Microsoft Kills Off Mac IE, Blames Safari 1128
aliebrah writes "CNet reports that
Microsoft will not release any more major upgrades for Internet Explorer on MacOS. They cite competition from Safari as the reason for this decision, and say that Safari is a better browser for Macintosh systems. Ironically, they also say that they can't compete with Apple, because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system."
Yeah, that must be rough. Today's SlashDotFunQuiz is to predict the order in which, impact when, and years until these other Mac products get the axe: Media Player, MSN Messenger, Office, Outlook, and Virtual PC.
Completion? (Score:4, Funny)
The best part is, Safari isn't done yet.
Re:Completion? (Score:5, Insightful)
When is Microsoft going to realize that tying their products into the operating system isn't synonymous with competition.
Re:Completion? (Score:5, Interesting)
The latter is one of the things they've been saying isn't true in court, no?
Re:Completion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Completion? (Score:5, Funny)
I think you got that wrong, the correct spelling is:
Konqueror
"I'll have a coffee"
"Beer it is"
"No, coffee..."
"Beer..."
"Cof-fee"
"Be-er"
"C..o.
"B..e..."
Not smart (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not smart (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not smart (Score:4, Insightful)
No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened
Typically Constitutional Amendments were made for far weightier matters, like, say the 26th (1971), which gave the vote to citizens over the age of 18 (21 had been the voting age). This was a very important rectification, because most men drafted, crippled or killed in Vietnam had been too young to vote - old enough for a legal responsibility to give up their lives and health, but not 'responsible enough' to have their opinions heard!
Hardly in the same league as Congressional pay, I think - or, say, the Equal Rights Amendment, which never managed to find its way to passage.
Re:Completion? (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, that's third party access to the mac OS. its open source now, COME ON!
microsoft is playing this one like a dissociative lunatic, they are the ones that don't give access to shit, accusing apple of doing (which they aren't) what m$ has done for years. maybe its to convince people that just don't know about the current state of affairs that this is being forced on them by apple. sheesh!
Apple should respond with Win-Safari (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows actually started as a set of libraries for DOS programs to add GUIs. The library's popularity helped Windows beat out GEM and OS/2 and achieve total world domination. Apple could pull a similar trick with Win-Cocoa.
If apple ported the Cocoa Foundation, AppKit, and WebKit to windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. a lot of developers would develop in Cocoa simply because of how wonderful Cocoa is.... and even if Cocoa apps ran under Windows and Linux, they would still run best on OS X on a Mac
Re:Completion? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. There are myriad things that MS could do to please the Slashdot community. They have simply never done any of them.
Like bankruptcy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, seriously, Microsoft do have a habit of "innovating" only reluctantly. Development on Internet Explorer seems to have stopped now that it has the majority of the market, and has fallen way behind Opera and Mozilla in terms of features, speed and usability.
Likewise, Microsoft Word seems to have, if anything, gotten worse over these past few years. They seem to have ran out of good things to do to it, and instead are content to obfusicate their file formats to maintain dominance.
How many "innovations" has Microsoft actually completed that aren't blatent copies? I can't think of one.
Of course, from a purely capitalist point of view, this is a perfectly reasonable choice. Why bother improving stuff that you have a monopoly over, a monopoly that's likely to remain untouched for the next few years at least? Competition is capitalism's way of improving software, and with a monopoly, there's no incentive to improve.
Which is why there are laws concerning monopolies, and strict regulation of such entities. But with the DOJ in Microsoft's pocket, there isn't any enforcement of these laws, and thus Microsoft can get away with making a profit without expending any effort.
Re:Completion? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what happens in a Monopoly. What did you expect?
it is highly likely that there is nothing Microsoft could do to please the Slashdot community
I think it would be closer to the truth to say there is nothing they *will* do to please this community.
What, do you expect us to just "get over" the fact that they demonstrate a propensity for evil over and over again?
Any action they can take will receive the same scorn and criticism, by the same group of people.
Of course, because they keep demonstrating an infinite propensity for being a pack of jerks.
There are lots of things they could do that would make slashdot people happy - they just happen not to be in Microsoft's financial interest. That's what happens in a monopoly market- your financial interest becomes opposed to the interests of consumers because there's no longer any pressure to please them. If Microsoft didn't own the file formats for Office they'd be forced to compete.
Defenders of Microsoft love to describe the objections to their business practices as "the same old story" and "tired" because they have no defense other than the fact that they've been doing the things people describe so long that they can't believe anyone is still complaining about them - it's obvious to them that no one has the power to stop them from being evil so the complainers should just "stop whining" about Microsoft's behavior.
Well, F that my friend.
Re:Microsoft is not special (Score:5, Insightful)
What, you expect me to *disagree* with you?
Look, businesses are amoral because they are not natural people and are, in general, only held accountable for their profit status.
This is only a little bit bad when companies have to worry about their competition- they are afraid to piss anyone off because they'll lose market share, so they only do what they think they can get away with.
In monopoly conditions companies don't fear their competitors, so they don't fear their customers and don't make changes to keep them happy. In this case, we have a market monopoly, reinforced by copyright monopolies over the file formats, so powerful that the company doesn't even fear the *government*.
So you are saying "everyone's doing it".
I'm saying 1. That SUCKS and 2. it REALLY SUCKS when a powerful monopolist does it.
I imagine you'll tell me to get over it again. Thanks for the tip. F that.
Re:Microsoft is not special (Score:5, Insightful)
Those promises have now been revealed as a lie, a fraud, a common deceit that was of such a scale that tens of thousands of career paths were altered by it and billions in MS profits hung in the balance. It was a criminal conspiracy to commit corporate fraud *AND NOBODY PROSECUTED*. The Democrats fell down on the job because when MS admitted a few years ago that the chinese wall was a myth and 100% access to the Win32 API was a myth the Dems were in charge of the executive and they wanted a poster boy defendent for an anti-trust revival. This was viewed as a good way to rally the troops and improve their electoral chances.
