Microsoft Ends IE on the Mac

ron_ivi writes "Microsoft is to cease IE support for Apple's Mac on Dec 31st of this year." And with this change, every mac on the internet will become even more secure than their Windows based counterparts. CT Deja Vu 'eh? Sorry.

Comments

Back in 1999 it was a very good browser

[YA_Python_dev]

Everyone please remember that IE/Mac is a very different browser than IE/Win, and back in 1999/2000 it was one of the most standards-compliant browsers around.

According to The Web Standards Project it helped to start the "CSS layout revolution".

Same freaking article title, much worse snarking

[frankie]

Quick refresher course in web history: 5 years down the road, Mac IE is outdated and in desperate need of retirement. But back in 2000, Mac IE5 was far and away the most standards compliant browser available. It had little or nothing to do with Win IE, except that IE6 was later based on Mac IE's rendering engine. It did not support ActiveX, and has no higher security risk than anything from Mozilla and pals.

Sheesh, the very latest article for Jebus' sake!

Re:from the-dupe-dept.

[Dun Malg]

why must all 12 posters in my example above think that they were the first (and only) person to realize it was a duplicate story?

They don't think that. It's just that since it is a dupe, the actual content has already been extensively commented on elsewhere, leaving nothing but its status as a dupe to talk about. If you want to read about MS discontinuing IE for the Mac, go back to the original article on the subject. The de facto topic under discussion in duped articles always reverts to "dupes and the lazy, unprofessional /. editors who post them".

Re:Give 'em a break

[Durandal64]

You're misunderstanding why Internet Explorer causes security problems. Safari is no different from any other Mac OS X application in that it uses frameworks to do its thing. So if there's a security vulnerability in any framework, every application which uses that framework is vulnerable. WebKit is no better off or worse off. It's just a framework for managing HTML connections and rendering HTML content.

This is not analogous to what Microsoft has done with Internet Explorer. Windows Explorer uses the MSHTML DLL to browse the file system, and Microsoft's HTML integration with the file browser runs so deeply that security flaws which would normally only be minor browser irritants become flaws which can execute arbitrary code in the file browser's memory space. Witness the security travesty that is ActiveX. A browser technology laden with security flaws suddenly becomes an operating system-level problem because of ActiveDesktop.

Apple does not use WebKit for the Finder, and the Finder is far less tied into the underlying OS than Windows Explorer is. The Finder has some special features over other applications, but at the end of the day, it's just another application which can be quit if you don't like it without really losing much. In Windows, it's a different story. For example, it's impossible to manipulate the Control Panel without Windows Explorer because that interface is guarded by private APIs. Mac OS X uses a separate application to change system settings.

Re:And Office?

[griffindj]

Unlike Safari, MS Office has no "real" counterpart on the mac... as of yet. I say that owning a copy of keynote2 and pages. Unlike IE for the Mac, MS Office for the Mac has a big lead on that market, and I think they will continue to support office well into your mid-life crisis. I use Office 2004 for my mac, and I haven't seen any tie-ins with IE. Although my install disc did come with msn messenger. Luckily uninstalling IE on the mac is a simple drag and drop in the trash can away.

Re:So much for Mac

[WinterSolstice]

I have a similar issue - SAP's NetWeaver Portal is IE only (and actually *is*, for admins). They use all kinds of stupid DOM tricks that simply don't work under firefox, and they don't even use them intelligently. They use it for a stupid right-click menu that shouldn't even have been implemented that way. Hello? Java? The whole thing requires Java 1.4.2_08 or higher anyway.

I'm pissed off about it, and I have opened SAP OSS notes regarding it :)

I do wish there was a way to get firefox to be more 'crapatible' so I didn't have to use IE at all. It's annoying, since most of the admins use Unix here. We have to run an IE session just for this.

-WS

Re:Uninstalling Mac IE

[stewby18]

I haven't and wouldn't want to try to remove safari to see if Apple allows it so easily.

I'll save you the trouble: yes. You'll still have the WebKit framework, since that's an integral part of several other bundled apps and a whole bunch of 3rd-party apps, but Safari itself is trivial to remove.

no big loss

[Wansu]

It ain't like many Mac users were running IE. Heck there's plenty of browsers available for the Mac.

Safari
Firefox
Mozilla
Opera
iCab
Omniweb

to name a few.

I TOLD THEM IT WAS A DUPE!!!!

[FyRE666]

For christ's sake! I'm a subscriber and get to tell these clowns when they're about to post a dupe. So not only does Taco not bother reading any articles posted the previous day, he doesn't even bother reading emails telling the idiot he's about to post a damned dupe! What's the point?!!