MacDailyNews Take: Actually, it’s been below 60% before. In fact, the POS was once blessedly at 0%, before Microsoft licensed Mosaic, began spaghetti-coding, and started to illegally abuse their desktop monopoly.
Electronista continues, “”Microsoft’s browser dropped to 59.95 percent of web use in April after Google Chrome leapt half a point ahead to 6.73 percent in the same timeframe. Firefox and Safari also ate into Internet Explorer’s share with small gains that put them at 24.59 percent and 4.72 percent each.”
MacDailyNews Take: The fact that 59.95% of people still use Internet Explorer is a testament to humanity’s monumental capacity for ignorance and self-flagellation.
Electronista continues, “OS share itself was much more static last month, although Microsoft again reached its lowest point with Windows getting a still-dominant 91.46 percent. Mac OS X was off just under a hundredth of a point at 5.32 percent, while Linux gained very slightly to reach 1.05 percent.”
“The researchers also provided early insight into the iPad’s usage habits,” Electronista reports. “It still accounted for just a very small fraction of web traffic at 0.03 percent; in the US, the only country where it officially sells, it represented 0.12 percent.”
More info is available in the full article here.
I wouldn’t say people using IE is a testament to them being ignorant. While I despise IE in every way possible, especially when I am trying to web design and make it IE friendly, I don’t think ignorance is to blame.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is an american slogan. Problem is most end users don’t know that IE is in fact broken. They don’t realize all the proprietary problems IE has. They have been using it for a long time and since it works for their needs and has all their bookmarks and preferences, it’s just easier to keep using.
New computers, new operating systems, big ticket changes like that are where people like that will most likely change. Too bad Safari/Firefox can’t do some sort of “try us for 30 days and if you don’t find out product is better, we’ll give you XX”. Of course, with a free browser, there isn’t much you could offer.
Bit by bit…
Long live the Children of Netscape!
It should pick up sice the 3G model is loose in the market.
The key to increasing the usage of Sarfari is a fully mobile iPad which should Pull those numbers up.
I was a a buddy’s house, recently, and noticed he was using IE. I let my opinion out, briefly – “don’t you have Safari or Firefox?”. “Yeah, I have Firefox, but all my bookmarks are on IE and I don’t know how to switch them over.”!
<sigh>
You know you need a vacation when you read POS as point of sale.
@REALTORben,
The definition of “ignorant” is “lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact”
Therefore, people who don’t know better are, factually speaking, ignorant. Case in point: You were ignorant of the meaning of the word ignorant until now.
I still don’t know if I’m really for OS X being licensed to box assemblers. At one time, I was steadfastly against it.
These days, I say go for it perhaps. Stick a dagger in Microsoft’s heart! Most of us who have been buying Apple computers all along will still pay for the superior hardware.
@ theloniousMac – Dang, that’s how I first read it too… I *do* need a vacation.
Electronista’s full article also notes: “Opera was the only other major browser to lose share by dropping to 2.3 percent.” And yes, while we realize that these numbers can change from month to month and it’s the long-term trend that’s most important, hasn’t Opera been stuck way back in fifth place for ages now, with little or no forward progress? So much for the EU-mandated browser ballot helping them…
The other sad part of IE still having even that much web usage, is that IE6 still makes up most of it. My own company has *finally* started moving us away from IE6 the past several months… albeit only as far as IE7. Still, a bit of progress is better than no progress at all. I’m guessing a lot of other companies are trapped in the same proprietary web Microsoft spun when they encouraged companies to design their intranet sites only for IE6.
The same a-holes that have huge alarm systems on their cars and houses, expensive deadbolts on their doors, etc. and then go and leave the back door wide-open using Internet Explorer to do their banking and credit card transactions? It boggles the mind.
IE needs to die. At this very moment I am battling a CSS problem where my code looks fine, and the site looks exactly how I want in every major browser except IE. I’ve been staring at the same section of code for an hour, and I don’t see anything that would cause this problem. Microsoft and their lack of playing nicely with others is causing real damage and they need to go away. They’re killing the web. And they’re slowly killing me on the inside.
MDN is slowly becoming the eccentric old lady of the Mac news world casting insults around and shouting about ignorance, laziness (as with Adobe employees) and much more besides.
However, the reality here is that many people don’t have a choice about their browser choice: it’s given to them as a done deal by IT people who design a common operating platform around some version of Windows and so 10,000 people get stuck with a browser because of a decision made by a CIO, his senior systems architect and the Microsoft “consultant” that’s been assigned to keep them on the straight and narrow.
