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December 19, 2005 6:33 AM PST
Microsoft drops Mac IE
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The news, which came in a statement on Friday, may not have come as a complete surprise to Mac users: Microsoft announced back in June 2003 that it was ending Mac support for IE. Microsoft has not upgraded the software in three years, leaving IE 5--rather than version 6, which is available for Windows--as the most recent version available to Mac users.
While IE for Mac will continue to be available for another month after support ends, Microsoft is advising all users to move to "more recent browsing technology such as Apple's Safari."
The lack of support for IE is unlikely to be an issue for Apple users, most of whom already use alternatives. The only potential difficulty could lie with some sites that have been designed to work with IE only.
This affects a minority of sites, but the issue hasn't completely gone away. In June, for example, Web-testing company SciVisum said that one in 10 Web sites in the U.K. failed to work properly with Firefox, the popular open-source browser.
Firefox, Safari and other browsers such as Opera are available for Mac OS X.
Colin Barker of ZDNet UK reported from London.
72 comments
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Everyone should be using Safari or Firefox by now, and if you are not then shame on you.
2006 is almost here - prepare to have your eyes opened peecee weenies.
Microsoft announce that a product is discontinued years after
nobody cares....
Good on you MS for letting that go!!
to show the DoJ that they were trying to play nice...which has all
the absurdity of Elton John marrying a supermodel rolled into a
nice, downloadable package.
Mac users were Microsoft's alibi, and evidently Redmond doesn't
feel like they need to lie any more.
Thanks, Microsoft. Don't let the screen door hit you in the hiney
on the way out. And take all the spam and virii you brought with
you, too.
May, 2003. They just seem to have forgotten&.
I use both myself but have been using Firefox more and more lately
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/" target="_newWindow">http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/</a>
lol I thought the "Now lets just get them to drop Windows", was funny XD
after they stopped its development. It's a horrible old fossil, and I
can see why they decided not to spend any money on it after Safari
was released, and Firefox for OS X must surely have cemented their
decision to kill Mac IE that much more.
Good riddance. I haven't bothered testing my code with Mac IE for
ages, anyway.
Yeah, my woes simply indicate that my sites aren't 100% CSS/standards compliant. But when IE commands 90%+ of our the market share, and higher when it comes to our audience, that pretty much becomes the standard.
I've inherited and built onto these websites that have been around longer than CSS, but there's no time to just scrap everything and start over, and from what I've seen, some of the stuff we're doing can't even yet be duplicated by CSS because Microsoft went ahead and added stuff not (yet?) recognized by W3C.
So Macs finally move to Intel, suggesting an easier coding job for Microsoft and probably a bigger market-share in general for Macs, they finally decide to completely cut off IE? Ugh.
Thanks for nothing.
It's no secret that those of us who frequent these sites are more technically advanced that the average person. Installing and maintaining other browers is no big deal.
But sometimes you can't dictate the policy handed down from above about what's allowed on your PCs (or in most cases on this campus, whether you even have the ability to install stuff on the workstations), and even moreso, it's impossible to dictate to your client what they should run. And when you try to force, good luck with that.
I guess if we use the "road" analogy, then you may be right in suggesting that I need to remove anything from my road that isn't lowest-common-denominator so that all of the "cars" can equally navigate it. Fair enough.
way more often than PC people in the corporate environment?"
Based on the fact that Apple accounts for only 4-5% of total
computer sales, but Macs comprise about 16% of the total
computers in use, I'd have to guess that it's you.
Those figures indicate that Mac users upgrade way less than their
wintel cousins.
Why lock yourself into MS, when it accomplishes nothing and serves to cripple your site in the future?
about anything, my solution to IE-only websites is to simply take
my business elsewhere. If these web companies don't mind cutting
out 10% of the market, especially a 10% that is concentrated in the
higher economic end of the scale, that's their choice.
Sometimes, in the case of local businesses, I've let them know my
thoughts and actually saw their websites change - the ones that
care about not arbitrarily turning down customer dollars.
experience if developers weren't forced to support a non-standards
based, poorly written, intentionally proprietary, security-issues
riddled browser like IE.
Fact 1: current active users don't need to look for another browser (think Mac OS9 users); their current copy remains working fine. You won't get an answer anymore from Microsoft's helpdesk, but I'm pretty sure you won't get an answer right now if you would phone.
Fact 2: IE/Mac and IE/Win have different HTML engines. IE/Mac was at launch way ahead of every other browser in the field. Websites targeted at or using IE/Win specific code won't work in IE/Mac anyway. And if a website does work in IE/Mac, but not in any other browser on the mac platform, well, you still can use IE/Mac if you have a copy.
It IS the end of an era though: IE/Mac was the first poke at IE. IE/Mac was the proof of concept of what a browser could be, what IE could have been. Sadly, Microsoft saw better business in developing the windows version of IE and the Mac version became orphaned software. It's a miracle it has hold out so long.
Darn! Now I will never know...
GOOD RIDDENS IE!
Mac & Open Source Community blew IE out of the water YEARS AGO.
Old news from a Jurassic Software Monopoly in Redmond, WA.
tabs, and is slow as molasses.
Safari and FireFox baby
A minor issue in the grand scheme, but it does irk me when someone with the resources of Disney doesn't take the time to make their product work on other browsers.
Well, consider this a generalized grievance against Windows-specific and browser-specific services.
It works flawlessly....only a little trouble with some online-banking.
But those people only work with IE or netscape....(surprisingly still
out there)
What is it good for...Absolutely nuthin!
Macintosh now, Macintosh tomorrow and Macintosh forever!
browser Microsoft could have improved it with a new version.
I think its stupid and bad business sense for them to discontinue
IE for Mac because with the esception of the Macintosh the only
other platform Internet Explorer has ever run on is Microsoft's
own Windows operating system.
I agree IE was not that great a browser to begin with whether it
was used on a Mac or a PC. It would probably be best for
everyone even Windows users to dump Internet Explorer as soon
as possible.
Had Microsoft continued IE for Mac they could have brought
their MSN Toolbar possibly to Mac to work in IE. There is a new
browser war emerging (this one I am viewing from Mac and PC
desktops) and now a search war with Google.
It would be great if Apple made Safari for Windows and with
Netscape's resurgence (or rebirth) and its commitment to
recontinue development of their browser, the addition of
Mozilla Firefox, and other Mozilla based browsers including
Camino, Opera etc and possibly even a Gbrowser from Google
Microsoft would face intense competition in the market,
consumers would have more choice and be made to play nice.
Because this time they can't win the new browser war by
monopolization, by bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows
(and/or Macintosh which must have had an effect on Netscape's
Macintosh browser development business as well as its Windows
business) but have to play fair. Innovation will emerge and
everyone will benefit.
years ago, around the time Apple introduced Safari. Microsoft
made the decision that, since Apple was developing its own
browser, MS didn't need to waste resources or money on a
product that was quickly losing market share. Many Mac users
simply downloaded Safari when it was released and relegated IE
to second fiddle.
Firefox has gained some ground on the Mac platform, but many
users use Safari for much the same reason that Windows users
tend toward IE. It's there and, for most folks, it works.
features like local.live.com.
amazing how much more I love computers.
>frequently, but every few months he's standing
>around for half a day while formatting and
>reinstalling all his software
...doesn't know what he's doing.
There's no reason to have to reformat and resinstall OSX unless he had a hard drive failure. Why is he reinstalling software so often?
No other OS degrades over time.
Either your boss is an idiot or this is just silly FUD