in such a small minority that I would suggest any serious web developer to simply ignore them.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I hate to break it to you, pal, but Mac users don't use Apple software just because it's Apple software, we use it when it provides the best solution.
Particularly with web browsers. Back in the OS 7.x days, Netscape Navigator was the best early on, but when IE became the best (with version 4.5), I switched. I kept Navigator (and later, Communicator) around for testing of pages I created, but with each new version it became more bloated and slow. And there was that thing where it would blank and slowly reload the entire page for no discernible reason that really drove me into a rage.
When I moved up to OS X, I stuck with IE for a while but still kept trying Netscape's stuff, and it was still slower. I tried the other browsers, but some of the smaller projects were getting updated (or changing names) so often I couldn't keep up. Then Apple released Safari.
It works great, it's much, much faster than IE, and it renders pages properly. I use it because I think that even in beta, it's the best of what's available, not because Apple makes it.
Microsoft just gave up a big chunk of IE marketshare. With some sites, especially ones that appeal to artistic/creative types, they've basically reduced their marketshare to 50%.
Now, if 50% of your users run IE, and the other 50% run an amalgamation of Mozilla, Konqueror or Safari, Opera, and *, this will force developers to consider web standards.
Businesses may have been able to justify ignoring 5% of their market, but you can't ignore 50%.
Assuming that this isn't just a Microsoft plot to clobber Apple into accepting something, this is fantastic news indeed.
This is the best part about this. Suddenly the 1% or so of users on *nix OS's have a couple more percentage points worth of users, many in corporate environments, who will demand web standards compliance since IE only pages won't work for them anymore once MS comes out with its next standard-smashing version of IE.
For now of course everyone already has the current version of IE for Mac, but when that version becomes obsolete the enemy of my enemy will once again be my friend. Yay market share buddies!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Make sure you pool your efforts with this guy: http://khtml-win32.sourceforge.net/
This effort progressed quite quickly after the announcement of Safari, but appears to have slowed a tad... however that doesn't stop all of those budding win32 open source programmers getting into it! I'd love to see this proceed...
You raise an interesting point. However, it is likely that this is also a warning from Microsoft to Apple. Safari's wonderful ... you can have that market, KeyNote is cute ... but really isn't a threat to PowerPoint, but do any more and see what our commitment to VPC and Office updates are. Granted there has been significant revenue to Microsoft from Mac Office in the past, but Microsoft is clearly telling Apple to be careful in what actions it takes.
Mods, the parent post is a troll. Please note the following Mac myths being propogated: 1) Difficult to develop on a Mac 2) Mac's are expensive There is also some ignorance of the Human Interface Guidelines available from Apple, which do not require you to "use Macs for a year or two until you start to wrap your brain around how users expect the system to work." No, you certainly don't have to use a Mac for a couple of years. Read the guidelines, use the (free) development tools available from Apple which guide you towards the guidelines by their very nature, you will be able to successfully program on the mac in no time. Check out Hydra (http://hydra.globalse.org/index.html), written in about 8 weeks and totally rocks. I use it for collaborative programming on scripts. Find a Mac and check out this software, it will blow you away. Written in 8 weeks. Whoops, rambling,, lost the thread here. Oh, yeah, TROLL!
If I had some ham, I'd make a ham sandwich, if I had some bread
I think that these are all pieces of a bigger picture. I say that MSFT is using Safari as an excuse for something that was part of their business plan all along.
I say they don't want to release more standalone IE for Windows or Mac because their next 'integrated-with-OS' version of IE will contain proprietary and hard to duplicate features that will complement features in the next major MS SQL Server and IIS releases. I expect them to campaign hard for banks and other 'security conscious' entities to make the online access to their services exclusively use the new 'advanced security features' of the latest Microsoft products. They're hoping the ignorant bank managers would fall into the trap.
MSFT plans to try to get everyone hooked on these server products, thus requiring the Windows Longhorn OS to access the services because that's the only way you'll be able to get a browser that speaks the appropriate language. Essentially, they would be trying to force everyone to use Windows if they want to access the secure online features of their bank or stock broker. They way they would be using an operating system monopoly to marginalise other web browsing products in an effort for people to buy their own product.
And I'm quoting myself here: Wasn't this what Microsoft was sued for before? Using their Monopoly on OSs to marginalise the web browser industry? Haven't they learned anything?