So the decisions of three (or maybe ten) people has an effect at least three orders of magnitude larger than it should.
In the corporate world of the Global 500, the top 50 companies employ nearly 22 million people. Not all of them will be allocated computers on an individual basis, but that’s a moot point because none of them will have a voice that can be heard by IT “architects” making safe decisions.
Our company is not that big, about 100 P Of C Dell running XP with IE7.
I tried and tried and tried to get Safari or Firefox installed in my POC but the answer I get is that they (IT) don’t support other browser. I told them I did not need support, if I ever run into problems I would start up IE and just work with that (as if THAT would ever happen…)
They always answer the same way: “We don’t want to start having people running different programs when IE does the job” and by doing the job is working with our Oracle database using javascript on IE to access it. IE is the slowest freaking browser on Javascript on the planet.
Bunch of lazy ‘ignorant’ IT people…
Typical MDN double standard reasoning.
High market share for MS over Apple be it the OS, the browser, the application implies consumers are ignorant.
Yet (strangely!) high market share for Apple over in MS mp3 players, smartphones and their apps doesn’t imply consumers are ignorant. Now they are remarkably discerning, recognising apple quality.
Allready told you: doomed they are and doomed they remain. M$ is allready an hasbeen!
@Jimithy Two words: Chrome Frame.
“The fact that 59.95% of people still use Internet Explorer is a testament to humanity’s monumental capacity for ignorance and self-flagellation”.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
@MCCFR
As a web developer (among other tasks) it’s not so much IE in general. It’s that IE users are extremely slow to adopt even newer, better behaving, versions of IE. It kills me to look at my web stats and see how many visitors are still using IE6. We’ve taken to putting in a piece of code on our sites that tests for IE 6 and nicely tells the user that they need to update their browser to get full utilization of the site. I don’t know if it’s ignorance or inertia at work, but MS needs to do a better job at pushing users to updated versions of the browser, especially since web technologies are rapidly advancing. I hope they get IE9 out the door pretty soon and really push for its adoption. There is nowhere more evident of the disparity of developer capabilities and user experience than that of the web and IE users.
@kevt
Truth is high market share of defacto MS is NOT a matter of choice for any but consumer home market. If the elevator I am riding is using Windows I did not make that choice. If my employer sets a Windows computer on my desk I did not make that choice. I do however choose my iPod, iPad, and Powerbook!
@Jimithy
Thats because you need to code for IE first and then the rest.. if its an alignment issue then you should throw in some CSS code to set all the margins, line spacing, font, etc. Then you will have no issue or atleast way less of an issue.
@Spark
I didn’t even put in a redirect or notice when the person is using IE6. Parts of my code will only work in IE7 and up.. but they can still view what it is.. aka png files. Cause I refuse to EVER use a GIF image file. They look soooo horrid.
As far as MS doing a better job of handing out new IE versions.. its up to the user to not update. Windows automagically adds in an IE update with the windows updates.
I remember when I would tell people that there were alternative browsers other than IE and they would look at me and say…there are?
That was just LAST year.
Neanderthals….
@ REALTORben
I stopped making Websites IE friendly a few years ago. I just added code that detects IE and open a dialog that explains that IE may not display the pages correctly because IE is broken and does not support the HTML standards properly and to contact Microsoft with any issues or download, Firefox, Safari or Opera that does work correctly. If they click the “Get a better browser” button I open a page with the download links to the other browsers. Or they can click the “OK, I’m good with broken IE” Button it loads the index page and they can continue with IE.
My Site clients love it, because their sites are faster, less prone to issues and IE users don’t bug them on why thing are off. When the rare Microsoft Fan does bitch on why IE usability of the site is not support they just refer them to Microsoft Tech support for an IE Issue after providing the customer with the HTML Standard that IE is not supporting properly.
It’s a WIn, Win for my customers and they love it.
The IE6 numbers are down to Microsoft’s push for adoption of their own non-standard coding methods a decade ago. So many corporate inhouse applications break if alternative browsers are used companies are struggling to move away from it, even to IE7 or 8.
Interesting too that the OSX share went down slightly. I wonder if that’s related to many Mac users in the USA switching to browsing on their new iPads.
I have several friends running XP where I’ve installed both Firefox and Safari on their systems, and I CAN’T GET THEM TO STOP USING IE!!!
And then there’s my brother who is still using the browser built-in to AOL…
@MarkyMark7
set their default browser to firefox and remove the IE icon from their desktop and program menu. Then it will be a fight for them to even find IE