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Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7

An anonymous reader writes "Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is out. Windows 8 may suck but now you can at least enjoy (most of) that version's Internet Explorer. IE10 for Win7, originally not planned, has seen the light of day after all — four months after it debuted in Windows 8. It is available via Windows Update as an optional update; however, if you've already installed a pre-release version, it will be updated automatically as an 'important' update. IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows, and it will not feature embedded Adobe Flash as the Windows 8 version does (use the plug-in version from Adobe, as usual, instead)."

4 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Actually... I'm glad. by BLToday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought the "embedded" Flash of IE is similar to Chrome's embedded Flash. Meaning Microsoft maintains its own build of Flash like Google maintains its own Flash. So it's up to Microsoft to fix any security issues and not rely on Adobe to release a patch to the consumer. So it could be a good thing like Chrome or a terrible thing like IE6.

  2. Re:Actually... I'm glad. by infogulch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm thinking "embedded" actually means "included", like how chrome included flash player instead of using the plugin version.

    This is a good thing since updates to flash player happens at the same time as updates to the browser (in the case of IE, it's handled by windows update) and it's easier to update and therefore more likely for critical flash updates to be applied.

    Not sure how different "embedded" vs plugin is for security.

  3. Re:This is why people hate MS by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can still build software for 2.2 if I want. I could backport any fix I like.

    I am not actually expecting them to backport something to XP, just pointing out that until recently they held IE10 from Windows 7 for no good reason.

  4. Re:This is why people hate MS by vux984 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wrong.

    How is it "wrong"? How is the fact that itunes 11 won't install on Leopard in any way even the slightest bit different from what Microsoft is doing? Both companies just want to move on and not support the old stuff.

    Apple doesn't artifically limit it.

    Yes, actually they do. Hell there have been OS X upgrades that they have simply DECIDED not to let run on older Apple hardware.

    http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26562/leopardassist

    LeopardAssist is a simple tool to install Leopard on older, unsupported Power Macs.

    "It bypasses the 867 MHz processor check in the Leopard installer to allow systems that don't meet the requirements to complete installation. It achieves this by temporarily faking the clock speed in the device tree, changing it to 933MHz, and then launching the Leopard Installer. No modified Leopard DVD's, no hardware hacks or tweaks, just a one-time run application. (Much like XPostFacto)"

    It doesn't get to be any more of an artificial limit than that. 900MHz = "Ok" 800MHz = "No you can't install it".

    There are a number of other similar OSX upgrade related jerk moves like this over the years.

    What could be more artificial than that?

    They make it clear they move on and don't support old stuff because that's what they want to do not because it's physically impossible.

    Same as microsoft.

    Microsoft doesn't want to support directX on XP. They said so. Nobody ever claimed it would be "impossible". Ditto for Internet Explorer. They could support IE10 on XP but they don't want to, and said so. But at least in those cases it would be actual work to get them running on the older system.

    Apple is the only one that completely artificially blocks you from running new software on old OSes, or new OSes on older hardware. Safari 5 was artificially exclusive to Tiger. Itunes restrictions have also been pretty artificial. I think my favorite is itunes because you needed the latest itunes to support new iphones, but itunes only supports the latest macs.

    My brother got burned by an iphone, forcing him to update itunes, forcing him to update his OSX, forcing him to buy a new computer. And he wasn't running a decrepit old computer either; it was meeting his needs just fine.

    It was rather ironic that itunes supported Windows XP PC which came out years before his Mac computer. (Granted it required XPSP2... but XPSP2 is a free upgrade that worked on any computer that ran XP. vs OSX updates which were not free and which do not run on any Mac made in 2002 onwards with nothing more than a (optional) ram upgrade.