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Underground > Laboratory >

Microsoft to discontinue IE for the Mac

18:48 / 13.06.03

Well I kind of wondered, after Apple put out Safari, just how much of an insult MS would take from the new Mac browser. But obviously, someone was rubbed the wrong way.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine concerning OS X on x86 machines and if Apple would dare throw that gauntlet down. Is this the start of a major OS war? Or just a fizzle from MS realizing that it's not worth the trouble making internet browsers for Macs but keeping the other software still in the field?

Look into my crystal ball.

19:24 / 13.06.03

I think this illustrates that MS are now not viewing IE as an application, but as part of the OS. Therefore you don't get it except as part of Windows any more.

This, however, is bollocks:

'Some of the key customer requests for web browsing on the Mac require close development between the browser and the OS, something to which only Apple has access,' she explained.

No they don't. How come other browsers seem to be able to satisfy customers perfectly well without being by Apple? What this probably means is "some of Microsoft's ideas of how web browsing should work require...". There's been some speculation as to whether Safari is going to become an integral part of OS X but it doesn't seem to be going down that route to me.

This looks like yet another two fingers up at the courts, who definitely do view IE as an application, otherwise wouldn't have ruled against them.

There's a certain logic in their position, but not enough. Modern OSes should have full integration for networking and browsing and so on - if you look at Konqueror on Linux, it works in a similar way (except better) - but that doesn't mean integration at the level of the OS, where you can't remove the browser at all. If applications need to launch a browser, they can launch the default browser whatever it happens to be.

I only use the horrible thing at work and to go on the Royal Bank Of Scotland site, anyway. (Incidentally, Konqueror can spoof it, though Opera can't.)

I think this might also mean that there will be no future releases of WiMP for other platforms, either, as they want media playing to be integral to the OS as well.

19:31 / 13.06.03

...and while I was trying posting this article in a Mac community, IE crashed on me for the third or fourth time today, causing me to again hiss "useless piece of crap" at it.

nedrichards is confused

22:09 / 13.06.03

Safari is not an integral part of OS X.

However Safari uses the WebKit/Core framework also developed by Apple & KDE. This is an integral part of the OS and is avaialable to be used by programers as easily as any other part of Cocoa etc. Note: NetNewsWire and OmniWeb have both said that they will be using WebKit. Most of WebKit is open source and is based upon the KHTML rendering engine developed by the KDE project for their own Konqeror browser. Apple's improvements to KHTML are already feeding back in and making the Linux desktop an even better browsing place to be. This is a good thing.

Safari itself is just another consumer of WebKit, this is why in the latest leaked beta's (build 80 and above) the size of the Application itself is down from 10 to 3mb - it needs one of those nice PKG installers now to copy the other 7mb of WebKit onto the system.

You may see OS X on x86 (although I severely doubt it) what you will never see it OS X on commodity hardware. It just *will not happen*. Apple's entire business is about being the BMW or Mercedes of the computer world, providing added value and coolness. They are not Daewoo.

Having said that I'd love to be proved wrong, it would make things...interesting for a very short while. Until they were killed by Microsoft's multi billion cash pile. Let's say that again, they have many, many billions of dollars in cash, sitting in a bank account waiting to spend on things like propping up their monopolies (see $750m to AOL to drop the Netscape anti-trust suit the other week).

23:37 / 13.06.03

You may see OS X on x86 (although I severely doubt it) what you will never see it OS X on commodity hardware. It just *will not happen*. Apple's entire business is about being the BMW or Mercedes of the computer world, providing added value and coolness. They are not Daewoo.

I agree. I'm not one of the long-term Mac freaks (only switched recently, and from the *nix side of things) but I'm aware that Apple have a serious interest in hardware, which makes them intrinsically different from MS, who have an interest in making sure that everyone else's hardware supports them but that's it.

It would be suicide for Apple to port OS X to any old machine that you could buy from Walmart. They don't make enough from the software for that to be a sensible move for them.

In my estimation: They want the "digital lifestyle" market, which they've got pretty much sewn up now (yer iPod-bearing Wired kids would be fools to go elsewhere), the "style-mongers with money" market which is theirs too (Apple hardware still looks far better than any equivalent PC kit) and the "I am a suburban computer user who values ease of use and coolness more than money" market (realistically, a home Mac will cost you at least $1,000, but that's within the price range of many). They also appear to be going more for the business end of things with their servers these days, though I don't know how successful that is. They've got the Mac zealots already and always will, even if they charge $100 for .mac etc etc.

