Microsoft drops Mac IE

The minority of Mac users still browsing with Internet Explorer need to consider moving to another browser very quickly, as Microsoft plans to discontinue support for IE beginning Dec. 31.

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.

[Ty Tyson]

About time.

Utterly useless browser.

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.

[LordKalthorn]

By what?

Firefox 1.5? It is no better than Internet Explorer 7, its no better than Firefox 1.0. They barely have 10% marketshare and they're already bogged down in as many bugs as Internet Explorer with 80%+!

[Stan Johnson]

peecee weenies

Hey, I had to use a new Mac the other day do get into some of my old Mac files. I'm a designer and began on Macs but have since moved on to Windows. Wow, and how glad I am. I really think the only word to describe my recent Mac experience was that it sucked BIGTIME. I think PCs are 100% better and feel sorry for anyone stuck with Macs and Apple. Macs really, really suck performance wise when compared to new PCs. I could not believe how bad it was. I so glad I'm on a Windows machine now I just had to sit down and laugh for joy!

[Buzz_Friendly]

bah

Eyes open for what....Dells running OSX? That attitude is why iPods sells better than the entire Mac platform.

[zizzybaloobah]

Now if we can just get them to drop IE for Windows!

I know, I know, wishful thinking -- though that's basically what they're doing since IE7 when/if released will not be available to older versions of windows.

[System Tyrant]

Look at it this way.

IE 7 could be better. :)

[MahRain]

I won't miss it

Whenever I encounter a site that doesn't work in Safari, I can use Firefox, and vice versa. Internet Explorer 5 is the first thing I delete after installing my Mac.

[corelogik]

Nothing like...

closing the barn door after the horse is already out. Good timing
Microsoft announce that a product is discontinued years after
nobody cares....

[City_Of_LA]

Finally

Apple don't deserve a great browser like IE. OSX make IE look bad with the buginess and unstability.
Good on you MS for letting that go!!

hilarious

Funniest thing i've read all morning.

[System Tyrant]

Yeah...

Rotten ol' stinkin' wormy Apple. Dirtying up a nice clean browser like IE. Who do they think they are. You tell 'em. Somebody should juice Apple for all they've done to poo on Microsoft.

[mntechnogeek]

IE wasn't doing anyone any favors

Let's face it ? Internet Explorer was merely a crutch for Micro$oft
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.

[Thunder Johny]

Thanks, Microsoft

http://www.analogstereo.com/mazda_owners_manual.htm

[the Otter]

IE for Windows was already discontinued.

Microsoft announced they were discontinuing IE for Windows in
May, 2003. They just seem to have forgotten?.

[SqlserverCode]

You don't have to use IE

You don't have to use IE
I use both myself but have been using Firefox more and more lately

http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/

[AimsAlpha]

IE is useless anyway

IE was a security threat anyway, I don't even see why Microsoft users still use IE. There's at least three "better" alternatives out there: Firefox, Netscape, Opera, etc...

lol I thought the "Now lets just get them to drop Windows", was funny XD

[lonewolf367]

Why even announce it

Obviously support is low, Microsoft didn't need to even tell the Mac world to switch. Mac users are more trendy than that, and IE for Mac was downright awful from the start so there's no loss at all.

[The Cubelodyte]

"Support?"

I was very surprised to hear they were offering any support at all
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.

[TV James]

Bummmer...

My boss uses a Mac. Whenever something doesn't look right on Safari, he'll fire up IE and if it still looks odd, I have to say "It looks fine on the PC." That usually satisfies him, but now he won't be able to see for himself after he upgrades to a new machine that doesn't contain IE. (Is it me or do Mac people upgrade and/or reset their machines way more often than PC people in the corporate environment?)

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.

[TV James]

Oh, and before you say...

Before you say "Well you should get Firefox or Opera or Flock, etc., etc., etc." I want to suggest that anyone who says that is really living in a bubble.

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.

[rcrusoe]

Re: mac upgrades

"Is it me or do Mac people upgrade and/or reset their machines
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.

[Bill Dautrive]

Scary

Write your website to W3C standards and it will work everywhere, including IE.

Why lock yourself into MS, when it accomplishes nothing and serves to cripple your site in the future?

Guess you don't need the business

Since there is pretty well always more than one source for just
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.

IE & Yahoo

The only thing I use IE for is playing games on games.yahoo.com. So this is no big loss.

[PCCRomeo]

Yahoo sucks as bad as IE

They claim they support Firefox....Yea right....I don't know why anyone would use any Yahoo services anyway...

[PCCRomeo]

Drop IE for Windows please!!!

Do us all a favor Microsoft and discontinue IE for Windows....PLEASE!!! :-(

[lkrupp]

Amen to that, brother...

Think how far along the web would be in terms of the browsing
experience if developers weren't forced to support a non-standards
based, poorly written, intentionally proprietary, security-issues
riddled browser like IE.

[tennapel]

What an ill-researched report

C|Net: anyone can copy Reuters; I expect SOME intelligence on your site.

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.

[Thunder Johny]

better business

http://www.analogstereo.com/jaguar_owners_manual.htm

[sumwatt]

This is old, old, old news.

Microsoft announced over a year ago that they were not going to extend any future versions to Mac. With this in mind, it was only a matter of time before they publicly stated that they would cease support for the product. IE5 on Mac was buggy to begin with, the fact that they weren't going any further with new versions essentially cut off the support chain over a year ago.

[Llib Setag]

No Mac IE Vista? DARN!

I've been holding my breath waiting for IE Vista for Mac to be released so I can see how much MS has ripped of Mac Safari 1.0 Browser...

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.

[NeverFade]

Thank God

what a virus ridden P.O.S. that is - I'd never use it, doesn't have
tabs, and is slow as molasses.

Safari and FireFox baby

[Musmanno]

Only problem I can think of...

since I don't use IE much, pertains to my neighbor's kid, who loves to play Disney's Toon Town MMORPG. You can only play it with IE, though. If you use a different browser, it won't even let you on the site.

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.

[Musmanno]

Come to think of it

that may only run on a Windows machine to begin with - though the only computer they have is a Mac and the girl talks about playing the game all the time. She must play elsewhere.

Well, consider this a generalized grievance against Windows-specific and browser-specific services.

[efabo]

What about Opera??

I ;m surprised Opera has been scarcely mentioned....
It works flawlessly....only a little trouble with some online-banking.
But those people only work with IE or netscape....(surprisingly still
out there)

[BentonBear]

What is it good for...?

Lyrics:
What is it good for...Absolutely nuthin!

Macintosh now, Macintosh tomorrow and Macintosh forever!

[Thunder Johny]

Macintosh tomorrow

http://www.analogstereo.com/chrysler_town_and_country_owners_manual.htm