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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.'"
I use a Mac and love it, but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).
cheers, ben
Never miss a good chance to shut up -- Will Rogers
It's been easy to hate on since MS stopped updating it in like 2001 anyway. But IE 5 for Mac was the best and most standards compliant browser on any platform the day it was released. Awesome work by the original team. Sad it came from MS. Sadder still that they basically abandoned it once their contractual obligations to Apple were up
I had this problem with the Gap web site a few weeks ago.
I solved the problem by shopping at another online store. The Gap lost about $800 in Chrismtas sales from me that I spent elsewhere. If I was a shareholder, I'd be pissed that they're turning away customers.
I hope they saved at least that much by hiring incompetent web site developers.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
People seem to think that IE for Mac in some way used the same rendering engine that the Windows verison uses. This is far from the truth. The Mac version of IE is much more standards compliant and has none of the quirks that IE for Windows has, which pretty much means that it helps no one on the Mac side view IE specific web pages.
However, the corporate perception of the death of IE is another matter entirely. Though I would hope that the new popularity of FireFox will show IT mamagers that IE is not the only show in town and letting their Mac user use Safari, Shiira, Opera, Camino (my personal favorite) or Firefox is not that bad an option.
I think the Mac platform has far better browser choices than Windows has now. I was really liking K-Meleon there for a while, but I find the UI needs more work.
MacIE had one of the strangest and saddest histories I've seen, of any product.
MacIE 5 was an awesome release, critically aclaimed and everything, with a good development team and a strong testing team, that included daily performance measurement.
And yet, almost immediately after 5.0 was released, the MacIE team was redeployed to work on a set-top DVR box. The notion at the time was that the team would continue to do MacIE work in their spare time, since IE 5 was the leader among Mac browsers and no longer needed a full-time team.
The problem with that notion was that WebTV, the team's new bosses, had no reason to actually schedule any time for real IE work. So later, when that particular set-top box got cancelled, the IE team got redployed for other WebTV work, and since this was now out of MacBU's control, nothing could really be done.
3 or 4 years went by before enough people in the Mac division wanted to resume work on IE, and when it looked like we might actually need the technology, as a base for MSN-for-Mac, the IE 6 team was formed. It got a firm OS X-only foundation, a new even more complient browser base, and then suddenly it became apparent that Apple was doing their own browser, because, well, there were lots of small clues, but the big clues was that Apple had started calling the old Mac IE team offering them jobs.
By that time the Mac division had formally committed to MSN-for-Mac-OSX, so it's not like we were completely going to stop work. But a meeting was held internally, the outcome of which was that it didn't make sense to build our own browser if Apple was going to bundle one, because the marketshare and mindshare of the distant-second-place browser, on the distant-second-place platform, wasn't worth pursuing. A week later we had a meeting with high-up people at Apple, where they told us they were doing a browser. And the week after that, after confirming it with Bill Gates, who was reportedly sad but understanding of the decision, MacIE was officially shut down.
MSN-for-MacOSX went ahead, and was also critically acclaimed, but once released, indications were that the number of users was about the same as the number of developers. After that, MacBU concentrated once again on the next Office release, and MacIE has been well and truly and permanently dead ever since.
Over the whole sad journey, the single most surprising thing I ever discovered was from a small conversation that went:
Me: "Look, if it makes sense to devote dozens of people to WinIE, then surely it makes sense to devote half a dozen to MacIE!"
Higher-up: <confused look> "There aren't dozens of people on WinIE. WinIE had some great people on it! We need those great people on products that make money!"
Me: "Then why on earth did we pursue IE in the first place? Just so that the DOJ would sue us?"
Higher-up: <confused look>
Some day I hope to get a proper answer on our motivation to do WinIE and MacIE in the first place. It seems to be that we were scared of not having control of the HTML standard. And indeed, now that Firefox is gaining traction, Microsoft has added more people to WinIE again.
Epilogue: All of this made it a lot more easy for me to quit and go work at Google
Reminder: I may or may not be leaving some parts out for NDA reasons.
(sig) The last bug isn't fixed until the last user is dead. (/sig)
Hi all,
I keep hearing "my bank doesn't support firefox", or "The Gap doesn't support firefox". Which bank? Which banks in particular? What other retailers in particular? I want an online list I can refer to!
Where is a webpage I can go to see the list of all the major corporations who develop IE-only websites? This way I can avoid patronizing them with my business altogether. It would save me the time of switching to other competitors (who do "get it") later. It would be nice if each entry in this online db also had a link beside it to where I (and others like me who "get it") can file my complaint about non-conformance to W3C strandards.
If such a page existed and became common knowledge, no corporation in their right mind would want to be on such a list. This public badge of shame would prompt them to hire some real web developers, not loser IE-monopoly-developers who are impersonating real web developers.