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Internet Explorer The Internet Businesses Microsoft Apple

Microsoft Ends IE on the Mac 289

Posted by CmdrTaco from the clearly-macs-are-more-secure-now dept.
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.
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Microsoft Ends IE on the Mac More

Microsoft Ends IE on the Mac

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  • from the-dupe-dept. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by u2boy_nl ( 927513 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:15AM (#14298554) Homepage
    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 [slashdot.org]
    • Since I killfiled Zonk, it's not a dupe for me.

    • Should be:

      from the yeah-umm-sorrry-about-that-my-bad dept.

      Oh wait, that would be a dupe dept [slashdot.org]

    • I TOLD THEM IT WAS A DUPE!!!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) * on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @06:54PM (#14304050) Homepage
      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?!!

  • Sigh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:15AM (#14298555)
    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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by mkw87 ( 860289 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:45AM (#14298820)
      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? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:15AM (#14298559) Journal
    In case you noticed, the linked article [people.com.cn] 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 [cbronline.com] 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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:31AM (#14298711) Homepage
      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.

      • 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.

        Ok, so you're right. There, that's not something you see on a slashdot post very often, is it?

        I guess our argument comes down to whether an architecture really is safe. Maybe IE's architecture is just


        • Ok, so you're right. There, that's not something you see on a slashdot post very often, is it?

          Nope :-) You're obviously a gentleman!

          I guess our argument comes down to whether an architecture really is safe. Maybe IE's architecture is just unsafe because the current lines of attack are developed to target its architecture?

          No, I think IE's architecture is unsafe therefore lines of attack were developed to target it...

          Embedded into the O/S and activeX are a good starting point for things for MS to fix.

          As a pr

    • 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

    • It's possible that whatever browser has the highest usage rating will have the most [viruses] written for it.

      Anything is possible. But when it comes to Microsoft, we actually know: Microsoft has plenty of products that are not dominant, and they contain lots of security vulnerabilities, too. The problem is with the way Microsoft creates software, not that Microsoft software is popular.

      As for Firefox, it is not invulnerable; many of its defects, however, are the result of closely imitating Microsoft and ta
    • In case you noticed, the linked article read like a bad translation from Chinese to English.

      And why on earth is People's Daily being used as the canonical source of a story entirely based in the US? It's not a leak, it's announced on Microsoft's site [microsoft.com] for all to see.

  • Not secure... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by random_culchie ( 759439 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:16AM (#14298572) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • Just to play the devil's advocate.

      How does an insecure application (which I don't doubt IE is ), with no hooks in to the kernel space (unlike IE on windows), make mac insecure ?

      For argument sake, if IE/Safari/Opera/Firefox all have same # of vulnerabilities in their mac versions. Will they not be equally secure or insecure ?

      This is obviously a strong contrast against IE on windows v/s Opera/Firefox on Windows, as IE seems to work a lot in OS or kernel space.

      • Please explain how IE on Windows "hooks in to the kernel space"?
        • To be honest I don't know. But this is often one of the reasons put forward by non IE browsers, to tout that they are inheritantly secure as they are not embeded in the OS.

          Having not used windows for a while now, I really am not sure what the status of IE "built-into-windows" is.

          • Re:Not secure... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by cortana ( 588495 )
            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, ie
            • first of all thank you for an unbiased answer. Every time I ask this question, I end up getting replies either from Pro-Microsoft or Anti-Microsoft people, and they are equally biased in their own ways.

              Thanks for clearing some of the doubts.

    • 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.

      Hmmmmn, somehow, I doubt that someone using a version of IE on a Mac past the end of 2006 is the sort of person who'd be applying security updates in any case.

      I agree with the general gist of your post however - that it's better for software to continue to recie

      • Hmmmmn, somehow, I doubt that someone using a version of IE on a Mac past the end of 2006 is the sort of person who'd be applying security updates in any case.

        One example you might not be aware of are intranet applications. We have an inventory order system that REQUIRES IE because of the VB scripting. Not my idea. It will run on any box that uses IE, but the app wont work at all without IE. We don't have a choice but to use IE, patches or no, and our systems are patched very regularly.

        The author is alm
    • Nothing will force them to change from IE. Arguably this makes them even less secure.

      What security problems does IE for the Mac have?

  • Cancelled TWICE? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JonTurner ( 178845 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:17AM (#14298591) Journal
    It's bad enough MSFT cancelled it once, but to do it twice, why that's just cruel.
  • I use Firefox on Mac. IE on Mac sucked. As far as I'm concerned, they are doing everyone a favor by discontinuing it. Safari is better that IE as far as that goes.

