No way to build a market: No more Mac users. No more Dell users in the UK. HP’s shipping Netscape. Internet Explorer 7 is the ultimate “me too” knock off. And nobody’s madder than Microsoft employees and fans.
Microsoft employee Rory Blyth:
I think IE is horribly behind the times. When every other browser on the planet that’s worth a damn supports tabbed browsing, it’s just crappy that I still have to have different copies of IE open to have multiple sites open at once.As of right now, my favorite browser on the planet is Apple’s Safari.
Windows Live developer and creator of RSS Bandit, Dare Obsasanjo laments:
We haven’t innovated in the browser for almost a decade. Given that Microsoft views IE as a defensive option to make Windows an enticing product, there is less incentive to make it the ultimate browsing experience as products whose bread and butter is the Web browser. Why do you think there are so many Google employees working on Mozilla?Microsoft should either cede innovation in the Web browser to Mozilla/Google or make IE more than just “icing on the Windows user experience cake”by transfering the product to a team whose bottom line depends on browser innovation.
A bewildered ex-Mac IE developer Jorg Brown recalls a conversation with a Microsoft superior:
Over the whole sad journey, the single most surprising thing I ever discovered was from a small conversation that went:Me: “Look, if it makes sense to devote dozens of people to WinIE, then surely it makes sense to devote half a dozen to MacIE!”
Higher-up: (confused look) “There aren’t dozens of people on WinIE. WinIE had some great people on it! We need those great people on products that make money!”
Me: “Then why on earth did we pursue IE in the first place? Just so that the DOJ would sue us?”
Higher-up: (confused look)
Some day I hope to get a proper answer on our motivation to do WinIE and MacIE in the first place. It seems to be that we were scared of not having control of the HTML standard. And indeed, now that Firefox is gaining traction, Microsoft has added more people to WinIE again.
Epilogue: All of this made it a lot more easy for me to quit and go work at Google.
Microsoft Exchange partisan and leader of Orlando SBS IT Pro Association, Vlad Mazek, rages:
There is a 0 day exploit of another Microsoft file format that makes your Windows XP system wide-open for hackers if you made some bad decisions. On top of those is still using Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the Internet - what in the world are you thinking? How many times do you have to stab yourself to bleed to death? If you know the answer to that please download Firefox today and say goodbye to IE-borne online threats.The IE team dropped all development of Macintosh version of IE, then outright said it would not develop anything for XP anymore and everyone would have to upgrade to Vista, then they slacked away on security work and instead focused on visual issues while they got spanked on features by Firefox (which is why I switched). The Internet Explorer team needs to be punished, severely, for slacking away and compromising your computer and data security. This is not the case with almost any other Microsoft product. Will Bill fix it? Not as long as you continue to take it and not vote with your feet or at the very least tell them you are not happy with the risk they are placing on your computer.
And Linux Apple BSD Lotus Firefox users thought they were mad at Redmond…
Background (updated 3 Jan 2006):
- Browser Wars: Network Managers Flee IE; Email Battles; 27 December 2005.
- Dell: No plans for Firefox in Asia; Renai LeMay; ZDNet Australia; 27 December 2005.
- End of an era: Mac Internet Explorer; Jimmy Grewals Weblog; 19 December 2005.
- Firefox Pomposity; Blame Rory Blyth; Neopoleon.com; 28 January 2005.
- HP to ship Netscape browser on new PCs; Joris Evers; ZDNet Asia; 4 October 2005.
- I was on the MacIE 6 team when it got canned…; Jorg Brown; slashdot; 18 December 2005.
- Mac IE’s Death: A Case for Microsoft Disbanding or Transfering the Windows IE Team; Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life; 19 December 2005.
- Techies Vote: Anything But IE; Email Battles; 3 January 2006.
- VS Service Packs, Big City Critics, and Shareholder Check-Up; Mini-Microsoft; 7 November 2005.
- WTF is a WMF?; Vlad Mazek; Vladville; 28 December 2005.
16 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 29th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
mabster
I wonder how seriously I should treat an article that can’t even get Rory Blythe’s surname right.
December 30th, 2005 at 12:04 am
Editor
Apologies.
December 30th, 2005 at 2:07 am
danmac
According to the blog Rory’s name links to it is BLYTH.
December 30th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Rory
My surname actually is Blyth (no “e”), and I’m rather snobby about that
December 30th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
Rory
I should also note that this article links to a post of mine, but not to the actual *comment* where the quote appears:
http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/12473.aspx#12489
It’s important to have these things in context, and to read the entire discussion which led to my having said what I said.