Well yes, they have learned that they can get away with it.
With the critical (and, I think, much more important) problem that it was always slow compared to WinIE, both in rendering and interface. I'll take quick-and-dirty over slow-and-fully-compliant any day.
If they're complaining about access to GUI (Aqua) code, that's one thing, but they could at least show some intelligence and say that instead.
LordBodak's journal.
What an utterly useless comment this was. "KHTML sucks, dudes, but I don't know why." Pfeh.
If you did about three minutes of research, you could find a link like this one that tells you exactly in what way KHTML sucks... and more importantly, points out to you that it doesn't
But hey, let's not worry about the facts when we can just spew bile, right?
Well, I'll weigh in as an OS X pilot who surfs almost exclusively with Safari. Almost.
Like most people, I have to have a backup, in case something breaks. My habit has been to use Camino as a back-up browser. So far, this works ok for me. I'm a bit of a stickler for standards, so if a site doesn't work well I blame the site first, and not the browser; especially if I can compare/contrast between two browsers that are trying to behave in a standards-compliant way (even if the results are different).
But I digress. Regardless of the engine driving it, a browser is obviously a GUI-driven app, and I expect apps on Mac OS to behave and feel a certain way. The Mozilla/Firebird releases are not Mac OS native, at least in terms of look and feel, and I suspect that I (and many others) don't use them mainly for that reason.
Of course, this doesn't stop us from using the gecko-based Camino.
If I had need of the something that was more than a web browser, and wanted the whole suite of mail-news and web development that comes with a XUL-based app, I'd certainly be using Firebird. But I don't. I need a small, fast browser, and I have no complaints with Safari in this regard.
For those of us who want a browser to render a variety of sites in reasonably correct manner, most browsers will do. If you also want a look and feel consistent with the OS, with as little non-browser stuff as possible, Safari is an excellent choice.
Frankly, IE for Mac sucked on OS X. I have no knowledge of IE on OS 9. It lost it's edge by the time I started using a Mac, and the only reason I have it on my system drive is for one site that insists on using broken ECMA script that takes advantage of an IE trick (no, not a bank -- I bank just fine with Safari).
-- clvrmnky
You know, that's the sort of thing they may regret saying during the next DOJ/MS antitrust trial. There will be another one, of course...we all knew that right? ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Windows Media Player is so bad it merited a Perversion Tracker Review. (Perversion Tracker is a site that primarily pokes fun of inept shareware applications).
Looks to me like Apple is beating Microsoft at its own game. Certainly the QuickTime player is a pleasure to use, and Windows Media Player is not.
I find Microsoft's comments about integration into the operating system to be bizarre. The reason other browsers have passed IE have nothing to do with their integration with the OS, or lack thereof; features like tabbed browsing, popup blockers or superior font rendering have absolutely nothing to do with tight OS integration.
In my opinion, the only way a browser should be integrated into the OS is in the help viewer, which can use the same rendering engine. I believe Apple is in the process of doing this with Safari, and I think it's a great idea. But it does nothing to prevent other companies from making a better browser, if they can do it.
D
I'm sure a lot of /.ers would cheer then :)
Ok, seriously, Microsoft do have a habit of "innovating" only reluctantly. Development on Internet Explorer seems to have stopped now that it has the majority of the market, and has fallen way behind Opera and Mozilla in terms of features, speed and usability.
Likewise, Microsoft Word seems to have, if anything, gotten worse over these past few years. They seem to have ran out of good things to do to it, and instead are content to obfusicate their file formats to maintain dominance.
How many "innovations" has Microsoft actually completed that aren't blatent copies? I can't think of one.
Of course, from a purely capitalist point of view, this is a perfectly reasonable choice. Why bother improving stuff that you have a monopoly over, a monopoly that's likely to remain untouched for the next few years at least? Competition is capitalism's way of improving software, and with a monopoly, there's no incentive to improve.
Which is why there are laws concerning monopolies, and strict regulation of such entities. But with the DOJ in Microsoft's pocket, there isn't any enforcement of these laws, and thus Microsoft can get away with making a profit without expending any effort.
There was an article on MacEdition a few weeks ago in which CodeBitch talked about tabbed browsing.
The most interesting part of the article though, was the graphic halfway down the page that showcased the browser shares of Mac Edition visitors from November 2000 to March 2003.
They don't have access to the underlying system....