Republicans didn't cover themselves in glory either, concentrating on defending MS in order to minimize the electoral gain of a revitalized anti-trust national mood. There's a very good case of doing an Arthur Anderson to MS and indicting the company. Depending on the statute of limitations limits for the particular crimes, MS officers could end up in club Fed for what they've pulled over the years.
I don't particularly like monopolies but there are problems with MS that are not monopoly related in the least.
Re:Pleasing the /. community....? (Score:5, Insightful)
Big isn't always bad, not is small good. if that were the case, everybody would be crapping all over IBM and cheering on the SCO underdog in its valiant fight to knock the big evil IBM down a peg.
People hate MS because they are amoral in their behaviour--they "don't play nice". They implement perverted versions of open standards (bastardised kerberos, broken email and DNS, improper use of the HTTP protocol in IIS which IE handles OK but all other browsers occasionally choke on...). MS wipes the floor with competitors by imitating them and undercutting them to the point of giving away the executables--and if that doesn't erase them completely they "bundle" then "integrate" applications (already there with IE--that'll be followed by Media Player, then NetMeeting, Outlook and if left unchecked the rest of Office too). Nasty and evil ain't it? big didn't make them bad--big just allows them to get away with it.
Not that you need to be big to be bad. Witness the actions of SCO--that evil little bastard of a corporation. It is a pipsqueak with a loud annoying bark. They are flexing all the muscle of IP ownership they can conjure up--launching a ludicrous billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM. They vomit up propaganda press releases and threatening letters to Linux vendors and developers. In doing all this they look petty, greedy and entirely devoid of scruples. It conjures up thoughts of SCO directors laughing maniacally as they plot to pump-and-dump their stock or force-feed it to IBM at hyper-inflated prices as a settlement. Besides that, all it does is make the pointy-haired bosses who were finally opening up to Linux alternatives have more doubts and excuses to stay with the rickety old status-quo from Microsoft. Not only to the powers-that-be at SCO not seem to care about the health of the industry, they don't even seem to care about public image or even corporate self-preservation! Nasty, evil little bastards.
Contrast that to IBM. They are HUGE and for decades were the epitome of CLOSED source (right down to men in dark suits bearing NDAs and security bordering on paranoia). IBM has learned to "play nice"--at least to a degree. Their paid staff contribute immensely to Free software projects (Linux, Apache and I believe the Postfix mail server among them), port their closed applications to Linux (DB2...) and support linux on a wide variety of systems. They participate in the development of open protocols and use and promote them faithfully. They do all this despite being big enough to get away with doing much less. Yes they are a big faceless corporation, and yes they were prodded in that direction by antitrust suits and advancing technology making their mainframe operations look obsolete. The fact remains though, that IBM is now "playing nice" and that keeps \.ers and their ilk off IBM's back. Atta boy, IBM!
Bill's "philanthropy" is closer to anthrophagy (Score:4, Interesting)
But isn't education philanthropic? I guess that depends on whether the education is directed to enthralling our best and brightest to Microsoft and their software - both students and study venues - or is unencumbered. Guess what? With the exception of court-ordered actions and a sprinkling of cases where the brownie points were more critical than immediate sales points, all of Bill's educational sponsorship is tied to Microsoft software in one way or another. No change there in the last 20 or so years, still the same old over-ridingly desperate egocentricism. (-: Had to laugh, though, at the recipient of one computer centre telling Bill during his inspection tour that the computers in it ran "a variety of software" but omitting to mention that every bit of that variety arrived on RedHat CDs... :-)
I wonder... have I used enough long words to trigger the lameness filters? (-:
Re:Completion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Help push Mac users towards Safari (Score:5, Funny)
One down, one to go... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Funny)
"Steve, we've had a good run..." - Bill Gates
"Aww come on, I was just havin' some fun" - Steve Ballmer
"I want to get out while we're still ahead" - Bill Gates
or something to that effect.
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Informative)
"On the Windows side, Microsoft has said that it will stop development of standalone versions of Internet Explorer, instead evolving the browser as part of future updates to the Windows OS."
That link embedded in the quote leads to Microsoft abandons standalone IE. [com.com]
Of course, evolving the browser into the WinOS may or may not have significant impact on all those pages that are IE specific. All I can say for sure is that, of the 3 browsers that I use on OS X, (Safari, Netscape,Explorer) Explorer is by far the slowest and buggiest of the lot.
blue
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that these are all pieces of a bigger picture. I say that MSFT is using Safari as an excuse for something that was part of their business plan all along.
I say they don't want to release more standalone IE for Windows or Mac because their next 'integrated-with-OS' version of IE will contain proprietary and hard to duplicate features that will complement features in the next major MS SQL Server and IIS releases. I expect them to campaign hard for banks and other 'security conscious' entities to make the online access to their services exclusively use the new 'advanced security features' of the latest Microsoft products. They're hoping the ignorant bank managers would fall into the trap.
MSFT plans to try to get everyone hooked on these server products, thus requiring the Windows Longhorn OS to access the services because that's the only way you'll be able to get a browser that speaks the appropriate language. Essentially, they would be trying to force everyone to use Windows if they want to access the secure online features of their bank or stock broker. They way they would be using an operating system monopoly to marginalise other web browsing products in an effort for people to buy their own product.
And I'm quoting myself here: Wasn't this what Microsoft was sued for before? Using their Monopoly on OSs to marginalise the web browser industry? Haven't they learned anything?
Well yes, they have learned that they can get away with it.
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes: donate money to the right politicians.
It's All About .NET (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft will do what they can to stay on top of the OS market, but the server products are being pursued for a whole other reason.
E-commerce.
Microsoft is simply expanding into other markets to ensure stability and future financial growth. Would you argue that the X-box is an attempt to lock people into using Windows and Office?
-Lucas
But... (Score:4, Funny)
But they're one and the same, remember? You kill off IE, you kill off Windows!
