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Microsoft Ends IE for Mac
RandomMacUser writes "A while ago, Microsoft stopped updating IE for Mac, freezing it at version 5. But according to this Microsoft webpage, all support will cease December 31, 2005, and any official distribution with cease January 31, 2006. Also, the webpage suggests 'that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.'"
Well, if Mac users cannot get hold of a supported copy of IE, then it might force websites (such as your bank), to test their websites against browsers other than IE.
Have you told your bank? Because problems like this never get fixed if nobody complains. More importantly, if you tell them that their pages are broken in Firefox/Safari, and they tell you to get IE, switch banks, because businesses tend to listen when they lose customers because of things like this. When you close your accounts, and they ask the reason, tell them why.
You wouldn't buy a lawnmower that only worked on 'Black & Decker' grass, you wouldn't buy a knife that only cut 'Chicago Cutlery' brand onions, so why the hell would you do business with a bank that forces you to use tools that you don't want to, namely, Windows and IE?
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
This is most likely due to the upcoming Intel transition. IE is written against the Carbon APIs (and most likely in CodeWarrior), which by all accounts (including Jobs himself) takes substantially more code refactoring to make Intel-compatible than a Cocoa application. IE simply looked at the dev costs of continued maintenance in light of making it Mactel compatible, and said "meh, it's not doing anything for us anyway". And they need those brains working on porting Office:mac, which actually does make MS money. Personally, I haven't launched IE on my Mac in months, so I doubt I'm going to miss it.
Or, in a more likely scenario, they aren't going to care and they will continue to only support IE for Windows or other browsers that happen to closely mimic its behavior.
And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.
Exactly. IE is a free product, but costs Microsoft money to develop (it's not just a port of Windows IE). Office for Mac makes money, but IE only exists to try and "enrich" whatever platform it's on. Back in the day IE was actively developed for the Mac (along with some major cash from Microsoft being pumped into Apple's stock) it was because Apple was down on it's luck.
There was no way Microsoft was going to let it's main "competitor" die off. If Apple disappeared, it would allow enough space in the desktop market for a new, real competitor to enter (like Linux - at the moment Linux has to compete with both Windows *and* OS X, making it much harder to be accepted as a mainstream consumer desktop OS).
A long as Apple is in the picture taking up the number 2 position, Microsoft has a safety against real competition on the desktop, simply because of how certain brand markets tend to operate (Coke vs. Pepsi, Intel vs. AMD, etc). Now that Apple is doing well, there is no reason for Microsoft to pay extra money to keep Apple in the game. They can just sit back and watch Apple act as an albatros in the plans of Linux and any other potential desktop competitor, safe in the knowledge that Apple itself will never actually grow beyond a certain percentage of the market.
No, really. If the server does all the work and uses nothing but standard CGI, then the web site will work for everyone. Everyone. If you really stick to basics, sites that deal with numbers can work for such crufty old things as text browsers without a glitch. If you must have images (say, for graphing your banking activities) then sticking to JPEG and GIF will again gather in by far the widest array of users.
Every time some developer chooses client-side processing of any kind, they are locking out users. Which is form over function, and as such, I think is a very poor decision.
It's one thing to be bleeding edge when you're showing off and nothing depends on it; it's entirely another to get the blood from your legitimate clients because you want to use new stuff.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have no idea why Apple let themselves get into this situation where Microsoft can do very serious damage any time they want. What Apple should do is a second Safari -- admit they can't support a complete office suite by themselves and start pushing a version based on NeoOffice/J or OpenOffice. Sooner or later, Bill Gates is going to pull the plug.