This is hilarious for two reasons:
1. The well documented API provided by Apple is pretty nice from what I have seen, and heard from, from developers for the platform. Ever seen MS documentation? Lots of it... too much of it, and none of it is worth reading enough in a mad quest to find something relevent.
2. 2/3's of the OSX system is open source BSD license(actually, I think Darwin is converted to some apple open source license that is very open still, but I could be wrong). But either way, how much more open do they need it?!?!?
Then of course there is that whole, 'whats good the goose is good for the gander issue' with IE vs Netscape and underlying code knowlage advantages.... it all just makes MS look very very dumb.
But yeah, Safari is a better browser than IE. But does this mean that Chimera should quit now because if MS can't make it in the market, then no one can!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
The OS X version of IE is a wonderful broswer, aside from the lack of tabs. It is faster, more stable, and all around better than the Windows version.
But we don't need it. OS X has an excellent port of Mozilla, which after over a year of use I can attest is excellent. Safari is also a nice option for users who want a less bloated browser, assuming that those users can tolerate that nasty brushed metal theme.
OS X users have two great browser options, we don't need IE. The only group who needs IE on OS X is Microsoft, and Microsoft has turned tail and run away after getting a nice ass-kicking in the OS X browser war.
OS X continues to prove that Open Source software is not just a niche market for programmers and sysadmins. Now we just need to educate Windows users about the great alternatives to Microsoft's products, and start beating down Redmond's doors.
Even Mozilla has conceded and is dropping their browser suite to work on niche applications like pheonix. Phoenix, a niche? Get real, Phoenix is the browser (Firebird). If Netscape didnt Open Source and start the Mozilla project, _then_ Microsoft would of had dominance . They would of been able to dictate standards and nobody would of cared when you cried "but your page wont work in Opera". The browser war is over, but there was no winner, just losers. No party acomplished their aims, and that is the way it should be.
Apple should port Safari to Windows along with all of the Cocoa libraries. Tell developers that if they develop in Cooca, a windows port is just a re-compile away. Without Cocoa on Windows, you not only have to re-write everything you have to change languages too!
....same strategy as the iPods....
Windows actually started as a set of libraries for DOS programs to add GUIs. The library's popularity helped Windows beat out GEM and OS/2 and achieve total world domination. Apple could pull a similar trick with Win-Cocoa.
If apple ported the Cocoa Foundation, AppKit, and WebKit to windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. a lot of developers would develop in Cocoa simply because of how wonderful Cocoa is.... and even if Cocoa apps ran under Windows and Linux, they would still run best on OS X on a Mac
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Personally, I think MS just wants to drop IE for MacOS.
This leaves several questions.
MSN for OSX includes a web browser. Based on a review i've read, it handles diffrently then IE so it's probably something else. Has MS has created something new or they are using third-party technology to provide web access?
Since AOL settled, they now have a license to use IE again. Will they switch to IE on the Mac, even thought it essentially dead or continue transitioning to Gecko? MS killing Mac IE may give AOL a good reason to keep Netscape Around.
Also, a MS spokesperson said, "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,". So how did developers add tabs to the open source browser Camino? Note: Camino's interface is native. It doesn't use cross platform widgets like Mozilla.
~Scott
I wouldn't put Omniweb into the "maybe soon again" category. The latest Omniweb (OmniWeb 4.5 beta 1) is using WebCore/KHTML and it renders at least as well as Safari with a ton more features than Safari has. It's very stable too, I'd hardly even call it a beta. Give it a try again, it's excellent now!
Sapere aude!
