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Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

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Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#121

Post by sliverstorm »

phillmv wrote: post #76
sliverstorm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 retu…

It shows just how isolated the startup community can be from traditional business. Stable businesses can make plenty of money; growth is simply the way you increase your profits even more.

Really, your sentiment is reminiscent of the dot-com refrain of 'get big or go home'. Those were the true champions of growth-as-profit (and it sure turned out well for them)

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#122

Post by phillmv »

webjprgm wrote: post #105
phillmv wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> running outdated software the rest of us have to support. Why would you support outdated software only used by pirates? Just don't support it to force the pirates to update.

Just because they knowingly or not pirated a copy of Windows does not mean they won't pay for your web app, if at least not in the form of eyeballs for your ads.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#123

Post by [deleted] »

phillmv wrote: post #76
sliverstorm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 retu…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#124

Post by GoodIntentions »

phillmv wrote: post #76
sliverstorm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 retu…

>> Yes. You need to find/create more markets.

xbox.

It isn't the only "other" interest, but prolly the best example. MSFT isn't just enterprise oriented.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#125

Post by dangrossman »

antinitro wrote: post #116
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #19

Good news, but XP users still won't be able to upgrade past IE8.

I honestly can't see the reasoning behind this.

IE9 implements too much of its modern HTML5 and security features using Windows 7. DirectX 10, which it uses for hardware accelerated graphics, text and video does not run on XP. XP is eons behind the times in security features. It's not just a marketing decision, at some point if they wanted to do these things they had to say "this version of IE will not run on our 10 year old OS."

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#126

Post by AndyKelley »

tomjen3 wrote: post #77
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.

What? I'm calling you out. Sure, you can customize your OS if you run Linux. You can also customize your OS if you run Windows or Mac, and it's not more difficult. More to the point, you can install an alternate browser or even an alternate version of IE if you so choose.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#127

Post by msujaws »

dangrossman wrote: post #125
antinitro wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't see the reasoning behind this.

IE9 implements too much of its modern HTML5 and security features using Windows 7. DirectX 10, which it uses for hardware accelerated graphics, text and video does not run on XP. XP is eons behind the times in security features. It's not just a marketing decision, at some point if they wanted to do these things they had to say "this version of IE will not run on our 10 year old OS."

Hmmmm.... I wonder how other browser vendors are able to pull it off then?

This answer doesn't seem to carry much weight if Firefox and Chrome can do these things and still remain secure.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#128

Post by mdc »

veidr wrote: post #60
mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #11

The article points out that MS will still provide blocking tools for companies. Corporations are the major source of IE6 browsers and I'm not sure this will have any impact on them. The best we can hope for is that high consumer adoption rates will force many more sites to drop IE6 support which might spur companies to finally test and upgrade.

Big corporate is such a weird space. On one hand, you're right: big corporate will block this, and that will limit the impact, and thus I think a lot of the hallelujah in this thread is over-optimistic. But MS would never force such consequential upgrades on those customers; that's part of why MS owned and still owns the "enterprise" market (decreasingly lucrative though it may be). On the other hand, I doubt that co…

>why don't you just code a native app?

It sounds like that's exactly what they did,

They just hosted most of the code on a server. It's kind of like the "native" iOS apps that just use a webview component to display a web app. Sticking with IE6 just means you have all the hassle of a native app (like needing to make sure IE6 gets installed and stays installed on every machine) with none of the benefits.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#129

Post by robbrown451 »

What I don't understand is why doesn't Microsoft provide an upgrade that actually allows IE6 (and possibly other versions) to run as they did, on a site specific basis. This way corporations that need some IE6 only app can run them forever, but their employees can still use the rest of the web unhampered by this. Having it possible to run multiple "virtual browsers" within a single browser would also thrill web developers who want to test their sites on all the browsers without having to have multiple machines.

Yes it would be a bit bloated, but the default install would probably be the one that just ran the latest version.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#130

Post by danudey »

commandar wrote: post #120
veidr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big corporate is such a weird space. On one hand, you're right: big corporate will block this, and that will limit the impact, and thus I think a lot of the hallelujah in this thread is over-optimistic. But MS would never force such consequential upgrades on those customers; that's part of why MS owned and still owns the "enterprise" market (decreasingly lucrative though it may be). On the other hand, I doubt that co…

>One of the things that really blew my mind this year was a large ($40MM) software development project I became familiar with (a worldwide internal system for a multinational corporation) that concluded -- in 2011 -- and required MSIE 6. MSIE 6! Doesn't even run on MSIE 7, much less any modern browser. This happens all the time at the hospital I work at. I'm constantly flummoxed by how behind the times software vendo…

I worked at a hospital in 2008, where, mid-summer, the IT department had just approved the use of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (which was released in August 2004).

Note that this doesn't mean they were actually going to start deploying it. It just meant that they were open to the idea of doing so. I'd be surprised if they'd actually upgraded any machines yet.

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