*rubs chin*
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Insightful)
you and I may not "buy it" but plenty of people will.
Re:One down, one to go... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was bound to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose they want everyone to get MSN for Mac OS X if they want the Microsoft "experience."
Woohoo! First post!
iqu
Bound to happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
*honk*
Re:Bound to happen? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess MS is unable to compete with open source on a neutral playing field.
Re:It was bound to happen (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, I contend that if you find differences between IE6/Win and IE5/Mac, the issue is that IE6 doesn't follow the standards, but IE5/Mac does.
In fact, IE5/Mac is one of the best browsers at standards compliance. It doesn't share much (any?) code with it's cousin, IE6/Win.
Re:It was bound to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm thinking ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd actually kind of hope that MSOffice goes sooner than later... If it does, than you'll see a mad rush from Apple to update OpenOffice to have Apple's legendary smoothness. Don't get me wrong, I use OpenOffice, but it's not quite there yet...
Alternatively, they may already have something like this up their sleeves... Just look at Keynote...
Re:I'm thinking ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that Apple has the numbers of developers necessary to create an Apple office suite from the ground up. I suppose an alternate possibility would be to beef up AppleWorks into an industrial-strength office suite, incorporating Keynote and re-assimilating FileMaker Pro.
However, Steve has opted to take a best-of-breed Open Source solution (KHTML *is* best-of-breed when compared to Gecko, the solid, time tested *BSD *is* best-of-breed compared to the still-evolving Linux) and build Apple software around it. MacOS X is the result of uniting NextStep and *BSD open-source code, Safari is the result of uniting the GPLed KHTML browser engine with in-house code.
An Open Office completely tuned to use Quartz, Quartz Extreme, Display PDF and all the other goodies available to MacOS X developers would rock the house. It would have full compatibility with MS Office from Office 97 to Office XP, something AppleWorks never had. And Apple could give back a nice polishing job that nobody at Sun has the time, inclination or will to do.
As far as an Outlook-killer goes...I could definitely see Apple taking Evolution and running with it in a similar fashion to what I am suggesting they might do with Open Office. They might even hire some of the people who worked on Entourage back to make it happen.
The take-home message here is this: Apple does not need Microsoft anymore. Apple is no longer the teetering, smoking hulk that needed Bill Gates' checkbook to shore up while Steve Jobs did all the things he had to do to revitalize the Apple brand. Apple is now very content to have its niche. The comparisons to BMW and other luxury car makes is very apropos. Neither BMW nor Mercedes nor Rolls Royce nor Jaguar nor Ferrari nor Acura nor Infiniti nor Lexus have a very large chunk of the automotive market. But all do just fine for themselves.
Bill Gates is going to have to just suck it down.
Re:I'm thinking ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find Safari nearly unusable on some pages I go to because of flaws in KHTML (I see 'em when I load up the dog that is KDE too...). I've gone back to Chimera, and rarely have a problem with a page rendering incorrectly. And Darwin isn't better than Linux -- it's a totally different system with totally different goals. Linux/*BSD are monolithic kernels with typical unix-like authentication and system calls. OSX is closer to BSD-lite, running the Mach microkernel, and using Mach IPC, etc. etc. Totally different systems.
An Open Office completely tuned to use Quartz, Quartz Extreme, Display PDF and all the other goodies available to MacOS X developers would rock the house. It would have full compatibility with MS Office from Office 97 to Office XP, something AppleWorks never had. And Apple could give back a nice polishing job that nobody at Sun has the time, inclination or will to do.
If that were easy to do, the native port would be well-along by now. OO.o is big spaghetti code that doesn't necessarily translate well. Besides, it'd still be a crappy OSX application because it doesn't use ObjectiveC or Cocoa.
As for Sun, you're right. But I think Apple would be wise to buy them out.
As far as an Outlook-killer goes...I could definitely see Apple taking Evolution and running with it in a similar fashion to what I am suggesting they might do with Open Office. They might even hire some of the people who worked on Entourage back to make it happen.
Except that you haven't been paying attention to Apple's philosophy regarding applications lately. They're almost adopting a unix-like philosophy where you've got small apps that do a few things well, and will work with each other. There aren't many functions that exist in Evolution which don't already exist in Mail.app, Address Book, iCal, iSync, etc. etc. Quit trolling.
Apple is no longer the teetering, smoking hulk that needed Bill Gates' checkbook to shore up while Steve Jobs did all the things he had to do to revitalize the Apple brand.
And if you think that MS bailed out Apple you also think that the Federal Government bailed out Chrysler. 150Mil from MS to Apple is now and was then chump change. What it did was get MS to commit to development for awhile, and provide an antitrust check to keep the Mac platform humming along until OSX was finished.
Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this a good thing for all of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Safari a w3c compliant browser?
Re:Isn't this a good thing for all of us? (Score:5, Informative)
WebCore/KHTML is getting there at a great pace. It has awesome support for most stuff, and as Microsoft says, it's better than IE/Mac.
It has fairly thick CSS support, too:
Woot, link! [macedition.com]
Re:Isn't this a good thing for all of us? (Score:5, Informative)
No, thats not insightful at all.. IE Mac has been developed by a totally separate team than IE Windows. That's why IE Mac has different features and has different levels of standards compliancy.
Re:Isn't this a good thing for all of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do agree that the end effect is that one proprietary standards compliant browser has been replaced by another (but this one also has an Open Source html engine). It also reduces diversity.
However, I don't believe the message is 'don't bother to compete with Apple', it's the message 'don't bother to compete with Microsoft, or we'll pull support/development resources'.
The reason I/we use Safari isn't because it's bundled and isn't because we're loyal. We are a crowd that use (and love) Camino, Omniweb, iCab, and Safari, not because we're loyal, but because each of those web browsers does something better than the others. Before Safari, I used Mozilla; not IE. Even without Safari, Mac users had already been looking for replacements, such as Mozilla, Camino/Chimera, Omniweb, iCab, and Opera.
