Bye Bye Internet Explorer, And Thank-You

Much as we’d all like to think that as Apple users we can ignore what goes on in Redmond we can’t. And what has happened this week is strange indeed; Microsoft is killing the development of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh. This time, though, who can blame Microsoft? Like others before it, Watson, Audion (and all the other MP3 players that proliferated the Mac landscape), and Adobe Premiere, Microsoft is merely responding to Apple’s salvos. Apple has, after all, developed an incredible product in Safari. One that, in a few short months, has come to dominate the Macintosh platform for anyone who wants a fast, and beautiful browser.

When Internet Explorer first came out for the Mac it was, at best, a wobbly odd kind of browser. Version 4 crashed, had mysterious support for javascript and was horrible rendering dhtml. IE 5, however, was a godsend for the Macintosh browsing experience. With the Tasman rendering engine it blew Netscape 4 out of the water. It was faster, rendered pages more accurately and was even Mac friendly with its color schemes. Internet Explorer for the Mac became, even for those who despise Microsoft, the browser of choice relegating Netscape 4, 6, and 7 to the garbage pail where they belonged. And, as Zeldman points out IE brought standards-compliance to the Macintosh browsing experience.

This is until OS X when the Mozilla project began and suddenly those surfers in the know switched to Chimera (now Camino). Finally those who disliked the monopolistic practices of Microsoft had an alternative. But Internet Explorer was still users—and Apple’s—browser of choice, coming as the default install on all its machines.

Until Safari. In Safari Apple has a killer app. Fast, standards compliant and eminently usable. It is, very ironically, the application that is beginning too, and will continue to, behave as Microsoft has argued Internet Explorer does in their view of Windows—as an integral part of the operating system. We have already seen the beginnings of this strategy in the recent update to iSync, where users can sync their bookmarks (with a .Mac subscription) between machines. In the coming months expect Apple to conjur up even tighter integration between Safari and the iLife suite.

So it hardly a surprise then that Microsoft has thrown in the towel on Internet Explorer. The only surprise may be that Microsoft is going to be perceived as being less diverse ad more monopolistic with this move something it does not want. The most important question is, is this a sign of things to come between Cupertino and Redmond? Apple has had no compunction taking on companies like Karelia or Adobe but will Apple really want to push Microsoft? AppleWorks is currently a second-rate product. There is no reason for it to continue being that way but having Office available for the Macintosh is something that has always strengthened Apple in the corporate environment. Then there is the case of Outlook Exchange that is still not available for OS X and is incredibly important to the viability of OS X (sans classic) in the corporate environment. If Microsoft feels that the Mac market is no longer important financially or politically it could be bad for Apple in the long run.

Speaking of monopolies there are, sadly, sites that still seem to only work in Internet Explorer. As Safari has gone from version to version it has gotten better. But there are always those few sites, often transactional ones, that only work in Internet Explorer. This is because of the amazing dominance of Windows (and therefore IE) to the point where it is cost-prohibitive for web-builders to develop for (let only test) other browsers or operating systems. Safari still doesn’t like my bank’s site. And the internal intranet where I work sniffs for anything other than Internet Explorer and says, sorry, you have to use IE. As the world continues to be ruled by one OS and one browser this could bode very ill for us Mac users. In the future Safari (and Apple) could become beta to Internet Explorer’s VHS. And now that Internet Explorer will not be developed for the Mac will all know what that means—we’ll all have to buy beige boxes with Windows to use the web. Apple needs to work hard to ensure this does not happen.

These issues aside AppleMatters would like to thank Microsoft. That’s right, thank them. For creating what objectively was a fantastic browser for its time. It reduced our dependency on that awful browser known as Netscape Navigator and raised the bar for browser development on the Mac, inspiring smaller (and no less important) developers such as Opera, OmniWeb, iCab and others to keep making the web browsing experience better and better. Microsoft also stepped up to the OS X plate very early on, providing Mac users with an OS X browser quickly. It was, and is a good product. And one we are going to miss.