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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
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.
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/
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.