Apple has no extra tie-ins with Safari. Everyone who knows anything knows this. Mozilla's Camino and Firebird kick IE ass. Camino is VERY close to Safari in terms of speed, and its more mature, when Safari catches up to Mozilla, they will be the same speed. Its hardly noticable to me right now. IE blows chunks and has for a while now. It was obvious to many of us that IE was not being supported well, and that it was only a matter of time before MS completely integrated IE into the OS. (Although I thought it would be years with the anti-trust keeping them on the mac. But as we have seen the weak settlement is not even being followed...and to no surprise.) As nice as the irony may seem, there is NO IRONY here. Apple has NO advantage other than its browser is based on KHTML. And all the other open source browsers are much better than IE. The disadvantage is bloated IE and small development group. (closed source) I expect Slashdot to know better, but the rest the world will fall for it and see it as "Ironic". It will also be interpreted by some as a blessing of the extreme bundling MS does. Everone else does it correctly, or more correctly-- they loosely couple their software. The unix paradyms are followed. MS tightly couples everything. MS can never understand unix.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
is that for a couple of years, IE 5/5.1 was by far the best browser on MacOS 9.x. MS basically ported it to OS X and called it 5.2 and it's pretty much been languishing since. I wonder what happens with MS's Media player (a clumsy, bloated, buggy, piece of crap). Will they now bow out of the Mac platform an concede to Quicktime's clear superiority (ever try to scan quickly through an audio or video file with MS's player on Mac?) But the real question regards MS Office. Media Player and IE bring no direct revenue to MS. The same cannot be said for Office. Media player is inferior to Quicktime's player and IE has been eclipsed by Mozilla (finally) and now Safari. None of the open-source office replacements are ready for prime-time yet. (ThinkFree might be close - I haven't used it on X yet).
Nope, they will only be redirected if they use an obsolete browser running on their Mac.
While Netscape was creating a revolution with their browser, Bill Gates was addressing developers and industry pundits and showing off his portfolio of CDs. He was proclaiming that they were the next revolution in computing, and showing how a person could carry around a small binder with all the information they ever needed, and pay only a small monthly subscription to keep their plasticized data current. It was a few months later that Redmond uttered a collective "Oh Sh%$". They bought a browser, slapped their icon on it, and started giving it away for free. Shortly after this, they began modifying the internal scripting language to add non-standard HTML tags that only their browser was compatible with. And it was about this time that the infamous "cut off their oxygen" phrase was uttered in a Microsoft executive meeting about Netscape.
So, based on this, and many other examples, I would put it to you dear reader that Microsoft's .NET strategy will tend to close off access to non-ms products. It is reasonable to assume that this will indeed entail support of Windows and Office to the detriment of other operating systems and productivity apps.
Run! There's a lobster loose!
They had better use 1.4 for the next major Netscape release), because
with the dropping of XPFE for 1.5 according to the new roadmap, it's
going to be at _least_ six months before the next reasonably usable
browser codebase (Firebird, which is extremely beta still) hits
release quality, and two years or more before we have a decent
mail/news client (from Thunderbird, which at this point is only
barely alpha and won't be able to replace Messenger (to say nothing
of a real mailreader) for months and months).
I was (in the 1.2 days) predicting 1.5 or 1.6 for the next Netscape
release, but at this point they need to work with 1.4, because 1.5
and 1.6 aren't going to be gamma quality. Then again, neither was
the branch that they based 6.x on, really, so who knows what they
will do. But what they *ought* to do is take 1.4 and work with it
for the next branch. Or 1.3, which is stable in my experience.
1.5 will feature serious loss of functionality compared to 1.4, as
a lot of things will still need to be ported over from XPFE to the
new toolkit. Quite a few browser features (all minor, but lots
of minor features add up), plus almost everything outside the
browser component.
That means we're probably looking at Netscape 9.x in circa 2006
before Netscape users get the flexibile architecture features
(extensions and whatnot) that were developed for Phoenix.
This is all entirely off-topic in a discussion about Mac IE,
of course, but hey, this is slashdot.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
13 June 2003 :::
:::
5 pm est
R.I.P.
The rumors flew all day, but we held off writing about this until we had it from an unimpeachable source. Jimmy Grewal is a key member of the Mac Internet Explorer team and a stand-up guy. He confirms that IE5/Mac is dead.
There is much that could be said. IE5/Mac, with its Tasman rendering engine, was the first browser to deliver meaningful standards compliance to the market, arriving in March, 2000, a few months ahead of Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 6. On a mailing list today, Netscapeâ(TM)s Eric Meyer said, âoe I donâ(TM)t think people realize just how much of a groundbreaker IE5/Mac really was, and how good it remains even today.â IE5/Mac introduced innovations like DOCTYPE switching and Text Zoom that soon found their way into comparably compliant browsers like Navigator, Konqueror, and Safari. And all but Text Zoom eventually made it into IE6/Win, Microsoftâ(TM)s most compliant Windows browser to date (and the last one they will ever make).
Bafflingly, after attaining dominance on both the Windows and Macintosh platforms, IE stopped evolving. In the past three years, its existing competitors at Netscape, Opera, and the open source Mozilla project greatly improved their browsers, and new competitors flooded the market, but IE/Win and IE/Mac stayed as they were.