December 30th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
Editor
@Rory. 1. We linked readers to the top of your story so they would understand your comment in context. Thx for the addtnl input. 2. Somehow in the orig article, you were labeled Rory Smith. mabster quickly took us to task, while adding an e to your surname. Between us, we seem to have twisted your fine name into everything but Gates.
December 31st, 2005 at 11:12 am
Danzigstorer
Just use Maxthon with IE.
December 31st, 2005 at 11:56 am
bobcat
Maxthon’s overlay can’t save IE from its underlying security problems, like the current WMF zero day exploit. Cut IE loose from the OS, then start over.
December 31st, 2005 at 1:48 pm
Moon
I don’t see how it is that you manage to continue inventing this myth about the lack of safety on Internet Explorer. The fact that there’s a 0 day exploit is the fault of the person who released the code without notifying Microsoft with sufficient warning. Aside from that Microsoft hasn’t had one of those since Sasser as far as I can remember. Furthermore I haven’t had my machine infected once since migrating to XP 2 years ago, I have not once used any browser except Internet Explorer. For protection I use MICROSOFT Antispyware Beta, WINDOWS Firewall and Norton Antivirus. If you guys manage to get your computers infected then it’s really your fault and if you’re that paranoid about the chance of wondering upon a malicious site then all you need to do is enter a few characters into the run and disable a service for a few days until it gets patched. Honestly, it’s been almost 10 years since people have started yelling about the downfall of Microsoft; get used to it, it’s not happening.
December 31st, 2005 at 2:02 pm
wyclif
The fact that Microsoft has all but killed browser development means that it doesn’t care about user exerience on the Web. Mozilla and others are doing all the innovation in that space now. To argue otherwise seems ridiculous given the facts cited above.
December 31st, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Karl O. Pinc
Moon writes:
“I don’t see how it is that you manage to continue inventing this myth about the lack of safety on Internet Explorer.”
Really? Can you use IE to go to the MS Windows killing website mentioned in “What Part of Virus and Spyware Didnt You Understand?”
(http://lobby4linux.com/WordPress/?p=67)
As long as simply visting a web site is enough to infect your computer, you will continue to hear about the insecurity of MS products.
January 2nd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Danzigstorer
I’ve visited the site mentioned in the lobby4linux site many times using Maxthon and IE, and I’ve experienced no problems.
January 3rd, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Hans
Konqueror is also a really awesome browser as well. People tend to forget to mention it. In fact, someone really ought to try porting it to Windows. I wonder how that would fare.
As for Internet Explorer, it’s true that it’s really starting to show its age (in features terms). But to those who say “yada my IE works fine and I’ve never been infected”, well… neither had I. On my old PC, I never even bothered to update Windows XP with service packs. And _nothing happened_. Hurrah.
However, when I bought myself a new laptop recently, which came included with the very latest patched Windows XP that has an almost proper firewall and popup blocker and what not (and I now did regular updates diligently as well) + Norton Antivirus, within a few months I was infected with some nasty trojan/spyware incarnation that slowed me down to the speed of a Commodore 64 running Vista Beta 2. I’ve had a few collegues ask me to fix up their laptops as well and apparently they got borked from only using Windows for a few days. And, to my own disbelief, I’ve witnessed before my very own eyes a copy of Windows, which we had just freshly installed, get borked within a few minutes. Something is going on and something which MS can’t just fix at a moments notice.
Hopefully Vista will fare better. However, one thing is for certain, MS really needs to work on IE. It’s a very important part of their business strategy. Make it more compliant to the web standards, that’s my main suggestion. Cross browser CSS is a nightmare.
January 4th, 2006 at 12:53 am
Anonymous
KDE is porting Konqueror to windows as we speak.
January 4th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Zanzibar BuckBuck McFate
People love to whine.
Flashback: IE 5 is released, users complain, “why does Microsoft keep adding new features?”, “We want compatibility”, blah, blah, blah…
Now it’s “Why DOESN’T Microsoft add new features?”
Awww, SHADDUP ALREADY! There are FREE alternatives!!!
September 21st, 2007 at 12:26 pm
gavin
microsoft has lost a dozen users i know alltogether. i converted to linux 3 years ago and my computer has never gone down(with the exception of wen i screw around and break something but thats my own idiocy not the os.) microsoft just isnt worth my time.