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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.
They cite competition from Safari as the reason for this decision
The best part is, Safari isn't done yet.
Vonal Declosion
Now if they'd only do the same for the Windows version of IE...
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
that Office will certainly be last. That's still a good source of revenue.
.-.--
So when do they kill off Windows and blame it on Linux?
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
There's no way the cult of Apple will ever disappear completely. The Apple crowd are the ones who produce most of the attractive media anyway. Maybe one day I'll stop seeing sites that require IE because of this decision.
Is Safari a w3c compliant browser?
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
.. anything that doesn't make them money. Remember, they're ruthless business people, not ruthless idiots.
(even though it can be hard to tell the difference)
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.
...yeah, that is a real problem with open source.
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.
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.
Speaking with Bugs Bunny voice:
"Of course you realize this means... WAR!!!"
(Steve J. hangs up and speed dials Apple Legal Dept. and DOJ...)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
As far as i know they didn't port Outlook after Office 97. The new Mailclient/Groupware is called Entourage and it's an Apple-Exclusive. Thank god, because from what Ie heard, this beast seriously sucks.
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)
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?
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/
That way, Microsoft will be forced to kill Windows entirely!
Arf!
You're right. From a business point of view it *does* make sense. Personally though, I do enjoy the irony of the "We don't have access to the underlying operating system" comment - especially since the underlying operating system is Darwin and open-source. :) More than likely though, they were referring to all the little gluey-bits that Apple layers on top of Darwin to produce OS X.
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
Anyway, Mozilla played as much part in its demise. I've used Moz since it's been available for OS X and aside from being slightly sluggish in early versions, it has always been a better, more stable, more compatible browser.
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.
You should always read slashdot articles cynically...
0 6&mode=thread&tid=113&tid=126&tid= 95
This is the most recent example of this. Microsoft, in a previous slashdot story two weeks ago, announced IE 6 SP1 or whatever will be their last update ANYWAYS even for WINDOWS.
Conclusion?
1) MS has no plans to develop IE further anyways for any platform, AND
2) MS therefore couldn't care less about Apple
Of course, Apple will say MS made that announcement because they were gonna be faced with stiff competition, or that MS will still develop the browser in secret (for all platforms), but let's face it. MS covered their ass already.
Just click on TOPICS and then INTERNET EXPLORER. It's the top article!!! Here's the link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/31/16502
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Damn, I submitted much the same yesterday, but probably a bit too late. Next time. Thereâ(TM)s a complementary piece at MacCentral. Also, thereâ(TM)s a bit of discussion at the MacNN board, most of which centers around Safari being able to seamlessly spoof IE 5 and future versions in using bank sites, online purchase forms, etc that are putatively restricted to IE. In any case, given that IE was the most bloated and slow browser available for OS X, this is no big surprise after the release of Safari.
Nonetheless in the MacCentral story, Microsoft does state âoeMicrosoft and the MacBU continue to be committed to the Mac platform. We are excited about the new versions of products coming out like Office, Virtual PC, Messenger and MSN for Mac OS X. Our commitment hasn't wavered, it's just a matter of doing what's right to meet customer needs.â
Whoopie, MSN â¦
Microsoft will not release any more major upgrades for Internet Explorer on Windows. They cite competition from Mozilla as the reason for this decision, and say that Mozilla is a better browser for Windows systems. Ironically, they also say that they can't compete with Mozilla, because IE has better access to the underlying operating system.
Microsoft will not release any more major upgrades for Internet Explorer on MacOS.
.NETand passport less and less a viable product.
It seems like that Microsoft is slowly imploding over the past 2 years?
The above statement, obviousally a threat made to try and control apple does more harm to Microsoft in the public's eyes than any good that could come of it. Now they are directly trying to piss off the mac users, PLUS increase marketshare for the other browsers making
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...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.
Perhaps. It seems an odd statement to make, even from MS. It's a bit like there's a presumption on their part that a company making an OS won't release all info about the system to the world, but instead will keep little 'secrets' to make their product better.
Clue to MS: Safari's "secret" is khtml. It's open.
Ironically, they also say that they can't compete with Apple, because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system.
Are they admitting that the only way Microsoft can compete with other software manufacturers, is by having access to the operating system's sourcecode, to which other's don't? And is there any doubt left that MS in fact used this unfair advantage against Wordperfect and Lotus?