This might sound like the complacence of victors after throttling an opposing army. But inside Microsoft, nobody was slacking off. Our friends there, we knew, were working on improvements, particularly in the areas of CSS and DOM support. Yet no significantly new browser version ever came of their activity. IE6/Win still had trouble with parts of CSS1, still did not support true native PNG transparency, and still did not incorporate Text Zoom. IE5/Mac, which had worked well in OS 9, became flaky under OS X, and a minor upgrade did not fix its problems. Even die-hard IE5/Mac fans began switching to Camino, and, when it arrived, Safari.
Those who switched may have done so on the basis of features like tabbed browsing or popup blocking. Some in the development community may have switched because of the improved standards compliance in Gecko browsers like Camino and Netscape. But mostly, we think, the switchers were behaving instinctively.
With Camino or Safari, you felt you were using a living product that was continually improving in response to user feedback. Microsoftâ(TM)s browser engineers were busy working on something, but their activities took place behind a (figurative) corporate firewall.
Over the past weeks, the stories we and others have been covering (including the unavailability of an improved version of IE5/Mac outside the subscription-based MSN pay service, and the news that IE/Win was dead as a standalone product) painted a picture of a product on its way out. And now we know that that is the case.
We know that, after spending billions of dollars to defeat all competitors and to absolutely, positively own the desktop browsing space, Microsoft as a corporation is no longer interested in web browsers. We know that, on the Windows side, it will eventually release something that accesses web content, but that âoesomethingâ will be part of an operating system â" and that operating system wonâ(TM)t be available until 2005, and probably wonâ(TM)t be widely used before 2007. Whether the part that formats web pages will be more or less compliant with W3C recommendations than what we have now, we donâ(TM)t know. Neither do we know whether the unnamed thing that handles web browsing will support CSS3 and other specifications that will emerge during the long years ahead in which Microsoft offers no new browser.
From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if 85% of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.
But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth.
help out.
The premise sounds like sour grapes to me: "we couldn't cheat and smash that market into the ground, so we're picking up our marbles and leaving in a huff." So there! Phrrrrp!
FWIW, Exploder for Mac is better (faster, more standard, more secure) than Exploder for MS-Windows. Since Safari can beat that, it follows that Konq on MS-Windows should romp it in against Exploder.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But isn't education philanthropic? I guess that depends on whether the education is directed to enthralling our best and brightest to Microsoft and their software - both students and study venues - or is unencumbered. Guess what? With the exception of court-ordered actions and a sprinkling of cases where the brownie points were more critical than immediate sales points, all of Bill's educational sponsorship is tied to Microsoft software in one way or another. No change there in the last 20 or so years, still the same old over-ridingly desperate egocentricism. (-: Had to laugh, though, at the recipient of one computer centre telling Bill during his inspection tour that the computers in it ran "a variety of software" but omitting to mention that every bit of that variety arrived on RedHat CDs... :-)
I wonder... have I used enough long words to trigger the lameness filters? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Gotcha. Makes a lot of sense actually. Although you could make a case that in a lot of ways, Bill Clinton was Regan II. Not so much in terms of substantial policies, but in terms of political style. They both had a very good ability to communicate, and a good sense of the political centre (Regan might have been a right-wing wacko in practice, but you never felt like he was an extremist). There was a good piece in George magazine back in the day about how during his reelection campaign, Clinton appropriated a substantial amount of Regan's reelection campaign, down to Clinton's use of phrases like "It's morning again in America" during campaign rallies. I kinda get the impression that the distinction between Regan and George Herbert Walker Bush is pretty much required reading for anyone hoping to become a successful American politician these days. Regan for what you should do, and Bush for what you shouldn't.
I'm new to macs, starting with Jaguar. I picked up a mac magazine the other day which seemed to repeat a mantra of 'IE is the best IE is the best' which made me boggle. I used it for about 2 minutes, hated it and started looking for alternatives, and luckily I found safari pretty quickly. Camino is good too, but not quite as quick. Maybe I've been using OSS browsers for too long, but to me a better quality browser is more important than the ability to correctly render sites that adhere to Microsofts idea of html instead of the W3C's.
Checking one's work in IE is very important for Mac web developers. Most people don't use Gecko or KHTML based browsers.
