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

from the-dupe-dept.

[u2boy_nl]

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 18, @11:47PM
from the who-needs-ie-anyway dept.

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.'"

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/18/ 227225&tid=113&tid=3

Would you like that article in English?

[eldavojohn]

In case you noticed, the linked article read like a bad translation from Chinese to English. Probably because it was.

If you'd like a better article regarding this, try out this article which is easier and it also contains a relevant quote:

"It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari," Microsoft said.

Instead of having to put up with awkward sentences like the following from The People's Daily article:

IE will not be a problem for Apple users because most of them have applied different browsers on their computers.

I hope everyone has "applied" firefox by now.

I'm not going to say anything about this remark:

And with this change, every mac on the internet will become even more secure than their Windows based counterparts.

Other than this is an arguable statement. It's possible that whatever browser has the highest usage rating will have the most virii written for it. If Firefox becomes the dominant browser, it might even be safer to have IE installed on your computer to avoid the latest virus. Yes, a Firefox virus is fixed faster than an IE virus, but it's still a liability.

Re:Would you like that article in English?

[tpgp]

If Firefox becomes the dominant browser, it might even be safer to have IE installed on your computer to avoid the latest virus.

Utter nonsense.

In the context of the article this is doubly nonsense because IE for Mac is discontinued and vulnerabilities for it will never be fixed.

In a wider context, its still nonsense. If you're concerned about security, you use the browser with the more secure architecture - not the one with the least users.

Not secure...

[random_culchie]

And with this change, every mac on the internet will become even more secure than their Windows based counterparts.
Not if they keep using old unsupported software..
Nothing will force them to change from IE. Arguably this makes them even less secure.

Re:Not secure...

[cortana]

Well basically it's a myth. No part of IE runs in 'kernel mode'. Unfortunatly it's one of those myths that will be impossible to stamp out.

IE is built in to the OS in the sense that it comes with Windows, and is impossible to remove.

First of all, the 'trident' rendering engine is used by many third party programs, so removing it would break them in the same way that removing a commonly used library would. That is fair enough.

The problem we all have with IE is the fact that you can't remove the front end, iexplore.exe. If you remove it from add/remove programs, it is just marked as being invisible. If you delete it, system file protection puts it right back. If you set an ACL on it denying everyone the permission to execute it, system file protection undoes your change.

If you run it, it asks if it is to become the default browser. Of course, the default answer is yes; so a user who runs it by accident will probably end up unintentionally switching back to IE.

The problem with this is that it's too damn easy to run IE by accident! Programs like mIRC and MSN Messenger hard code IE as their handler for HTTP urls, so when a user clicks on a link from IRC, or picks 'read hotmail inbox' from MSN messenger, IE runs and probably becomes their default browser. ARGH!

dupes aside

[TedRiot]

I think this might be a good thing for web in general, because sites need to start supporting web browsers in general if they want to keep their mac users instead of assuming that mac users will want to install IE. Not that mac IE ever behaved like its windows counterpart..

Brain-dead comment

[Malc]

"And with this change, every mac on the internet will become even more secure than their Windows based counterparts."

Remove this brain dead inflamatory comment, and there's nothing really left of this story. I hope the person submitting it is proud of themselves. Especially considering this is a dupe of a previous front page story.

Furthermore, this comment is just plain wrong. When Microsoft stops support for IE on the Mac, are they going to remove it from all the Macs that already have it? No of course not, so the security situation will not change immediately. I hope Microsoft will continue to supply security patches, otherwise there is a danger that every Mac on the internet with IE will become less secure over time as exploits are found.

Out of curiousity, just how insecure has IE on the Mac been?

Re:Brain-dead comment

[TeacherOfHeroes]

I hope Microsoft will continue to supply security patches, otherwise there is a danger that every Mac on the internet with IE will become less secure over time as exploits are found.

Unless thats what they want to happen.

Would it be so bad for MS if the public perception of os x as more secure than windows was damaged a little?

suggestion

[lovebyte]

I am a subscriber.
I sent an email to tell it's a dupe 20 minutes before the story appeared to everyone.
I was hoping it mattered.
I am disappointed.

Since during the last duped story someone suggested a way to avoid dupes, let me add my idea:
During the time the story is not yet fully released:
Allow subscribers to post.
Automatically give 5 moderation points to all subscribers and allow moderation.
Editors, please check the subscribers posts before releasing the story to everyone.
If all is ok, remove the subscribers posts and release story.

And Office?

[Ed Avis]

Doesn't Microsoft Office have all sorts of hooks into Internet Explorer? At least on Windows, you need the latest IE for the latest Office, or it installs at the same time, or something like that. What does this say about the future of Office for Mac?

Sad

[nuremon]

What's sad about this is that I still need to use IE on MAC to make silly things work on Disney's website and a couple other places. I love web standards...

Re:So much for Mac

[CastrTroy]

That's not something you should blame on open source software. You should either blame the developers of the website that only works on IE, or blame it on Microsoft for making a browser that is not standards compliant. In the case where saying firefox can't work with an IE only website, well, that's really not Mozilla's fault. Maybe it's activeX, maybe it's something else. You can't expect Mozilla to copy ActiveX, or some other non-standard technology that microsoft has built into the web browser. And maybe you shouldn't have bought into a solution that relies on some proprietary piece of software. It really sucks that many things require Microsoft products to work, even though we know that they don't need MS to program similar software. The best thing we can do is to stop buying solutions that require things such as IE and MS Office.

Re:Give 'em a break

[Durandal64]

My point is that IE/Mac is more secure than Safari. IE/MacOSX was a lousy Carbon job so it's not tied into any framework besides Carbon. In much the same way as any malware app on Windows can embed an IE control to download files, ads, rootkits, etc., any Mac app can embed Safari to do the same thing.

So? How is this any different from using the Core Foundation API to do the same things? Any API can be used toward malicious ends. Apple had an API for establishing network connections long before WebKit, but I didn't see anyone whining about that one. Microsoft's error wasn't in including an HTML renderer library as you seem to think. Their error was making low-level OS components reliant on that library. Apple has not made that mistake.

I agree that a WebKit app can do much less damage than an IE/Windows app assuming everyone's system is patched up, since most Windows users run as Administrator all the time, but both Safari and IE/Windows have had flaws that opened up users' systems in unexpected ways.

And the same is true of any library. Security exploits are not exclusive to HTML renderers.