Sigged!
After seeing that they "can't compete with Apple":
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I'd say "How do you like them apples", but it's too obvious a pun.
To be half serious, it was obvious this was coming - they've been in maintenance mode on IE/Mac since MacOS X 10.1 (fall 2001) - the only updates they've done since then have been for security/critical bugfixes. Until Safari, Mozilla/Camino was the only real option for a forward-looking browser.
Also, apparently there's a IE release coming out Monday, after which it's over except for the aforementioned security/critical bugfix patches. If IE breaks on 10.3, for instance, it's a pretty good bet that a fixed IE will ensue - elsewise their browser share in the Mac market goes to 0% real quickly.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
"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."
;-)
So, what are our alternatives?
Media Player: VLC, MPlayer for OS X
MSN Messenger: Proteus, Fire
Office: Apple Works, Keynote as Powerpoint Replacement, Open Office, AbiWord, Gnumeric
Outlook: Apple Mail.app, iCal, Evolution,
Virtual PC: Ya, well, maybe sometime RealPC will appear after they settle with Microsoft. But who uses that stuff anyway?
Last but not least, Internet Explorer: Safari, Camino, Mozilla and maybe soon again Omniweb, thanks to WebCore. (Yes, i left out Opera & iCab)
Okay, did i miss something?
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
This is not such a bad thing.
It means that as long as Apple retains its current market share, there will be a sizeable portion of internet users browsing the web without IE, which will hopefully result in less browser-specific coding by webmasters.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Did they ever bother to port Outlook to OS X?
No, and there won't be a version of Outlook, per se. Microsoft will be releasing (this summer, last I heard) a version of Entourage X that has Exchange connectivity features.
For now, people are making do with running Outlook 2001 in Classic (if they need group calendaring), or running the existing Entourage X with POP/SMTP or IMAP enabled on their Exchange server (if they don't need group calendaring).
I'm no Microsoft fan, but I do use Entourage because it's essentially the OS X-native grandson of Claris Emailer-- developed by the same people, hired by MS after Emailer was killed.
~Philly
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
HAHAHAHA, you've looked at all the data and ignored several pertinent facts in order to draw the exactly wrong conclusion. Congratulations.
There will continue to be competition on the Mac platform (and Windows and Linux) because Safari isn't the only game in town. I use Camino as my main browser. Firebird is looking very good too. Omniweb needs some more work, but it has been competitive since Day One.
Secondly, no hidden APIs are used by Safari. Its internal rendering engine uses the open source WebCore framework which is based off of KHTML. Omniweb 4.5 (just released a few weeks ago) uses that framework too, so it isn't exclusive to Apple. If you are thinking Safari uses super-secret-extra-special Quartz rendering APIs for blitting to the screen, think again. Camino draws to the screen just as quickly as Safari and it's 100% open source.
Competition is alive and well on the Mac platform. Perhaps it doesn't have 10 strong contenders in each category, but neither does the much larger Windows market.
cr
Needing access to the underlying OS is just a poor excuse. Mozilla is a far better browser than IE, and that works on just about every OS imaginable, so presumedly you don't need to low level OS know-how to make a top notch browser.
But they're one and the same, remember? You kill off IE, you kill off Windows!
*rubs chin*
The coolest voice ever.
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.
This would be mean a decrease in market share for IE (assuming Apple doesn't die) which is good for us Linux and standards-compliant browser users!
So, what's the catch?
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.
Most here, obviously in light of the fact that MacIE is such a piece of crap, are more worried by the thought of MS killing Office for OSX. People claim that MS will break support for older versions of Windows Office on Windows because they don't care.
Wrong, they have to care. About 10% of all Office users are still using Office95, about 20% still using Office97, about 40 to 50% still using Office2000. (Office2000 can open OfficeXP documents without many problems). Not that many moved to OfficeXP. A new office that cannot save old Office compatible documents will not get many customers. MS will not willingly shoot themselves in the foot.
Your Office X will remain compatible for a number of years yet, no worry. After that you can switch to OpenOffice.
isnt the xbox losing tons of money?
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
What is so incredebly tricky about this is the legal aspect of it. Microsoft is pushing its IE-Windows integration to the fullest, exactly why everyone is all over them (with their monopoly and so on). By claiming that custumors demand the kind of features only Apple can provide because of their OS-browser integration and thus that they cannot develop anymore for the mac because of the integration between Safari and the OS they make their own case for the integration of IE and windows stronger. "Hey, when "our competitors" are doing this, we should also be allowed so, right?"
