Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

geek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 175 posts

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#71

Post by dpark »

davedx wrote: post #53
dpark wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The is a common claim, but has anyone actually researched this? Is there any evidence that this is still true? It's my understanding that most of the IE6 market share is in Asia, where many people are running pirated versions of XP.

Do you have any research to backup your claim?

Actually, yes.

http://www.ie6countdown.com/

IE 6 holds a 1% market share in the US. How many corporations in the US are mandating IE 6 if it's only got a 1% market share?

You'll also note that IE 6 has a nearly 28% market share in China. Now, this doesn't say that these are pirated installs, but they are obviously XP or older, and this is clearly where the bulk of IE 6 market share is.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#72

Post by sliverstorm »

phillmv wrote: post #70
ArbitraryLimits wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what makes you think the "enterprise" market is less lucrative than it used to be?

No growth. Everyone who could possibly use a Windows license has a Windows license and drags their feet about upgrading. You're either busy growing or you're busy dying. As a potential shareholder, I care more about growth than straight up profitability.

By this logic, as soon as you saturate the market, you are dying?

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#73

Post by phillmv »

ramblerman wrote: post #59
waitwhat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirated versions of XP are perfectly capable of running IE7/8. The problem is that a few years ago Microsoft pushed Windows Genuine Advantage updates automatically via Windows Update (they might even have done this twice), with the result that all those pirated versions of XP turned off Windows Update forever and never installing anything from microsoft.com. Oops.

I partake in my fair share of Microsoft bashing but am I understanding your point here. You're criticizing MS for not pushing updates to pirated versions of their software?

They forced an externality on to the rest of us.

The marginal cost of sending updates to pirated machines is probably negligible, and pirates adapted to WGA within a couple weeks.

So – they managed to convert a few Western users who didn't know they were running a pirated copy. I would place a good bet that the total volume of pirated licenses remained the same, though.

More recent experiments have shown that piracy is really more about customer service than straight up cost [0]. As a result, we have large hordes of unpatched machines that are easy to convert into zombies and running outdated software the rest of us have to support.

[0] http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economic...

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#74

Post by dhkl »

Perhaps one of the reason why people are still capable of getting an acceptable Internet experience from IE 6 and 7 is because Flash 10 (and 11 for IE 7) supports them.

Thank goodness that there is a strong traction behind HTML5 stack, and the industry as a whole is less reliant on Flash to deliver good UX.

Without Flash, the capability of these older browsers will be reduced, and I'm sure they will get abandoned at an even higher rate.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#75

Post by wwweston »

rplnt wrote: post #56
nextparadigms wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 5 years it will be compared to the other browsers, just like the others are much further ahead of IE6 now. IE6 used to be a good browser, too, when it launched.

The problem isn't good/bad. Problem is that IE6 is nonstandard.

I'm not sure there was a browser that did standards better at the time of IE6's initial release. Maybe Opera.

And in my opinion, the bigger problem with IE6 was that it was buggy -- both where it purportedly followed standards and where it had its own way of doing things, behavior often didn't match spec or had unexpected side effects. It took devs years of trying to figure out where all the bodies were buried before everybody understood how it worked.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#76

Post by phillmv »

sliverstorm wrote: post #72
phillmv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No growth. Everyone who could possibly use a Windows license has a Windows license and drags their feet about upgrading. You're either busy growing or you're busy dying. As a potential shareholder, I care more about growth than straight up profitability.

By this logic, as soon as you saturate the market, you are dying?

Yes. You need to find/create more markets.

Look at Apple. iPod -> iPhone -> iPad.

If I invest 100 dollars in you, I want to receive a percentage back after a certain while. You need to be able to give me 103 dollars back the next year just to beat inflation, i.e. for this to not have been a complete waste of my time.

In real terms, this means you need to grow your business by at least 3% in order to give me that return.

I'm not the right person to talk about this, as my knowledge is thin and my metaphors are poor, but even if you're the sole owner you start to lose money if you don't grow at a reliable rate.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#77

Post by tomjen3 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #23

I'm not a fan, and I don't understand the gushing. As developers, I suppose folks are glad to reduce their support matrix? But as users, creators of highly customized workstations and rabid fans of particular development environments, doesn't it bother anybody but me, that the browser choice has been hijacked? Sure, its just stupid Windows users, they don't care. Is that it? Every IE UI is different, and they seem to…

If you run Windows, you accept what you get. The same if you run Mac.

If you want to customize it you run Linux, simple as that.

There are prices and trade-of for all platforms. I run on them all I accept that Windows is a walled garden. I should not expect my things to stay as they are.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#78

Post by underwater »

dhkl wrote: post #63
dpark wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The is a common claim, but has anyone actually researched this? Is there any evidence that this is still true? It's my understanding that most of the IE6 market share is in Asia, where many people are running pirated versions of XP.

I worked for a Mainland Chinese manufacturing company for a while, and they run all their desktops on Windows 2000. They have several applications that targets IE only, and will not run (properly) on other modern browsers such as Firefox or Chrome. What I have found is that the IT guys in China compile many "recovery disk" with a pirated copy of Windows that people use to reinstall their OS. A lot of these disks are…

Maxthon is quite popular. They use Internet Explorer's Trident engine, newer versions also ship with Webkit and switch engines based on the site being rendered.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#80

Post by yuhong »

dspillett wrote: post #38
melling wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE8 is the max for XP so until XP goes away it will be the new IE6, which is at 1% in the US. So, yes IE8 will have another decade.

Not a decade for XP and IE6, but certainly more than two years. Close to a decade for IE8 potentially though. XPsp3 drops off extended support in April 2014 (see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?ln=en-gb&c2=1173 for detail) at which point it will get no new security updates unless you are a company that can afford to pay for them to be done (and if you did need to try that, it would no doubt be very expensive)…

AFAIK even IE 5.01 was supported on Win2000 SP4 until 2010!
Post reply on HN