However, a message this does send to developers (big or small) is that if you want the Mac market, you have to develop the best product; we are a known proven market willing to pay for software and good product; Macs are, after all, more expensive than PCs, arguably justified on grounds of aesthetics and ease of use. If Microsoft made IE faster, more capable, and easier to use than Safari, we would switch in a heartbeat; it's not loyalty, but *quality*.
Yes, it's arrogant to say 'we', but I do think I understand the mindset of many Mac users (not all).
Re:Isn't this a good thing for all of us? (Score:4, Funny)
- Windows: I have no clue, I just do what all the others do
- Mac: I want the best and nicest tool
- Linux: Give me freedom or give me death
They'll Kill Off .. (Score:5, Insightful)
(even though it can be hard to tell the difference)
x-box? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x-box? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x-box? (Score:5, Insightful)
This will set the stage for Xbox3 to control the market for pervasive household computing. It will run your entire home and automatically re-order milk from the local grocery partner. Sure, a couple homes might burn down when they get 0WNED or BSOD. Luckily your MS-TV will filter such news by default, to protect your sense of well-being.
Spending billions to gain a new monopoly over the course of multiple versions is standard procedure for Microsoft. They did it with Windows, with Explorer, with Office, and in Soviet America they'll do it with YOU.
there's a shocker... (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad the goverment isn't going far enough to make them allow fair competition in the Windows market place.
I don't want MS to be taken apart. Just that other companies need to have equal access to the underlying OS and protocols so that they can make products that compete.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are confusing Windows and Mac OS X. The underlying operating system, Darwin, is open source [apple.com]. Or are they referring to the window manager? Why would they need access to the Window manager source???
Re:Huh? BULL -LONE -EE (Score:5, Insightful)
How? The source is only useful to people a) debugging the code, or b) interested in by-passing the API to shoot themselves in the foot by using internal, unpublished features. Apple keeps it closed source to maintain their competitive advantage in being the most visually appealing desktop experience, not to spite anyone.
but also learn Mac-specific stuff like Objective C in addition to the APIs.
This is uninformed rubbish. Objective-C is in the gcc compiler [gnu.org]. Mac OS X uses the gcc suite. There is nothing "mac-specific" about Objective-C. The API has been around for over 10 years. It's called OpenStep, and if it has survived that long commercially, then perhaps it just might be worth learning. Lastly, we have source compatible OpenStep libraries for many other Unix OSs: GNUStep [gnustep.org].
Where did this Mac Development Myth Start? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Would you really try to see a linux program ported from windows without first try to figure out how the system works? I think your 1 to 2 year learning curve to be way too steep - OS X doesn't have that many nuances.
3) What cost of development? You mean the free development tools? Yeah, that's hard money to make back. Plus, mac users, IMO, are much more likely to pay shareware fees than linux users.
I am so confused. Why is it starting to go around that it is hard to program for Mac OS X? My theory: FUD being thrown around because people are starting to realize that it's really really really easy to program for Mac OS X... but it's just a theory.
Matt Fahrenbacher
Bill Gates? Steve Jobs here... (Score:5, Funny)
"Of course you realize this means... WAR!!!"
(Steve J. hangs up and speed dials Apple Legal Dept. and DOJ...)
This could be the beginning of standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternately, this could spell big trouble for Apple. How will my Mom feel when she can't check her mutual funds using her Macintosh because the browser isn't compatible?
Is this an example of a development community unwittingly aiding and abetting Microsoft's abuse of monopoly power?
Re:This could be the beginning of standards (Score:5, Interesting)
Netscape 4 was horrible at rendering CSS- an absolute piece of crap. I still have to take it into consideration when creating pages, but it adds a lot of time to my work.
For anything that I do that is INTERNAL to my organization, I tell them right up front -"Use IE", because in reality that is the easiest way to say "don't use Netscape 4". Most of the cube dwellers have no idea there is anything else- and people that do know there are other choices ignore my suggestions anyway- which is fine.
Since I started doing this, I have only had one non-Netscape 4 person who had a problem. He was using a very early version of Opera, all he had to do was upgrade.
But on our public sites, I need to fully support Netscape 4, while it is breathing its last dying breath.
I don't care what browser people use, as long as it has good CSS support!
Re:This could be the beginning of standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's it...just tell the customer he is wrong and out of date then show him an embarrassingly ugly site. OK.
Web developers better learn or lose more business (Score:4, Informative)
The same way my mom feels when she goes to a site that is IE specific and doesn't support even the most basic of web standards.
Mad.
But, as she has been informed by her son on Microsoft's efforts to deliberately break software compatability and internet standards in order for force their customers to use their product rather than the product of their choice, her anger is aimed squarely at the web site (or more precisely, at the company it represents) and at Microsoft, not at GNU/Linux or her browser.
She finds a competitor who is standards compliant and buys from them instead.
And guess what. She loves her Linux box, and will "give it up only when they pry it from her cold, dead hands." She is living proof that Linux is more than ready for the desktop, and not only usable, but often preferred, by those who are not computer literate and simply want to be able to use a machine simply, and without random crashes or data loss. Something Linux gives her, and Microsoft hasn't been able to deliver in nigh 20 years.
As a side note .. (Score:5, Interesting)
His blog is pretty interesting, if you're into such things.
http://www.jimmygrewal.com/
Now Let's Port Safari to Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Office (Score:4, Interesting)
The more concerning thing is Office. Office v.X is excellent and all, but what happens when the new PC version comes out and Microsoft decide that they're bored of updating Office for the Mac - will they just kill that too? One of the key points of the Apple sales strategy is that Macs have Office - without it, things will become more challenging, I'd have thought.
One could point out that anything different in file formats will break compatibility with older versions of Office on the PC too, but so what? It's all part of the Microsoft upgrade strategy anyway. PC users will always have the choice (albeit expensive) to upgrade. What if Mac users don't?