On a positive note the macbusiness unit also stated that the coming office for mac will not be the last.
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!
From the inventors of not giving access to the underlying OS.. because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system
-Cnik
Nope, no MS-style hidden APIs here. And yes, I'm an ADC member but there's nothing special going on here. Run ObjectAlloc on Safari and watch the NSFlippableView, NSTextField and NSMatrix instance counts go wild as a page loads (amongst other objects). Write your drawing code with Cocoa and get "Quartz" text for free. These are hardly low-level and even Apple recommends you use Cocoa or Carbon calls higher up rather than calling Quartz 2D directly (though you can if you really feel like it).
Quartz would actually be useful for many other projects, which is why Apple doesn't do it.
How? The source is only useful to people a) debugging the code, or b) interested in by-passing the API to shoot themselves in the foot by using internal, unpublished features. Apple keeps it closed source to maintain their competitive advantage in being the most visually appealing desktop experience, not to spite anyone.
but also learn Mac-specific stuff like Objective C in addition to the APIs.
This is uninformed rubbish. Objective-C is in the gcc compiler. Mac OS X uses the gcc suite. There is nothing "mac-specific" about Objective-C. The API has been around for over 10 years. It's called OpenStep, and if it has survived that long commercially, then perhaps it just might be worth learning. Lastly, we have source compatible OpenStep libraries for many other Unix OSs: GNUStep.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The July 2003 MacWorld magazine (in print, but not sure I can find the relevant article online) prints a short interview with Roz Ho, General Manager of the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft.
Two questions they ask:
Q1: Apple released its Keynote presentation software and a beta of the Safari Web browser. What has been the reaction to Apple's foray into areas that have been your strongholds?
A1: We've heard positive things from Mac users who have tried Keynote and Safari. We believe customer research is key to developing quality products and we continue to listed to our customers on Apple's products and ours.
Q2: But from the outside looking in, the assumption might be that it would strain the relationship. Has that been the case?
A2: No. Our relationship with Apple continues to be solid, and our commitment to Mac customers is as strong as ever.
Now, in light of the new news and articles coming out. What can we assume about Roz Ho?
1. Nice but ignorant. Not high enough up on any ladder in Microsoft to know what she's talking about.
2. A liar who clearly was talking out of one side of her mouth for this group despite knowing things about the troubled relationship and product jeopardy.
3. Partially truthful. She used many hot marketing phrases for promoting a sense of trust in her responses, but she didn't actually say anything that would ensure a future where MS for Mac products were developed in the future.
4. Completely truthful. Translations: We like Apple doing the R&D for us so that we can steal the good bits from their products to integrate into the next versions of ours. With horrible history of abandoning file format compatability, bug riden cross compilers, onerous upgrade prices, and constant threats of product discontinuation, our commitment to Mac customers is as strong as ever.
I'm completely at a loss as to which way I should interpret her statements and therefore be able to interpret future statements.
>> Quartz would actually be useful for many other projects, which is why Apple doesn't do it.
> How? The source is only useful to people a) debugging the code, or b) interested in by-passing the API to shoot themselves in the foot by using internal, unpublished features.
I think he meant that it would be useful for other BSDs and Linux because Quartz could (and would) then be ported to them, giving Open Source OSes (a big part of) the same advantage as MacOS X... And that is of course why Apple doesn't Open Source it.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
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.
Well, assuming M$ is following a good software design methodology (except for the PolyGlot of Spaghetti Code one), why don't they just introduce a level of abstraction, i.e. a defined standard of lower-level API's (left to the O.S. vendor to implement)...then the core IE code is built upon calling those API's...and if Apple doesn't want to divulge it's OS details, that's fine...they only need to implement the lower level API's and provide access to them.
Assumptions are the futhers of all muck-ups.
-jc
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...
The next verison of Entourage, due this summer, is supposed to have Exchange support.
Conglom-O: We Own You (TM).
Now I can get rid of my Javascript that detects MacIE and tells them to go download Mozilla or Safari!
Awesome.
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
Maybe M$ wants access to Apple source code. Longhorn is due 2005 after all.
