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

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".

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

So here I am, obsessively refreshing Slashdot, as we do, and what do I see at the top of the page? Ya sure, I've got mod points, no I haven't meta modded lately. What ho, free day pass?

So I see a big blank page, thanky adblock plus, hit the continue to free day pass link, and what I see? Bright red dupe. Oh wait, but this time with trolling in the janitor's comments!

Hotness. So this is what being a Slashdot subscriber is all about? I'm sold.

Re:Sigh

[mkw87]

What was funny for me was that I left work with my browswer open to slashdot, and at the time the last story was yesterdays post of this. I came in, sat down, hit refresh, and virtually the same damn article was still at the top.......I was very confused.

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.

Cancelled TWICE?

[JonTurner]

It's bad enough MSFT cancelled it once, but to do it twice, why that's just cruel.

Re:Cancelled TWICE?

[Pope]

Mac IE was so bad, they had to cancel it twice just to be safe!

This just in...

[Billosaur]

Microsoft no longer to support IE for Apple

In a related story, Apple IE users will no longer be supported.

And in business news, Microsoft announced it will discontinue support for IE on the Apple platform.

Thank you and good night.

Re:This just in...

[BushCheney08]

So, anyone know when IE6 for Mac is coming out?

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..

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".

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.

Re:suggestion

[mopslik]

let me add my idea

Here's an even easier idea that the editors can try out, patent-free:

• Click "Old Stories" to reach the Search Slashdot page.
• Type "IE Mac" into the search bar.
• Behold the power of searching (second result).

Re:suggestion

[sydneyfong]

Only on slashdot would somebody pay for the "priviledge" to do work that editors are supposed to be paid to do.

Meanwhile, CmdrTaco continues playing WoW...

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!

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?

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?

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.

Two negatives make a positive, correct?

[rolfwind]

So IE work on the Mac must be continuing!

Not again!

[roman_mir]

So let me get this straight. They ended IE support of Mac, then they restarted IE support for Mac and then they ended IE support of Mac all over again and all of this within the course of 2 days? Sneaky bastards!

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.

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.

Dialog at 7:30 in the morning

[Qbertino]

Jules: 'Why did you post that dupe? Again.'

Slashdot Admin: 'What?'

Jules: 'Do I look like I'm stupid?'

Slashdot Admin: 'What?'

Jules: 'Do I look like like someone who needs to be told everything twice?'

Slashdot Admin: 'What?'

Jules: 'Don't you understand what I'm saying? What country are you from?'

Slashdot Admin: 'W...? What?'

Jules: ' "What"? "What" ain't no country I ever heard of. Do they speak english in "What"? '

Slashdot Admin: 'What?'

Jules: ' Say "What" again. SAY "WHAT" AGAIN! I DARE YOU, MOTHERF*CKER, I DOUBLE DARE YOU. '

Vincet: 'How do you read our submitions and the articles posted?'

Slashdot Admin: 'W... w... we ... we don't actually.'

Jules: 'So you think we're stupid?'

Slashdot Admin: 'What?'

*BLAM!* *BLAM!* *BLAM!* *BLAM!* *BLAM!* *BLAM!* *BLAM!*

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?!!