“I think it can now be safely said, in hindsight, that Microsoft’s entry into the browser business and its subsequent linking of the browser into the Windows operating system looks to be the worst decision—and perhaps the biggest, most costly gaffe—the company ever made. I call it the Great Microsoft Blunder,” John C. Dvorak writes for PC Magazine. “All of Microsoft’s Internet-era public-relations and legal problems (in some way or another) stem from Internet Explorer. If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column—billions. The joke of it is that Microsoft is still working on this dead albatross and is apparently ready to roll out a new version, since most of the smart money has been fleeing to Firefox or Opera. This means new rounds of patches and lost money.”
Dvorak writes, “Microsoft should pull the browser out of the OS and discontinue all IE development immediately. It should then bless the Mozilla.org folks with a cash endowment and take an investment stake in Opera, to influence the future direction of browser technology from the outside in. Then, Microsoft can worry about security issues that are OS-only in nature, rather than problems compounded by Internet Explorer.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Scott” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: The U.S. should just hook up John C. Dvorak to a steam-powered generator and we’d all have free electricity for as long as he lives. Now, in this case, by chance, Dvorak’s actually correct. IE causes nothing but headaches for Microsoft. Internet Explorer is the Windows of browsers. Of course we mean that in the worst possible way. That 80% or so still use IE should tell you just about all you need to know about the majority of humans. Furthermore, those that design web sites to be Internet Explorer-only are talentless hacks.
On a Mac, we use Safari, FireFox, Camino, and Netscape in that order. If stuck with a Windows PC, we’d use FireFox with a Safari-like theme.
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Related articles:
Firefox breaks 10% mark, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer lost nearly 4% market share in past year – April 04, 2006
Security report shows Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was unsafe for all but seven days of 2004 – March 22, 2005
Penn State’s IT Services recommends dumping Microsoft Internet Explorer immediately – December 09, 2004
Security expert: Don’t use Microsoft Windows, Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer – December 09, 2004
Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer products reflect arrogance, sloppiness – November 21, 2004
Web Standards Project: Abandon Microsoft Internet Explorer and ‘Browse Happy’ – August 25, 2004
IT managers loath to switch from flawed Microsoft Internet Explorer – July 07, 2004
Securty expert: Microsoft Internet Explorer ‘just cannot be trusted, use alternate browser’ – July 02, 2004
Security firm warns of new Internet Explorer flaw, advises ‘use a different browser’ – July 01, 2004
Microsoft axes Internet Explorer for Mac – June 13, 2003
You can start killing IE yourself! Plus earn a buck for each one you do!!
http://www.explorerdestroyer.com/
Dvorak is definitely right about this one. I guess he is able to be insightful about Windows stuff, so he should clearly stick to that and ignore Macs!
it’s amazing to me that people still use IE with all of the problems it has and when there are obvious solutions out there on the market
I am the first to post to this forum.
MW wife, as in wife.
Amen to that brother!
Doh!!!
IE is NOT a browser,is and still a VIRUS
Microshaft should just implode, close up shop altogether, and give money back to the investors.
http://musobs.blogspot.com/
Sensorium,
please, please, please say that English is not your native language.
WRONG! They should keep it, and let the albatross take them down.
Nonsense.
MS Internet Explorer ties developers to the Windows platform. This is the life blood of MS. For MS it has always been about developers.
IE has a whole host of problems, but back when it came out, it was a godsend for developers when compared with the disaster that was Netscape 4. IE dragged HTML/JS/CSS coding out of the dark ages and actually made it somewhat sensible (anybody remember the <layer> tag? ick). Not that it doesn’t have its fair share of totally annoying coding issues, but I think the coding community is *way* better off because of IE’s presence than if we’d just been stuck with NS4.
It has taken years for the competition to really catch up, and it was only because of some 17-year-old whiz kid that Mozilla/Firefox doesn’t totally blow. That kid singlehandedly rescued that entire project, bless him. Firefox/Mozilla are now the nicest browsers to code for, with Safari and IE close behind. IE 5.5+ really isn’t so bad.
I’m just saying IE served a useful purpose. Of course, if the entire community moved over to FF/Safari/Opera at this moment, I wouldn’t shed a tear
Dvorak is definitely right about this one.
Err… unfortunately not.
