3 replies to this topic

[Neon]

As Microsoft drops the Mac version of Internet Explorer, technology commentator Bill Thompson offers a modest proposal.

If you've got a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X and you like to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer for browsing the web, then I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you.

The Mac version of IE has not been updated for over two years, apart from the regular stream of security patches that are the lot of every Microsoft program, and now the company has announced that it is being dropped.

It won't be supported, security issues won't be fixed and it won't be available for download from the Mactopia website. Game over for the IE-using Mac population, unless they are willing to run an unpatched browser and take their chances with the hackers.

This might seem to be a rather minor and somewhat abstruse issue, of importance to relatively few people. After all, I'm writing this on my Apple laptop and a quick check reveals that I haven't run IE once, even though it's nearly a year old.

I do occasionally use IE on my Windows desktop, since I'm neither a Mac zealot nor anti-Microsoft, and I know that both of my children use IE as well as the open source Firefox browser when they are looking at web pages, so it's not that I've turned away from it completely.

But on the Mac I've got Safari, Apple's browser, as well as Firefox, and three browsers just seems rather excessive.

So far I haven't come across a website that requires me to use IE, not even when I'm downloading updates to Microsoft Office for the Mac - I told you I wasn't ideologically opposed to Microsoft software - but I've no doubt I will, and when it happens I'll be stuck.

He reckons it should be an open-source MS project...quite a clever idea!

[RedInferno]

LOL, that WOULD be cool, seeing as I plan to get a mac in a year or two.

[Neon]

BOO! HISS!

[RedInferno]

***BANG!!!*** *redinferno falls over*