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
Since we know that IE loved to make its own standards, which causes other browsers to choke or have the site reject them because they aren't using IE, I'm more worried that Mac users may lose a browser that had a fighting chance of accessing pages made by the MS webmaster drones (that is, a webmaster that does not assume non-MS users will access the site and uses proprietary code in the page that only IE/Windows understands).
The good thing is that Apple's new web browser team is very ferocious in adding features. The first thing many screamed about when Safari came out was tabs, and now, they're there, along with other features. Apple could take a lesson from the Omni Group and its browser OmniWeb, which had a preference that could make the browser say to sites that it was IE/Windows, IE/Mac, or other browser to fake it out and allow access. From there, Apple should add preferences to give Safari as many IE compatibility elements as possible--better, add them as options that the browser can sense when you go to pages that use IE/Windows features that normally aren't compatible. The user can opt to switch on these features from a modal dialog that appears on downloading the page to make things work a bit better.
The waning of IE/Mac isn't good for people like myself who try to make Macs fit better in the enterprise. PC/Windows users aren't used to choice in the browser world, so IE is their only browser, and Netscape is now a rarity in business circles. Many business-related pages are created with the various MS tools, and many webmasters are unaware that there is a Mac version of IE, much less the fact that it works much like its Windows counterpart. This change will mean that techs will have to educate the webmasters of Safari's differences to get business pages to work--not that such explanations get lots of results anyway.
The positive news is that Safari generally holds its own in compatibility more than any other browser, and has even shown more compatible than IE/Mac in some of my trials at work, which I why I use it almost exclusively today. Will the loss of IE/Mac throw Mac users back in a web-access Stone Age? Probably not, but you never know what some whacked out ideas have to be added as features in some feature MS webmastering tool that work only for IE/Windows.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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
It's kind of funny, because for the average Mac user there's a stigma before even using MS products that they're buggy and unreliable. You would think the MacBU would've went out of their way to alter that reputation. For example:
Windows Media Player for Mac - Feels like an absolute piece of Beta software. Moving the window, resizing it, or moving other windows on the screen usually makes the video disappear in WMP. Occasionally I run into a file that simply won't play in it. Since MacBU isn't working on a browser anymore, how about some Windows Media Plugins for Safari, and player that does more than "kind of work?"
IE for Mac - Great in OS 9; so slow that it was almost unusable in OS X. In comparison to other browsers it felt more like a beta release. Right to left language support was never attempted in any version, even after it was available with the release of Jaguar last year.
Office for Mac - For the most part, I have no complaints about Office X, and even think it's worth the money. My only complaint is it can't handle right to left languages, so exchanging Arabic or Hebrew documents with Windows users of Office is impossible. Fixing this would probably require a simple patch, one that could've been released a year ago since Jaguar was released. Also, my experience has been that Office X isn't nearly as stable as its Windows counterpart, so I chronically save any important documents (more so than I would if working in Windows). On a 800mhz PowerMac Office X still feels incredibly slow.
MSN Messenger for Mac - Works as advertised. The new version is actually great. I'm suspecting it's related to their release of MSN for Mac though, so that's probably why it's polished so nicely. With AIM and MSN supposedly merging, perhaps iChat users will be able to converse with MSN Messenger users too. If that happens, the importance of MSN Messenger on Mac may decrease.
The only significant thing MacBU has released this year has been an MSN client -- something the vast majority of Mac users could care less about. Instead of fixing important pieces of software, they decide to release their equivalent to AOL on Mac. Good versions of their most important products (Office, WMP, IE) might actually showcase how stable OS X is, and how friendly the Mac environment is in comparison to Windows. Of course, that wouldn't be good business for MS. Even though the MacBU supposedly operates independent of MS in Redmond, it still seems to make sure Gates' bottom line is always fulfilled -- make the Mac look like an inferior platform. MacBU hasn't released anything for OS X except buggy, unpolished, beta-like software (notice I left the OS 9 versions out of this).
Just to go back to the Arabic and Hebrew support in Mac Microsoft products for a second. For the longest time MacOS was the only choice for word processing in right to left languages. There were two things in my opinion that moved Arabic speakers from Mac, to Windows. The first, and most obvious, was that while MacOS supported the language, no browsers did. MS could have easily fixed this problem when they began working on IE for Mac, but never bothered. Secondly, Word documents became a de-facto standard, and while the PC version of Office supported Arabic, Mac Office didn't. On top of all that, instead of using the agreed upon standard for Arabic characters, Microsoft created their own. The result is total market domination in the Middle East, though I guess that's not too frightening since no one in the ME actually pays for Windows or Office anyway.