Zealots will, of course, talk about OpenOffice and the Aqua port, which Apple could of course assist in the development of, but it's got a fair way to go before near-perfect, nearly-all-the-time compatibility is achieved.
Will be interesting to see how this all plays out...
iqu
Sorry, but this doesn't make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, Mozilla played as much part in its demise. I've used Moz since it's been available for OS X and aside from being slightly sluggish in early versions, it has always been a better, more stable, more compatible browser.
This is not good (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention it had far better HTML (standard) support than WinIE, better PNG handling, a good DOM level 1 implementation, and support for ECMA 262, not "Javascript" or "JScript".
Tantek Ãelik and team did a wonderful job, and it's a real bad decision by the Seattle Moloch to axe their one product you cannot complain about in all fairness.
Microsoft should have based WinIE 6 on MacIE5.
I hope the people that worked on MacIE are the ones that will build the next-gen IE, and not those incompetent hacks who made the Windows versions.
more commentary from M$ ... (Score:5, Informative)
Damn, I submitted much the same yesterday, but probably a bit too late. Next time. Thereâ(TM)s a complementary piece [macworld.com] at MacCentral [macworld.com]. Also, thereâ(TM)s a bit of discussion at the MacNN board [macnn.com], most of which centers around Safari being able to seamlessly spoof IE 5 and future versions in using bank sites, online purchase forms, etc that are putatively restricted to IE. In any case, given that IE was the most bloated and slow browser available for OS X, this is no big surprise after the release of Safari.
Nonetheless in the MacCentral story, Microsoft does state âoeMicrosoft and the MacBU continue to be committed to the Mac platform. We are excited about the new versions of products coming out like Office, Virtual PC, Messenger and MSN for Mac OS X. Our commitment hasn't wavered, it's just a matter of doing what's right to meet customer needs.â
Whoopie, MSN â¦
What this does mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
The number of people they have working on Safari is substantially less than what Microsoft has working on IE. Granted, the way IE is designed requires more people to begin with (it's tightly integrated of course and it is a highly sophisticated piece of software), but more developers means a better product made in a shorter amount of time, assuming their priorities aren't skewed (hint: security). Except for a difference in the level of integration with the OS, Safari is now to OS X what IE is to Windows, and Apple needs to treat it as such--a product as vital as OS X itself.
Safari always had the feel of a side project, a "just in case" plan. Well, "just in case" has arrived, and it's time for Apple to get serious.
Re:What this does mean... (Score:4, Interesting)
In my experience, more developers just means a bigger project-- whether the task is big or not. Big projects are multi-fasceted, with lots of internally extensible components. The extensibility may be useful, but often it just serves to make it possible for lots of programmers to work on it independantly.
One good example of this is operating systems. Windows XP is huge. It feels huge. The design is centered around trying to make its zillions of features accesible-- using wizards, generic tree views, AI that tries to second-guess you etc. And I'm not talking components like device drivers-- I'm talking the higher level OS features. This is typical for huge projects. OS X does pretty much the same things, yet the design feels simple. Where Windows uses generic components (tree views, etc.), OS X frequently uses a GUI specifically designed for each particular feature. The Preferences window resizes to exactly fit a component, rather than leaving holes to fit unused features. These are signs of a small project. The sort of tight coordination required for that degree of polish-- the appearance that every decision passes through one look-and-feel tyrant-- doesn't scale.
An extreme example of something that feels huge (which I actually use) is NetBeans, Sun's open source Java IDE. Everything is done with a generic component, which makes everything feel thrown together and nothing is easy to find. There's no designer choosing what features to point out and which ones to bury.
A web browser has two fundamental parts: standards handling (HTML, HTTP, XML, CSS, images, etc.), and the GUI. In the case of standards handling, Apple is borrowing from KDE-- so they have Linux geeks worrying about compliance for them. That sort of thing is done well by a large, distributed group.
Apple's principal contribution is an Cocoa wrapper for the web libraries and a GUI. Each of these tasks are best suited for a small group. They each succeed best when they have the consistent feel of having been designed by one person.
Ironic indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they admitting that the only way Microsoft can compete with other software manufacturers, is by having access to the operating system's sourcecode, to which other's don't? And is there any doubt left that MS in fact used this unfair advantage against Wordperfect and Lotus?
Three words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I'd say "How do you like them apples", but it's too obvious a pun.
To be half serious, it was obvious this was coming - they've been in maintenance mode on IE/Mac since MacOS X 10.1 (fall 2001) - the only updates they've done since then have been for security/critical bugfixes. Until Safari, Mozilla/Camino was the only real option for a forward-looking browser.
Also, apparently there's a IE release coming out Monday, after which it's over except for the aforementioned security/critical bugfix patches. If IE breaks on 10.3, for instance, it's a pretty good bet that a fixed IE will ensue - elsewise their browser share in the Mac market goes to 0% real quickly.
Uhhhhmmmm, okay: (Score:5, Informative)
So, what are our alternatives?
Media Player: VLC [videolan.org], MPlayer for OS X [sourceforge.net]
MSN Messenger: Proteus [indigofield.com], Fire [sourceforge.net]
Office: Apple Works [apple.com], Keynote as Powerpoint Replacement [apple.com], Open Office [openoffice.org], AbiWord [sourceforge.net], Gnumeric [sourceforge.net]
Outlook: Apple Mail.app [apple.com], iCal [apple.com], Evolution [sourceforge.net],
Virtual PC: Ya, well, maybe sometime RealPC [fwb.com] will appear after they settle with Microsoft [slashdot.org]. But who uses that stuff anyway?
Last but not least, Internet Explorer: Safari [apple.com], Camino [apple.com], Mozilla [mozilla.org] and maybe soon again Omniweb [omnigroup.com], thanks to WebCore. (Yes, i left out Opera & iCab)
Okay, did i miss something?