No doubt, WinIE is fairly different from Mac IE; however, it sure was nice to have -some- sort of Tasman browser on Mac OS.
Now Mac IE's dead, VPC has an unstable future, and MS is taking the developers of RealPC to court.... eeeeeehhh... this doesn't look like a great time to be a mac web developer
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
This was a big surprise to me when I opened the 10.2 box and found a grey CD marked "Developer Tools" in there along with the Jag install disks.
It was free so I installed it just to see if I'd enjoy programming. Sure enough, it was good fun and I had some simple programs going (with help from the wealth of online sources on the subject).
Thanks to Apple, there'll be one more person willing to contribute to open source software as soon as I learn enough to be useful.
I'm sure there are free ways to develop stuff on windows (I know that MS's own dev tools are not free though), but having that CD in the box with Jaguar was a good way to get me interested enough to actually try some stuff out.
Ok. so my programs unexpectedly quit whenever you click on certain buttons, but I'm improvinf slowly. And come on, who doesn't need an unexpectedly quitting program? It reminds me of my Windows days!
Until Window's file system and the World Wide Web start to resemble one another, I find it absurd it's even being argued the two should be forced through the same interface. As it is, Microsoft merely "integrated" the webbrowser. It didn't change the underlying operating system to be more web-like, and the actual result was that people who run Windows are forced to load entirely unnecessary gunk in order to manage files on their hard drives.
Apple's browser, FWIW, is a standalone program. It's not a Finder replacement and is nowhere near being usable as such a thing. Again, their file system remains a collection of listable objects, not a cross-referenced document environment. The nearest things they'll be doing to what Microsoft did will be to bundle the browser with the OS (which I have no objections to, especially if they do not prevent resellers from bundling other browsers with the package) and providing an API (Webcore/Webkit) in the OS's System area so that third party developers can, if they want, use the functionality.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I hope this is investigated, though I doubt the Bush administration has any stomach for this.
--- igiveup ---
This I ponder much. Much much much.
The whole role of events with Microsoft in the past month or two has been very fascinating.
1) MS licenses UNIX crap from SCO
2) SCO goes nutty with lawsuits
3) MS buys Virtual PC from Connectix
4) MS makes deal with AOL about Netscape
5) MS buys European anti-virus company
6) MS ditches Linux support of said anti-virus company
7) MS says they are doing away with stand-alone IE
8) MS says they are done with IE for Mac (which I kind of figured when they made the stand-alone announcement)
Still, one has to wonder, what is brewing?
As far as the whole browser mess...and we all know it's a mess...what is happening? Most coders currently code just for IE and don't give a flyin' F about Netscape. Ok. But what about all the sites coded for IE in Mac. Does this mean the entire Mac market is shot to hell? Will sites that rely on IE-based code say "screw this...I'm not going to code for Safari"?
And is Safari really THAT big of a threat? I know I use Safari for most everything, but I still need IE to visit some sites. I'm actually a bit concerned about the future. What happens now?
1) Companies continue coding for IE only, thus the Mac market is SOL if they need to do online banking or have other functions that were specifically coded for IE.
2) The people developing Safari have to give in to IE's loose standards in order to render those IE coded pages.
This is tough...really tough. And only time will tell.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Here is the Scenario. MS buys Connectix... MS discontinues IE. Sites requiring IE continue to evolve until the 5.x Mac IE version simply won't work and Safari won't either. There is an outcry (or at least they claim there is one) from Mac Users that they need IE to function on bank and other high security sites. Meanwhile MS has been quietly making VPC from a separate Virtual Machine into an integrated Win API where Software for Windows runs along side Mac OS X software in the dock rather than encapsulated. MS releases IE 7 (or 8) for Windows on Mac using their new API. Why do this? They could then say to their developers: "Hey license our new Windows API for Mac software and you don't have to redevelop a Mac version to get a piece of that small market. That niche market is not worth the cost and effort of a full blown release anyway. Look we did it with IE and if you can do it with a browser where you need so much underlying OS knowledge ( as we argued in court wink wink nudge nudge) *your* program should be a piece of cake." End result (from MS's perspective.): Fewer and fewer Mac developers and less and less reason to use/buy and develop specifically for the Mac. That way MS can claim they are good guys because at least *they* are still developing something for the Mac (even if it leads to crumby emulated software.) My 2Â....