If Apple (or any other company for that matter) can release a product better than Microsoft Word, I'll use it in a second. Unfortunately OpenOffice just doesn't feel right to me (yet). It almost seems that Microsoft never expected Apple would release their own browser; perhaps they were expecting Mac users to remain dependent on the inferior Mac IE for a much longer time, and Apple's success with Safari has on
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
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
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.
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."
It's all about Digital Rights Management. Microsoft is likely increasingly to integrate its proprietary DRM system into Windows -- see, for example, http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1000411.html. Future versions of Internet Explorer will, in turn be integrated with those operating system services. Which they can't be on Mac OS, because the services won't be there. Hence Mac OS gets left behind (at least in the Microsoft world view) with an IE version that knows nothing of Microsoft DRM.
This means that IE is the de facto standard of the web. If I go to a site that OmniWeb doesn't handle well (typically commercial sites), that's when I fire up IE on my Mac.
That's step one of the real threat. Step two is this: If IE doesn't run on the Mac, then there is no de facto standard browser on the Mac.
Step three: The Mac market is small enough that many of the mainstream sites may just not care. You know how much they care about Linux-based browsers right now.
Step four: With a seemingly flakey web experience, who besides the real die-hards would buy a Mac? This means that Apple is in a life-or-death race to be fully IE compatible.
Step five: Who controls what IE does? Do I even have to mention step five?
Checkmate.
Unless web sites chose to be more generally compatible and test with some Mac-based browser, they can easily and accidentally become incompatible with Macs. Currently they don't have to ask the question because Mac IE is almost the same as Windows IE. All they have to do is avoid ActiveX controls, which most do.
Yes, some will care to be careful. But many may not.
This puts Apple in a very bad position.
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.
Microsoft will kill off first:
Media Player
MSN Messenger
Office
Outlook
Virtual PC
Cowboyneal, but I'll never give up my old fat binary of him.
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.
Try looking at other companies -- you'll be suprised how many others demonstrate a propensity for evil.
What, you expect me to *disagree* with you?
Look, businesses are amoral because they are not natural people and are, in general, only held accountable for their profit status.
This is only a little bit bad when companies have to worry about their competition- they are afraid to piss anyone off because they'll lose market share, so they only do what they think they can get away with.
In monopoly conditions companies don't fear their competitors, so they don't fear their customers and don't make changes to keep them happy. In this case, we have a market monopoly, reinforced by copyright monopolies over the file formats, so powerful that the company doesn't even fear the *government*.
So you are saying "everyone's doing it".
I'm saying 1. That SUCKS and 2. it REALLY SUCKS when a powerful monopolist does it.
I imagine you'll tell me to get over it again. Thanks for the tip. F that.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You can sign up to get access to the developer tools and documenation for absolutely nothing at http://connect.apple.com
hooray! it's a sex wiki
Actually, IE5 for Mac is the best version of IE by far. It is the only one that renders CSS properly, for example.
Jeremy
Then, guess what? In order to view these web sites, you need DRM. And what browser includes DRM? Why, Microsoft Internet Explorer! And what is the only operating system that runs IE? Why, Microsoft Windows! How convenient!
You see, this isn't an effort to satisfy "key customers." It's an effort to extend Microsoft's monopoly. Aren't you glad we paid tax dollars to find Microsoft guilty of abuse?
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
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?
The same way my mom feels when she goes to a site that is IE specific and doesn't support even the most basic of web standards.
Mad.
But, as she has been informed by her son on Microsoft's efforts to deliberately break software compatability and internet standards in order for force their customers to use their product rather than the product of their choice, her anger is aimed squarely at the web site (or more precisely, at the company it represents) and at Microsoft, not at GNU/Linux or her browser.
She finds a competitor who is standards compliant and buys from them instead.
And guess what. She loves her Linux box, and will "give it up only when they pry it from her cold, dead hands." She is living proof that Linux is more than ready for the desktop, and not only usable, but often preferred, by those who are not computer literate and simply want to be able to use a machine simply, and without random crashes or data loss. Something Linux gives her, and Microsoft hasn't been able to deliver in nigh 20 years.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Right now the only browser that comes installed on a Mac is IE.
