Interesting People mailing list archives
IE Mac, Re: more on internet explorer safety: plenty of press, but do people listen?
From: dave () farber net
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 13:31 -0400
___ Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889 ...... Forwarded Message ....... From: Stanton McCandlish <mech () well com> To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 10:15:47 -0700 Subj: IE Mac, Re: [IP] more on internet explorer safety: plenty of press, but do people listen?
There are only two choices left with IE: Either don't browse the web with it, or don't use it for financial transactions.The first choice includes the second. There's a gathering news roll suggesting avoidance for IE (on Windows; on the Mac it's pretty safe).
It may be less prone to exploits, but it's becoming less and less useful. No new version has been put out in a year or longer, not even a maintenance release, and it is riddled with bugs. Microsoft allegedly no longer supports Internet Explorer, for either MacOS Classic or MacOS X, in any way, according to some developers I've talked to. MS appears to have abandoned it. I find this rather strange. MSIE/Mac was at one time clearly the most-used browser on MacOS. Yes, Apple does ship it's own browser, Safari, with OS X these days, but why would MS just abandon a product (albeit a free one) that had more than 50% market share? At very least it kept the Microsoft name in front of Mac users, even more effectively than MS Office. It is definitely aging poorly, though. MSIE/Mac badly malfunctions in obvious and not-so-obvious ways with many modern websites, including those of the US Postal Service and the popular social network Orkut, leaving serious users little choice but to switch to something else. In some ways this is a shame, since IE has some features, like web page "subscriptions" with page update alerts, that at least most other browsers don't offer (I have not reviewed every feature of every known browser for OS X, so I can't say for sure whether such a feature remains a MSIE exclusive at this date. I've yet to see it elsewhere, though.) ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- IE Mac, Re: more on internet explorer safety: plenty of press, but do people listen? dave (Jul 06)