It's more "whining" than anything else, you just have to go back a little bit to find it:
Although Microsoft may continue to provide security and performance updates, no major new releases are planned, Microsoft Product Manager Jessica Sommer told CNET News.com. Sommer said that, with the emergence of Apple's Safari browser, 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.
http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-1017126.html
I call complete and utter whiny bullshit on this. It's not that they CAN'T compete, it's that they don't WANT to compete. OmniWeb dropped their proprietary rendering engine for WebCore/Kit and began focusing even harder on their wonderful UI. Why couldn't Microsoft have done this? Lots of applications have integrated Kit/Core, from third-party Web browser to instant messaging clients. I guess Microsoft doesn't have the resources that some 18-year-old kid with an ADC account does, right?
Irony: "We can't compete because someone else makes the OS and we don't have full access to it." - Microsoft
Call me a fucking waaaaaaaaaaaaaahmbulance, Redmond. You lost on this platform because you couldn't make a good Web browser if you tried, and all you did was blame someone else.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
You've been on *way* too much cool-aid.
'all' developers coding on Unix platforms? WTF? The majority have never even used it.
OSX just isn't standard enough for cross platform work, btw. the kernel is Unix but the filesystem layout is nonstandard (not to mention the case insensitive filesystem). I also doesn't run X by default so GUI work is out.
What everybody else said, let them know. But do it with a letter. A real one. That still makes a big difference.
LOL! Not only is the WebKit framework available to any developer who can drag and drop in Interface Builder, but WebCore is available under an open source license! Microsoft has access to the freaking source code. Public relations departments are funny.
Politely complaining is actually a very effective tactic, since "they" know that for every complainer, there's a hundred who stay silent and move to a different business. It has worked for me in on-line banking.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It just means they don't care anymore. If Apple isn't going to ship their browser as the default, there's not really a point in releasing it.
It's pretty much assured that the majority of people will always use the default included browser on a platform. They all work pretty good and the non-tech people just aren't going to put the effort in to get a new one for the most part.
Well, you take a marketshare that's small already (by many accounts smaller than FF on Windows usage) and take away the default status, it's just too small to justify the development time.
Your comments sound too optimistic to be taken seriously. Really, really wishing something to be true doesn't make it so.
Perhaps more importantly, I notice certain trends in Apple that, though not that bad now, could be pretty terrible if they end up in a winning position (their tendency to lock out any DAPs other than their own iPods, for instance). Honestly, if they end up beating out Microsoft, that will not usher in a brand new utopian Heaven-on-Earth. It will not be Kingdom Come. If they replace Microsoft, all that will mean is that they'll become the new Microsoft. Even accepting the terribly optimistic view that this prophesied "OS-X for all x86" will simply sweep Windows away, well, you can mark me down on the list of enemies right now in advance if you're so sure, 'cause I'll be a part of the resistance.
Fuckit, I'm tempted to make that my sig, as much as I (a) don't want a sig, and (b) know that it's liable to get every single post of mine from now on modded "flamebait"!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Standards are often silent on lots of details, and it's really up to the browser devs on how to do an implementation. For example, is padding included in the width of an element, or not? It depends on whether you're using IE or Mozilla. Go to the microsoft.com home page in IE and Firefox and see how the left nav behaves differently when you hover over an element. Which browser complies with the standards, or do they both? Well, that's anybody's guess.
I hate web sites telling me I can't use the UA of my choice.
And I hate the two guys that use Billy-Bobs-Web-Browser-That-He-Wrote-In-A-Weekend telling me that I should support his browser. Of course it's in our best interest to support the widest possible audience, but you have to weigh that off against the richness of the experience. I don't want to give 100% of the people a crappy UI because 0.001% of my potential market doesn't support a feature.
That being said, we would like to support another browser in the Linux/Mac space if possible. It will keep the Mozilla folks on their toes and get them to fix some really nasty problems like memory leaks.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
You're kidding right? I'm glad to see IE5/Mac go, it had idiosyncracies that were completely different and far more maddening than IE/Win. The browser that always needed the most hacks and workarounds was always IE5/Mac.
As a Mac and Windows user and a webdesigner who creates standards-compliant cross-browser compatible websites, I'm glad to see the demise of IE5/Mac. It was great in its day in 2001, but since then it has been a great big thorn in the side of web developers.