And people are intentionally and willingly going out of their way to download Safari, Mozilla, Camino, Omniweb, Opera, and even Netscape.
So Microsoft is stopping because they can't compete, despite having the bundled web browser on the Mac platform... People aren't using the browser that comes installed, and instead have to go out and download Safari from Apple.
GPL Deconstructed
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
Microsoft will do what they can to stay on top of the OS market, but the server products are being pursued for a whole other reason.
E-commerce.
Microsoft is simply expanding into other markets to ensure stability and future financial growth. Would you argue that the X-box is an attempt to lock people into using Windows and Office?
-Lucas
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
In order to view these web sites, you need DRM. And what browser includes DRM? Why, Microsoft Internet Explorer! And what is the only operating system that runs IE? Why, Microsoft Windows! How convenient!
Microsoft Windows runs only on PCs. Like any other emulator, Connectix^WMicrosoft Virtual PC for Mac doesn't support the Windows Next Generation Secure Computing Base (abbreviated Pd). Therefore, Microsoft Windows Pd doesn't run on Mac hardware, and Macs aren't going to get strong DRM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A thought just occurred to me, and scanning the comments here, I didn't see anything about it. (I don't browse lower than +1, so if I missed it, I'm sorry.)
;-)
What's stopping Microsoft from wrapping their own GUI around WebCore? If Omni can use it, Microsoft can, too.
Pride? Legal issues? Apathy? Arrogance?
They could easily adopt it, augment it with extra services, and wrap it in a cute (/sarcasm) MSN-style GUI. Problem solved.
"Embrace and extend" is policy, right?
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
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).
OSX No, but a little story about Outlook Pre-OSX
They started devlopment of Outlook for the Mac in 96. I was at Cal State Fullerton at the time, and they had a rule that all software installed on the Windows Computers had to be installed on the Mac. As very big customers of MS they sent us thier pre-beta version of Outlook for Mac. It never even made beta until Office 2001. They could not even use the system time correctly, it was always a few hours off in time stamping. Not to mention crashing the computer at the drop of a hat, looking at it funny, or typing a keystroke which gave our Mac users the true MS experience our NT4 users got.
Yes you can get Outlook for mac 8.6 or higher at
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/outlook
Wrong, wrong, wrong. MS does things that other companies do not. They are in a business who fundamentally depends on the size and quality of their developer community. What did they do? They offered a better deal on APIs than everybody else was offering. They promised equal access to the entire API and a chinese wall between the app dev side of MS and the OS dev side of MS. So what happened? People flocked to the platform in some measure because of those promises.
Those promises have now been revealed as a lie, a fraud, a common deceit that was of such a scale that tens of thousands of career paths were altered by it and billions in MS profits hung in the balance. It was a criminal conspiracy to commit corporate fraud *AND NOBODY PROSECUTED*. The Democrats fell down on the job because when MS admitted a few years ago that the chinese wall was a myth and 100% access to the Win32 API was a myth the Dems were in charge of the executive and they wanted a poster boy defendent for an anti-trust revival. This was viewed as a good way to rally the troops and improve their electoral chances.
Republicans didn't cover themselves in glory either, concentrating on defending MS in order to minimize the electoral gain of a revitalized anti-trust national mood. There's a very good case of doing an Arthur Anderson to MS and indicting the company. Depending on the statute of limitations limits for the particular crimes, MS officers could end up in club Fed for what they've pulled over the years.
I don't particularly like monopolies but there are problems with MS that are not monopoly related in the least.
Ya, go ahead, call him up... Explain to him how Apple's new browser is is based on WebCore, which is open source (as is a majority of the OS X). Be sure to explain that this has nothing to do with Microsoft's decision to stop development of standalone versions versions of IE for its own OS. If he asks... This decision had nothing to do with this either.
Go get em' moron!
Looking at IE, I wonder if MS lacks access to the Windows OS too
Hail internet explorer on the Mac!
You were first on ten but then again,
please fade away and don't look back.
We'll use Safari and gently say 'Amen'
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
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.
... as long as you're the biggest, that translates into more antagony
Big isn't always bad, not is small good. if that were the case, everybody would be crapping all over IBM and cheering on the SCO underdog in its valiant fight to knock the big evil IBM down a peg.