Re:Uhhhhmmmm, okay: (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows Media Player is so bad it merited a Perversion Tracker Review [perversiontracker.com]. (Perversion Tracker is a site that primarily pokes fun of inept shareware applications).
Looks to me like Apple is beating Microsoft at its own game. Certainly the QuickTime player is a pleasure to use, and Windows Media Player is not.
I find Microsoft's comments about integration into the operating system to be bizarre. The reason other browsers have passed IE have nothing to do with their integration with the OS, or lack thereof; features like tabbed browsing, popup blockers or superior font rendering have absolutely nothing to do with tight OS integration.
In my opinion, the only way a browser should be integrated into the OS is in the help viewer, which can use the same rendering engine. I believe Apple is in the process of doing this with Safari, and I think it's a great idea. But it does nothing to prevent other companies from making a better browser, if they can do it.
D
VirtualPC will be next (Score:5, Interesting)
Since server integration is the next big money maker for a LOT of vendors, I'm sure that MS will use the "no one uses V-PC on Macs anyways so we're redirecting our R&D to the Windows version" excuse here shortly.
think about it for a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
It means that as long as Apple retains its current market share, there will be a sizeable portion of internet users browsing the web without IE, which will hopefully result in less browser-specific coding by webmasters.
Re:think about it for a minute... (Score:4, Insightful)
A good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
If IE is history on mac we can expect them to make web pages that works in safari.
Now, remember that safari is based on khtml, perhaps we can get a larger percentage of websites that can be read in other browsers than IE.
This could be a very good thing.
Access to underlying OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Access to underlying OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Then Chimera/Camino (which uses the Gecko engine with a native Mac front end) came along, and really set the bar for start-up, rendering speed and elegance. It was the most popular browser on the Mac for a brief period of time (until Apple released the first Safari beta).
So... the open source makers of Camino didn't need any private access to the OS to make a browser than blew IE out of the water.
This is not what it appears.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the argument that they made about their browser and their OS. What better way to bring credibility to their argument that stating that another OS will be better served with a browser that closely integrates with its OS.
The Office thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, they have to care. About 10% of all Office users are still using Office95, about 20% still using Office97, about 40 to 50% still using Office2000. (Office2000 can open OfficeXP documents without many problems). Not that many moved to OfficeXP. A new office that cannot save old Office compatible documents will not get many customers. MS will not willingly shoot themselves in the foot.
Your Office X will remain compatible for a number of years yet, no worry. After that you can switch to OpenOffice.
Doesn't really come as a surprise to me (Score:4, Interesting)
And according to this news post...
"Ironically, they also say that they can't compete with Apple, because Apple has better access to the underlying operating system."
I guess there's the proof; they can't integrate the browser into the OS on a Mac. So long, Apple.
Not that I think Mac users will suffer a huge loss. Perhaps it will even turn the tide in a positive way since webmasters will no longer have an excuse to make IE-only sites if they wish to make it run on Mac's. Sure, Mac users are in minority, but they're not in such a small minority that I would suggest any serious web developer to simply ignore them.
Re:Doesn't really come as a surprise to me (Score:5, Funny)
In a related story, DrJooz and his hax0r budz cross off MacOS X as a happy hacking playground with the statement "Without direct access to the underlying OS via the browser Mac OS X is just going to too secure to be any fun."
It is widely anticipated that Microsoft's plans to run Windows browsing services in Ring 0 will provide DrJooz and his friends lots of fun and games.
Fantastic news (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft just gave up a big chunk of IE marketshare. With some sites, especially ones that appeal to artistic/creative types, they've basically reduced their marketshare to 50%.
Now, if 50% of your users run IE, and the other 50% run an amalgamation of Mozilla, Konqueror or Safari, Opera, and *, this will force developers to consider web standards.
Businesses may have been able to justify ignoring 5% of their market, but you can't ignore 50%.
Assuming that this isn't just a Microsoft plot to clobber Apple into accepting something, this is fantastic news indeed.
Standards Compliance is a Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The good thing is that Apple's new web browser team is very ferocious in adding features. The first thing many screamed about when Safari came out was tabs, and now, they're there, along with other features. Apple could take a lesson from the Omni Group and its browser OmniWeb, which had a preference that could make the browser say to sites that it was IE/Windows, IE/Mac, or other browser to fake it out and allow access. From there, Apple should add preferences to give Safari as many IE compatibility elements as possible--better, add them as options that the browser can sense when you go to pages that use IE/Windows features that normally aren't compatible. The user can opt to switch on these features from a modal dialog that appears on downloading the page to make things work a bit better.
The waning of IE/Mac isn't good for people like myself who try to make Macs fit better in the enterprise. PC/Windows users aren't used to choice in the browser world, so IE is their only browser, and Netscape is now a rarity in business circles. Many business-related pages are created with the various MS tools, and many webmasters are unaware that there is a Mac version of IE, much less the fact that it works much like its Windows counterpart. This change will mean that techs will have to educate the webmasters of Safari's differences to get business pages to work--not that such explanations get lots of results anyway.
The positive news is that Safari generally holds its own in compatibility more than any other browser, and has even shown more compatible than IE/Mac in some of my trials at work, which I why I use it almost exclusively today. Will the loss of IE/Mac throw Mac users back in a web-access Stone Age? Probably not, but you never know what some whacked out ideas have to be added as features in some feature MS webmastering tool that work only for IE/Windows.
MacBU's Products Have Motsly Sucked (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows Media Player for Mac - Feels like an absolute piece of Beta software. Moving the window, resizing it, or moving other windows on the screen usually makes the video disappear in WMP. Occasionally I run into a file that simply won't play in it. Since MacBU isn't working on a browser anymore, how about some Windows Media Plugins for Safari, and player that does more than "kind of work?"
IE for Mac - Great in OS 9; so slow that it was almost unusable in OS X. In comparison to other browsers it felt more like a beta release. Right to left language support was never attempted in any version, even after it was available with the release of Jaguar last year.