  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrotherNO@SPAMoptonline.net> on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:18AM (#14298599) Journal

    Microsoft no longer to support IE for Apple [slashdot.org]

    In a related story, Apple IE users will no longer be supported [slashdot.org].

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

    Thank you and good night.

    • Re:This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

      by BushCheney08 ( 917605 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:26AM (#14298667)
      So, anyone know when IE6 for Mac is coming out?
    • The users on slashdot should use this story to get the editors attention. EVERYBODY should submitt the same story if we can get at least a couple of hundred people to submit (or maybe a couple of thousand people to submit) the same story day after day maybe they'll get the message.

  • dupes aside (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TedRiot ( 899157 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:19AM (#14298607)
    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..

    • > 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.

      Yep, and we're not talking insignificant sites. My credit card company (one of the Big Three) site has important functionality that doesn't work except under IE (...according to their tech support and my attempt to use Safari.)

      One assumes MS considered the cost of keeping IE/Mac barely alive was worth more than the risk of forcing such sites

    • I just spoke to house.co.uk because I can't read my electricity bill online (weirdly I can read my gas bill!). They informed me that 'FireFox is not compatible with House' - I told them that it's the other way round and that they just lost a customer!

      The more different (but standards compliant) browsers out there, the better the experience for all of us.

      Justin.

    • I'm not even sure if its Windows counterpart knows how to behave.

  • Back in 1999 it was a very good browser (Score:5, Informative)

    by YA_Python_dev ( 885173 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:20AM (#14298615) Journal

    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 [tantek.com] browsers around.

    According to The Web Standards Project [webstandards.org] it helped to start the "CSS layout revolution". [webstandards.org]

  • Brain-dead comment (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:22AM (#14298633)
    "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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TeacherOfHeroes ( 892498 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:36AM (#14298751)
      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?
    • "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.

      Very true. I was going to comment on that and the usual dupe, but both were caught by others (-1 Redundant for me).

      However, the "brain dead inflammatory comment" was probably added by an "editor". I decipher the story topics as the following (reading slashcode would confirm that, but I rarely read arti
      • Hey thanks for the clarification about the italicised part of the story versus the non. You would think after all these years I would know this. To be honest though, the non-italicised part has never really been enlightening enough to come across to me as an editorial comment. As anybody who's run a successful business knows: consumers are often pleased by the most surprising and insignificant things. It's the idea people buy, not the brains behind the operation. And in fact the smartest people are o
        • As anybody who's run a successful business knows: consumers are often pleased by the most surprising and insignificant things.

          I've never run a successful or unsuccessful business, but I would almost agree that consumer are often pleased by the most surprising and insignificant things.

          Surprising just means unexpected, nice, and often a sign of attention to detail. I'm pleasantly surprised with my car's design feature of a gas cap holder inside of the locking gas cap cover. My car is not a BMW, but they had
          • Smart people often put up with junk that is in my opinion is dumb.

            Yes, I am dumb and often don't proofread my posts and look dumb taking about dumb. I know better, but do worse...

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

      The only one I ever heard of was MS02-019, which was fixed in 2002.

    • IE on the Mac doesn't take part in the ActiveDesktop Cluster**** that's been the biggest security problem on the net for the past 7 years, so...

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

      About as insecure as any other normal browser, and maybe a quintillion times as secure as IE on Windows.

  • suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lovebyte ( 81275 ) * <lovebyte2000@gmail3.1415926.com minus pi> on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:22AM (#14298634) Homepage
    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.

  • Two corrections here... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:24AM (#14298649) Homepage Journal
    First of all, this is a dupe from Sunday. Nothing new to see here. Move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

    Secondly (and more important): IE for the Mac was an entirely different product, with a different codebase and a different rendering engine. While IE for Mac did have an occasional vulnerability (typically patched pretty quickly), it was at the time a more standards-compliant browser than its distant Windows cousin.

    Unlike IE for Windows, IE for Mac was simply an application. No low-level stuff, no rendering engine used by the system (like IE Win and, for that matter, Safari/WebKit for the Mac), no ActiveX compatibility, no nothing. Other than the lack of pop-up blocking (which wasn't a common feature in any browser yet), IE was a pretty decent product. Most Mac users used IE, and were pretty happy with it - it had versions for the old Mac OS, and a spiffy Carbonized version for OS X). When Apple announced Safari, though, the writing was on the wall for IE Mac - why keep building a browser that earns no revenue and doesn't even help draw users to other Microsoft products? Just to get a few more MSN pageviews by people too lazy to change their default homepage?

    Nah.

  • Same freaking article title, much worse snarking (Score:5, Informative)

    by frankie ( 91710 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:26AM (#14298663) Journal
    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 [alistapart.com], 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 [slashdot.org] for Jebus' sake!