People hate MS because they are amoral in their behaviour--they "don't play nice". They implement perverted versions of open standards (bastardised kerberos, broken email and DNS, improper use of the HTTP protocol in IIS which IE handles OK but all other browsers occasionally choke on...). MS wipes the floor with competitors by imitating them and undercutting them to the point of giving away the executables--and if that doesn't erase them completely they "bundle" then "integrate" applications (already there with IE--that'll be followed by Media Player, then NetMeeting, Outlook and if left unchecked the rest of Office too). Nasty and evil ain't it? big didn't make them bad--big just allows them to get away with it.
Not that you need to be big to be bad. Witness the actions of SCO--that evil little bastard of a corporation. It is a pipsqueak with a loud annoying bark. They are flexing all the muscle of IP ownership they can conjure up--launching a ludicrous billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM. They vomit up propaganda press releases and threatening letters to Linux vendors and developers. In doing all this they look petty, greedy and entirely devoid of scruples. It conjures up thoughts of SCO directors laughing maniacally as they plot to pump-and-dump their stock or force-feed it to IBM at hyper-inflated prices as a settlement. Besides that, all it does is make the pointy-haired bosses who were finally opening up to Linux alternatives have more doubts and excuses to stay with the rickety old status-quo from Microsoft. Not only to the powers-that-be at SCO not seem to care about the health of the industry, they don't even seem to care about public image or even corporate self-preservation! Nasty, evil little bastards.
Contrast that to IBM. They are HUGE and for decades were the epitome of CLOSED source (right down to men in dark suits bearing NDAs and security bordering on paranoia). IBM has learned to "play nice"--at least to a degree. Their paid staff contribute immensely to Free software projects (Linux, Apache and I believe the Postfix mail server among them), port their closed applications to Linux (DB2...) and support linux on a wide variety of systems. They participate in the development of open protocols and use and promote them faithfully. They do all this despite being big enough to get away with doing much less. Yes they are a big faceless corporation, and yes they were prodded in that direction by antitrust suits and advancing technology making their mainframe operations look obsolete. The fact remains though, that IBM is now "playing nice" and that keeps \.ers and their ilk off IBM's back. Atta boy, IBM!
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.
Don't believe what they say about "Safari being a better option" due to better access to the OS. Those comments are pure smokescreens.
.NET. Only people who purchase Longhorn will be able to use those sites then, and Microsoft gets money from both sides of the equation! Over time, the more rampant Microsoft-only web content becomes, the more users will be driven to Windows. And of course we can't forget that Office will be on Mac only up until it's turned into a service, at which time all Office users will have to purchase the newest Windows machines and pay monthly fees to use it.
The end of Mac IE goes along with their plan to halt Windows IE development...free IE, anyways. Microsoft never fails to look out for the worst interests of competitors, while at the same time making the max cash, and the seemingly innocuous end to IE development has devious goals: Make money off of IE, and force people to buy Windows. How to accomplish this? Get e-commerce sites, and over time other service sites, to use
It's not a fast-approaching reality, but it's the reality of Microsoft's dreams, and a reality they are slowly creating behind the average consumers' backs.
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!"
Because, the web server gets a browser ID string with EVERY request sent to it. If the server (or CGI application) looks at the browser ID and doesn't like it, you will be sent a "get IE" page instead of the content you wanted.
Wells Fargo is like this. They demad that you use the latest version of IE or NS. I use iCab for Mac, and have iCab set to send the ID string for IE. Internet Banking works perfectly fine with iCab, it displays well, it is just as secure, but Wells Fargo refuses to "certify" iCab for use with the service.
The stated reason for the limitation is that security. But they refuse to answer why they don't just check for 128bit encryption and allow any browser that supports it.
In the end, the sender of the information can restrict you based on your client ID, IP address, domain name or anything else. The server is not under any reuirement to send you what you requested, only what the owner wants you to see.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Targetting developers? To annoy them you mean? :)
Writing a web page for IE is fantastically frustrating. My typical design process goes:
1) Write standards compliant HTML
2) Find out IE doesn't even render CSS1 right on occassion.
3) Spend the next few hours trying to figure out a way of getting the code to render in IE properly, without making it invalid HTML.