Office for Mac - For the most part, I have no complaints about Office X, and even think it's worth the money. My only complaint is it can't handle right to left languages, so exchanging Arabic or Hebrew documents with Windows users of Office is impossible. Fixing this would probably require a simple patch, one that could've been released a year ago since Jaguar was released. Also, my experience has been that Office X isn't nearly as stable as its Windows counterpart, so I chronically save any important documents (more so than I would if working in Windows). On a 800mhz PowerMac Office X still feels incredibly slow.
MSN Messenger for Mac - Works as advertised. The new version is actually great. I'm suspecting it's related to their release of MSN for Mac though, so that's probably why it's polished so nicely. With AIM and MSN supposedly merging, perhaps iChat users will be able to converse with MSN Messenger users too. If that happens, the importance of MSN Messenger on Mac may decrease.
The only significant thing MacBU has released this year has been an MSN client -- something the vast majority of Mac users could care less about. Instead of fixing important pieces of software, they decide to release their equivalent to AOL on Mac. Good versions of their most important products (Office, WMP, IE) might actually showcase how stable OS X is, and how friendly the Mac environment is in comparison to Windows. Of course, that wouldn't be good business for MS. Even though the MacBU supposedly operates independent of MS in Redmond, it still seems to make sure Gates' bottom line is always fulfilled -- make the Mac look like an inferior platform. MacBU hasn't released anything for OS X except buggy, unpolished, beta-like software (notice I left the OS 9 versions out of this).
Just to go back to the Arabic and Hebrew support in Mac Microsoft products for a second. For the longest time MacOS was the only choice for word processing in right to left languages. There were two things in my opinion that moved Arabic speakers from Mac, to Windows. The first, and most obvious, was that while MacOS supported the language, no browsers did. MS could have easily fixed this problem when they began working on IE for Mac, but never bothered. Secondly, Word documents became a de-facto standard, and while the PC version of Office supported Arabic, Mac Office didn't. On top of all that, instead of using the agreed upon standard for Arabic characters, Microsoft created their own. The result is total market domination in the Middle East, though I guess that's not too frightening since no one in the ME actually pays for Windows or Office anyway.
If Apple (or any other company for that matter) can release a product better than Microsoft Word, I'll use it in a second. Unfortunately OpenOffice just doesn't feel right to me (yet). It almost seems that Microsoft never expected Apple would release their own browser; perhaps they were expecting Mac users to remain dependent on the inferior Mac IE for a much longer time, and Apple's success with Safari has on
Interesting pattern here (Score:5, Insightful)
I submitted a story (which was rejected) about this little gem:
Microsoft has purchased the RAV antivirus program, and will discontinue the Linux version [computerworld.com].
Now this is interesting: they kill IE for Mac. They kill a product that allows a Linux/Sendmail based system to scan for viruses before they are delivered to the end user.
Question: has MS lost all fear of anti-trust action, and begun the final offensive against all competition?
Do bears excrete in the forest?
Do trolls post on Slashdot?
Mac OS X browser shares (Score:5, Interesting)
The most interesting part of the article [macedition.com] though, was the graphic [macedition.com] halfway down the page that showcased the browser shares of Mac Edition visitors from November 2000 to March 2003.
Underlying System (Score:5, Interesting)
This is hilarious for two reasons:
1. The well documented API provided by Apple is pretty nice from what I have seen, and heard from, from developers for the platform. Ever seen MS documentation? Lots of it... too much of it, and none of it is worth reading enough in a mad quest to find something relevent.
2. 2/3's of the OSX system is open source BSD license(actually, I think Darwin is converted to some apple open source license that is very open still, but I could be wrong). But either way, how much more open do they need it?!?!?
Then of course there is that whole, 'whats good the goose is good for the gander issue' with IE vs Netscape and underlying code knowlage advantages.... it all just makes MS look very very dumb.
But yeah, Safari is a better browser than IE. But does this mean that Chimera should quit now because if MS can't make it in the market, then no one can!
Open Source provides. (Score:4, Interesting)
But we don't need it. OS X has an excellent port of Mozilla, which after over a year of use I can attest is excellent. Safari is also a nice option for users who want a less bloated browser, assuming that those users can tolerate that nasty brushed metal theme.
OS X users have two great browser options, we don't need IE. The only group who needs IE on OS X is Microsoft, and Microsoft has turned tail and run away after getting a nice ass-kicking in the OS X browser war.
OS X continues to prove that Open Source software is not just a niche market for programmers and sysadmins. Now we just need to educate Windows users about the great alternatives to Microsoft's products, and start beating down Redmond's doors.
Does not have the access to the OS... (Score:5, Funny)
Looking at IE, I wonder if MS lacks access to the Windows OS too
from zeldman.com (Score:5, Interesting)
5 pm est
R.I.P.
The rumors flew all day, but we held off writing about this until we had it from an unimpeachable source. Jimmy Grewal is a key member of the Mac Internet Explorer team and a stand-up guy. He confirms that IE5/Mac is dead.
There is much that could be said. IE5/Mac, with its Tasman rendering engine, was the first browser to deliver meaningful standards compliance to the market, arriving in March, 2000, a few months ahead of Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 6. On a mailing list today, Netscapeâ(TM)s Eric Meyer said, âoe I donâ(TM)t think people realize just how much of a groundbreaker IE5/Mac really was, and how good it remains even today.â IE5/Mac introduced innovations like DOCTYPE switching and Text Zoom that soon found their way into comparably compliant browsers like Navigator, Konqueror, and Safari. And all but Text Zoom eventually made it into IE6/Win, Microsoftâ(TM)s most compliant Windows browser to date (and the last one they will ever make).
Bafflingly, after attaining dominance on both the Windows and Macintosh platforms, IE stopped evolving. In the past three years, its existing competitors at Netscape, Opera, and the open source Mozilla project greatly improved their browsers, and new competitors flooded the market, but IE/Win and IE/Mac stayed as they were.
