smcmh's Profile

Microsofts’s dominance in the browser market did not come from building a better browser or giving it away. Rather the combination of packaging IE with Windows and the choice of AOL to use IE bundled with its software at a time when the net was becoming very popular resulted in MS’s control of the market. Most consumers no longer had to choose a browser, they just had one that worked. The results may have been very different if MS and AOL required users to select and download the browser that they would like to use. I’ll bet most folks still don’t know that you can use any browser with an AOL dial up connection. Regarding Mac browser compatibility, my company’s email system (MS Exchange Server), most banking sites and most recently a realtor website (Firefox only), can all be reasonably used with Mac browsers, including Safari, Netscape and Firefox. There are still some sites that may cause problems; however, in my experience, Mac web compatibility is improving. It’s been a long time since I had to crank up IE 5 for the Mac.