I do conceed that the XML interface in IE is very good though, but I'd rather they get a browser that can render HTML properly. To my knowledge IE's only standard's compliant with HTML 3.0. 5% or so of CSS1 gets messed up, and CSS2 support is almost non-existant. It's really annoying when you can't just design a page, instead having to fiddle about with it until IE renders it right.
In other words, XML is all well and good, but for God's sake, they should concentrate on getting the basics right, first!
Don't forget, Konqueror can send anything as the user agent string. It's likely that people are setting it to masquerade as IE5 on W98, because any other configuration is likely to break with poorly-designed web sites such as this one.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is a political, not a technological, matter and it needs a political solution rather than a technological one.
.....
..... then add something else, save again and analyse ..... in other words, a total ball-ache, but it was still better than doing it by hand.
..... and if the only thing they can legally do to stop it is to publish the file formats, then that is what they will have to do.
The political solution as I see it is to mandate full documentation of file formats and suchlike. I don't doubt that MS will squeal at this, but the simple fact is, they have to obey the laws like everyone else.
At the moment, Mac and Linux users have a problem with hardware and software interoperability. HW manufacturers are refusing to release details of how to interface to their hardware, and SW manufacturers {read: Microsoft} are refusing to release details of how to parse and generate their file formats.
My first printer came with a manual filled with code samples and explaining how to use each of the different print effects it was capable of. My last printer came with a manual saying it only worked with Windows {a blatant lie - I remembered enough stuff from the 8-bit days to get text effects and even graphics mode working from DOS} and not detailing anywhere the control code sequences to send for its various effects.
In the past I have successfully obtained printer escape sequences using a combination of a printer with a hex dump mode and an Amiga {only because I had acquired a used printer without the manual, not because anyone was trying to hide anything}. One of the Amiga's cool features was that no matter what printer you were using, you just sent the same escape sequences to the printer driver device and they would be translated by the driver. So you would send ESC [1m for bold, and the printer might see ESC E if it's an Epson, or a bunch of characters with backspaces if it's a Generic Text Only, or something else entirely. Getting text effect ones like bold, underlining and NLQ was easy, graphics were more fun
If it was the law that hardware manufacturers had to publish full documentation enabling a competent person to write code that would talk to their fancy graphics card / scanner / printer / camera / electronic arse wiping device, because these details essentially form part of the operating instructions and are not proprietary secrets, then we wouldn't see the problem where we Linux users have a limited subset of hardware to choose from. I'm not saying it would be in everyone's best interests to receive the full programmer's documentation with the appliance {most users aren't going to need it}, but it should be available to those who request it, for a reasonable fee. And failure to comply should be punished simply by the grant of explicit permission to reverse-engineer any driver code &c. associated with the said appliance.
Likewise for file formats used by software. I've written code to take a PADS-PowerPCB ASCII file and extract useful data from it, so the prod. eng. people didn't have to punch in data by hand that CAD had to extract by hand. That wasn't too bad because it was an ASCII format to begin with, with a known structure - headers, delimiters and so forth. And I've even tried to generate RTFs that would load into MS Word, with varying degrees of success. Again, that was easy, because it is a text-based format. In both cases I had to generate documents with a single known feature and work out how that feature shew up in the save file
Of course, the software companies may feel they have more to lose from widespread reverse engineering
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Why do I have a vision of every Apple employee after hearing that news just give one big collective
*meh*
and continue developing cool products. Seriously... I don't think anyone really cares that MS has dropped IE. It's not like they did enhanced it over the past two years. Safari and Camino on the other hand are making great strides.
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 ---
... and also maybe their SCO license does not allow them to develop for OSX?
Jobs? Which jobs?
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
Some people are complaining that some browsers don't display correctly (including my new favorite Safari).
I think that's party, if not mostly, the fault of web developers who do not stay within WC3 defined web standards and creating these "cutting edge" sites that rely on proprietary tags, plug-ins, and features built into non standard browsers.
If your website requires the use of a certain browser, then you've not done your job. The original concept of the web was to remove these boundaries. Maybe I'm just old school, but people are losing sight of the whole reason we have the WC3 and standards--universal usability.
If Safari isn't cutting it, remember it's still Beta!--report the problem, but look at the code, too. Download, clean out all the Dreamweaver and FrontPage garbage, and see if it still has problems.
But what do I know....
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...