No OS vendor can rely on a 3rd party browser because the browser is almost the desktop now. You wouldn’t want to have such an integral part of your system in somebody elses hands.
Why do you think Apple has dedicated teams to develop Safari and Mail in the first place? Browsers and Mail Clients are where most of us spend our computer lives now.
Besides that, Dvorak’s statement that the security problems would significantly decrease in the scenario he portrays is defintely wrong.
Windows is in such a sad state now as regards security that scraping IE won’t help that much. Most of the IE vulnerabilities are intertwined with hooks to the underlying system, they just trigger them, but many could be triggered from other browsers as well.
What’s next from Dvorak? MS should kill Outlook? As far as I know Outlook also functions as a trigger to several Windows security problems too.
What should MS do? Scrap both IE and Outlook?
The only sane thing MS could do now is start a new effort and build a totally new OS. Really, they should buy what’s left of BeOS and start from there. But with the BeOS filesystem guy working at Apple, I guess they are already late…
I only use IE to look at my hotmail account and that’s it. MS forces you to use IE for hotmail. I only keep the hotmail account to use as a spam magnet when shady sites require an email address.
MW = leave. LOL
>scraping IE won’t help that much.>
What are you going to scrape off IE?
To iDon’t: I use Safari to access my Hotmail “spam magnet” account ALL THE TIME. I NEVER use IE. (for anything!)
I consider myself to be Apple fanboi #1, and I actually like Dvorak, both professionally and personally (I used to work with him); but…
I think he’s wrong here in some ways.
I agree with JEG above. IE tied many things to Windows and gave Microsoft an edge. It also allowed easy development of full apps outside of the browser, much like webkit does for OS X. I’ve worked in the development of some of these apps, and as much as I hate and never use IE unless I absolutely have to, it is a godsend in many ways for these apps on Windows just as webkit is for OS X (though Safari is my choice of browsers).
Keep in mind this is all about what Microsoft should do, based on their own interests, it’s not what I (and others) necessarily want them to do. I *want* them to quit altogether. This was a prior Dvorak opinion…quit the whole business.
Also, their failures are not based on what they should’ve done in the decision of creating IE, but rather in their failures of implementation and execution.
Is there anyone who believes Apple failed with webkit/Safari?
As I posted over the weekend, call Microsucks and claim that you have a PC and that you want to uninstall IE, not just change the default browser, actually remove every last trace of it. You are in for a hilarious conversation. It basically cannot be done. If you don’t want to call Microsucks, just do a Google search and read about other people’s experiences.
Huh, wonder why Mafiasoft keeps getting sued for monopolistic behavior?
MDN,
I don’t use Safari – don’t like it. I don’t like having to hold down a key to open a link in a new tab and I don’t like the wacky fonts it uses to display some text on webpages. I’ve tried changing the font in the preferences but it doesn’t change anything at all.
I use (and love) Firefox – can’t wait for 2.0 to come out.
“Mabel, go get me my shotgun. It’s browser huntin’ season!” I’ve also heard that IE tastes like chicken.
MW: blood. Do browsers bleed in binary?
EVERYONE, REPEAT AFTER ME: CAMINO, CAMINO, CAMINO, CAMINO.
http://www.caminobrowser.org
This is as true as ever!
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/357.html
And don’t forget that Camino backwards is “On iMac.”
Coincidence or conspiracy? And browser backwards is “Resworb.” You know what I’m talkin’ about.
“No OS vendor can rely on a 3rd party browser because the browser is almost the desktop now. You wouldn’t want to have such an integral part of your system in somebody elses hands.”
Really? Apple doesn’t rely upon Safari for anything, the last time I checked. I rarely ever use Safari because I’m a Firefox kinda guy. So as far as my experience goes, Safari could disappear tomorrow and OS X wouldn’t function any worse or any better.
The browser is not *almost the desktop* because I don’t spend my life in a browser. Do you? I spend my life much more inside of VLC, Tracktion, or iTunes, or Mail, than in a browser. Stand-alone or specialty apps still rule because they do things that a browser just isn’t cut out to do. No amount of whining about this will allow you to change the fundamental reality that a browser cannot do it all.
Camino is the best, runs faster then Safari and renders form fields/buttons etc better then Firefox.
CAMINO CAMINO CAMINO