This might sound like the complacence of victors after throttling an opposing army. But inside Microsoft, nobody was slacking off. Our friends there, we knew, were working on improvements, particularly in the areas of CSS and DOM support. Yet no significantly new browser version ever came of their activity. IE6/Win still had trouble with parts of CSS1, still did not support true native PNG transparency, and still did not incorporate Text Zoom. IE5/Mac, which had worked well in OS 9, became flaky under OS X, and a minor upgrade did not fix its problems. Even die-hard IE5/Mac fans began switching to Camino, and, when it arrived, Safari.
Those who switched may have done so on the basis of features like tabbed browsing or popup blocking. Some in the development community may have switched because of the improved standards compliance in Gecko browsers like Camino and Netscape. But mostly, we think, the switchers were behaving instinctively.
With Camino or Safari, you felt you were using a living product that was continually improving in response to user feedback. Microsoftâ(TM)s browser engineers were busy working on something, but their activities took place behind a (figurative) corporate firewall.
Over the past weeks, the stories we and others have been covering (including the unavailability of an improved version of IE5/Mac outside the subscription-based MSN pay service, and the news that IE/Win was dead as a standalone product) painted a picture of a product on its way out. And now we know that that is the case.
We know that, after spending billions of dollars to defeat all competitors and to absolutely, positively own the desktop browsing space, Microsoft as a corporation is no longer interested in web browsers. We know that, on the Windows side, it will eventually release something that accesses web content, but that âoesomethingâ will be part of an operating system â" and that operating system wonâ(TM)t be available until 2005, and probably wonâ(TM)t be widely used before 2007. Whether the part that formats web pages will be more or less compliant with W3C recommendations than what we have now, we donâ(TM)t know. Neither do we know whether the unnamed thing that handles web browsing will support CSS3 and other specifications that will emerge during the long years ahead in which Microsoft offers no new browser.
From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if 85% of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.
But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth.
This is really bad for Mac web developers (Score:5, Interesting)
Checking one's work in IE is very important for Mac web developers. Most people don't use Gecko or KHTML based browsers.
No doubt, WinIE is fairly different from Mac IE; however, it sure was nice to have -some- sort of Tasman browser on Mac OS.
Now Mac IE's dead, VPC has an unstable future, and MS is taking the developers of RealPC to court.... eeeeeehhh... this doesn't look like a great time to be a mac web developer
Re:Outlook? (Score:5, Informative)
No, and there won't be a version of Outlook, per se. Microsoft will be releasing (this summer, last I heard) a version of Entourage X that has Exchange connectivity features.
For now, people are making do with running Outlook 2001 in Classic (if they need group calendaring), or running the existing Entourage X with POP/SMTP or IMAP enabled on their Exchange server (if they don't need group calendaring).
I'm no Microsoft fan, but I do use Entourage because it's essentially the OS X-native grandson of Claris Emailer-- developed by the same people, hired by MS after Emailer was killed.
~Philly
Re:Outlook? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was an old OE user in my pre-X days, and now that I'm on this UNIX-BASED SYSTEM (fuck you, Open Group), I use Entourage all the time. The downside is that, just like the Windows version, Office for Mac is ridiculously expensive. (Yay for various discounts. I'd never pay full street price--$400-$500--for Office. Sorry, fellas.)
Re:Limited access to OS (Score:5, Insightful)
I
Anyway, it's still a bullshit excuse from Microsoft. Look at how fast Camino is, for example. The Camino team has the same level of access to the DOCUMENTED APIs that Microsoft does, and yet their browser doesn't blow monkey dongs.
But that's Microsoft for you.
Re:Limited access to OS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Limited access to OS...I dun think so (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Limited access to OS (Score:5, Informative)
The text rendering engine is abstracted by Qt. For whatever reason Apple decided not to pay for Qt developer licenses and created a set of stubs that map Qt onto MacOS, so the font rendering technology will be the Quartz native. The code they use to draw the actual text is completely different.
Does it use undocumented APIs? It wouldn't surprise me. Microsoft has been doing this kind of thing for years. I'd note that it's not always due to nefarious evilness, just freezing APIs takes effort and a certain amount of confidance that you got it right. Until an API is frozen Apple/MS' own stuff may well use it anyway, but it's not been documented/exposed in the headers.
Re:Misleading very misleading (Score:5, Informative)
And another thing - you do realize that IE for Windows and IE for Mac are two separate products, developed by two separate teams at MS?
Re:Hah. A little competition... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone really believe this? If you do then I've got a couple of landmarks and bridges for sale if you're interested.
Safari, and Apple's access to the OS, is just lip service done by a PR rep looking for some reason to excuse themselves from the Mac market. The Mac port of IE simply makes no business sense anymore -- In the era of the struggle between Netscape and Microsoft, when Netscape had the monopoly on web browsers basically by giving it out for free, it made sense from a PR perspective to get as big of a marketshare however possible, even if it meant dumping millions into developing software for users who don't add a penny to your revenue stream. Microsoft won the browser war quite handily, now capturing some 90%+ of web browser clients. That's old news, and the web browser wars don't get media or investor interest anymore, so it isn't even justified via indirect reasons.
Indeed, the last major browser update from Microsoft was, what, 3 years ago? Clearly Microsoft either has something very large underway (just as Mozilla catches up), and again the Mac market doesn't represent revenue potential, or the arena in general just doesn't hold much interest right now.
Re:Outlook for Mac is dead already. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Uncontrollable kneejerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to break it to you, but a majority [apple.com] of OS X is open source.
"This has been a major reason for most companies not porting software to the Mac platform."
So, what you are saying is that developers are/will not port software to OSX because Apple does not provide enough source... I guess that is why all the developers flock to Microsoft - Microsoft loves to provide Windows source.
Ha. You are a moron. Name me one significant application that is not avalible on OS X...
Keep clicking on that Start button!