Moves like the Apple Music Store indicate that they're making more of a push for the mainstream, and I've heard people complaining that they seem to have abandoned the cutting edge of UI design. I can't see a wholesale populist move coming, though. They don't have the base to compete with generic x86 manufacturers, and will never be able to do so on the same footing.

23:50 / 13.06.03

Meh. I certainly won't miss it.

I have Safari (currently my primary browser), Camino and OmniWeb (v4.5 finally has decent CSS and JS support), and I'm prefectly happy with them.

I only kept IE and Netscape around to test webpages I make.

05:24 / 14.06.03

IE was embarking on an OS specific path for quite some time. So, Safari was a reaction to this move, than say the other way around. Look at Keynote (Powerpoint equiv.) for example.

OSX has been developed very early on as being able to (internally) work on x86 boxes, but as was mentioned before, it'll never happen. A few million in software sales will never grow to dwarf the billions Apple hardware draws in. Hardware margins are quite high in Apple's to begin with.

And if one looks at the current performance gap, it's important to consider two options. 1st, the experience as well as the ease of use is better and more productive than on any other machine (my opinion, though enforced by the dozen years or more of working on any type of machine I can get my hands on). And two, consider the 23rd of this month and what Apple and IBM have been working on. These machines, coupled with the new OS release in August, will solidly hand over major bragging rights. Talk 2-3x the performance at the same frequency, 64-bits with a kick-ass motherboard, and 1.4, 2x1.6, and 2x1.8 probably debuting.

Fanboys await some interesting times in the computer biz...

05:28 / 14.06.03

Oh... and as a web designer, I can only hope that these next versions (appears to be the route of Safari at least) are standards compliant. I will be a very angry individual if MS decides to add there own bs and make design and implementation of the internet content a pick a side argument. Don't want a reason to keep an up to date PC on my desk.

20:15 / 16.06.03

This is welcome news. IE has never been anything but a thorn in my side as a web developer, with its custom extensions and strangely unique interpretation of JavaScript. I do basically everything using Mozilla on both my Mac and Linux boxen, and I've been tremendously pleased.

nedrichards is confused

20:23 / 16.06.03

Yes shoutouts all round to the mighty Mozilla, especially in it's new, sparkly and stragely extensible new guise of Firebird. The Thunderbird mail client is also giving lots of spam filtering love although it's a bit more rough around the edges that the slickness that is Firebird.

For those who don't follow the internal politics of Mozilla.org as avidly as I do after the upcoming Mozilla 1.4 the big monolothic application suite is all spiltting up into meeeeeeeeeeeelions of tiny little programs that come together to create a mighty robot, transformers style. They'll all still use XUL (except done right and blinding fast this time) so your cross platform, er, platform is preserved. Suffice it to say tyhis is a good thing for anyone who likes the internet.

nedrichards is confused

20:25 / 16.06.03

Oh and so I don't contribute too badly to thread rot it's good to see Apple joining in with XHTML, having two great open source rendering engines can only be a good thing. This way they push each other on to greater extremes of coolness whilst retaining their own superhero identities, handily signalled by wearing their pants outside their trousers. (rather a good metaphor for open source code sharing I think)

23:01 / 19.06.03

Not tried Thunderbird yet - I think I'll wait til it comes out of alpha, though I'm looking forward to it, given how much the Mozilla mail client rocks.

I'm actually using Camino to type this. I've gotten a bit sick of Safari's random slowdowns and crashes, and for some reason font rendering in Camino seems to be better... I'm a browser whore though, I may switch back tomorrow.

Given that Opera seems to have abandoned the Mac entirely to concentrate on Windows (the forums are full of "When is O7 coming out for the Mac?" "We can't tell you, we're working on it, really" posts and have been ever since O7 came out) it is looking more and more like the momentum of the Mozilla project is going to carry it forward on every platform including the Mac (and it can survive AOL's pullout through sheer geek userbase and enthusiasm) and Apple are supporting KHTML, which is another good thing. Linux Konqueror has become a superb browser without corporate support and this is only going to help.

Microsoft have entirely abandoned the concept of browser as application, it appears, and are assuming that they can get away with their bad-standards, user-unfriendly product. I don't think this is a realistic attitude. People spend a hell of a lot of time browsing the web. As the "alternatives" keep developing and IE stays where it is, I think more and more people are going to take them up. Opera already has immense word-of-mouth credibility.

There's a demographic argument that you can apply to compatibility, too (one which I wanted to try on my bank). Who are the sort of people who will be using non-IE browsers? Experienced computer users and geeks. Is this group generally a good advertising and sales one to go for? Yes. Do you really want to bar them from accessing your service? No. I've noticed more and more sites being cross-platform accessible rather than the awful situation a year or so ago when you had to use IE to access almost anything.