  • And Office? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:27AM (#14298673) Homepage
    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:And Office? (Score:2, Informative)

      by griffindj ( 887533 )
      Unlike Safari, MS Office has no "real" counterpart on the mac... as of yet. I say that owning a copy of keynote2 and pages. Unlike IE for the Mac, MS Office for the Mac has a big lead on that market, and I think they will continue to support office well into your mid-life crisis. I use Office 2004 for my mac, and I haven't seen any tie-ins with IE. Although my install disc did come with msn messenger. Luckily uninstalling IE on the mac is a simple drag and drop in the trash can away.
      • Luckily uninstalling IE on the mac is a simple drag and drop in the trash can away.
        True, and coming from a Windows background this was of particular joy to discover. Amazing what happens when business rules don't get in the way of computer owner preferences. (However, I haven't and wouldn't want to try to remove safari to see if Apple allows it so easily.)

        • Re:Uninstalling Mac IE (Score:5, Informative)

          by stewby18 ( 594952 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @12:37PM (#14299281)

          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.

        • However, I haven't and wouldn't want to try to remove safari to see if Apple allows it so easily

          "Uninstalling" safari is just as simple. drag to trash, empty. done.

          Unlike IE on windows, safari is a stand-alone user-level application that is not used for anything besides web browsing, so removing it does not cripple anything.
  • I'll ignore the dupe aspect of this story to state that IE for the Mac has not received a significant update since the year 2000. Everything between then and the termination of development in 2003, was simply basic maintenance updates that kept it running on each version of OS X and squashed a few security bugs here and there.

    IE for the Mac has been very dead for a very long time.
  • ...uh...no, that doesn't work does it...

    Anyway, how about we try for three and a bunch of us submit this story AGAIN!

  • Two negatives make a positive, correct? (Score:5, Funny)

    by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:44AM (#14298811)
    So IE work on the Mac must be continuing!
    • "Two negatives make a positive, correct?

      Are you foreign? Sorry, but I just read the title, re-read it, and couldn't help but think it sounded like the stuff of a Babelfish translation, maybe translating something like "Two wrongs make a right, right?" from, say, Korean into English.

      iqu :P

  • Not again! (Score:5, Funny)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @11:44AM (#14298818) Homepage Journal
    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!
  • when I installed Suse. I'm not exactly all broken up about this.

  • Sad (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nuremon ( 791801 )
    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...
    • Let Disney know about the problems you have with their site. The more feedback they get, the more likely they are to consider alternative browsers in the future.
  • When other browsers offered tabs, IE was pitched into the trash.

    So tabbed browsing is in beta, eleven years since the technology was introduced. I wonder if they will lead users to believe it is one of their innovations?
  • Really, your telling me people still use IE? Why?
  • CT Deja Vu 'eh? Sorry.

    He's Canadian?

  • IE on Windows (Score:2, Funny)

    by sbirnie ( 717828 )
    If they would only stop supporting IE on Windows - then we'd ALL be safer!
  • Yeah.. especially since I recall reading this yesterday, right here on Slashdot!

    The horse is dead already. Please stop beating the poor thing!

  • In related news, Slashdot announced today a change in editorial policy. Starting in December, each Slashdot editor will approve a different version of the same story.

    Asked about the decision, CmdrTaco pointed to tension amongst the editors. "ScuttleMonkey was whining about only having a chance to approve **Beatles-Beatles linkwhore articles, while Zonk and others get to approve stuff that matters (sometimes more than once, even). This change in policy will hopefully get rid of this tension, which has di

  • Dialog at 7:30 in the morning (Score:5, Funny)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @01:03PM (#14299487)
    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!*
  • Microsoft has released its WinFS 0.98a and Windows Media Center XXX betas. Users are encouraged to download and use the software free of charge.

    **Requires Internet Explorer for Mac.

  • no big loss (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wansu ( 846 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @01:58PM (#14300004)


    It ain't like many Mac users were running IE. Heck there's plenty of browsers available for the Mac.

    Safari
    Firefox
    Mozilla
    Opera
    iCab
    Omniweb

    to name a few.

  • You must, must, MUST post a story telling us what your days are like. I'm not trolling, I'm being totally sincere--what is going on in your world that you didn't recognize a story YOU posted YESTERDAY?!? Married life? Horrid in-laws? Kid on the way? Early-onset Alzheimer's? Spending too much time boinking supermodels on top of a mountain of OSTG cash to notice? Seriously, what's going on?
  • So, millions of mac users using old, unsupported, unpatched versions of IE = more secure?

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