Apple dumping IE?!?

I hope they will... I use chimera all the time.. it's a fast browser but feels some times incomplet, but with apple supporting it that would change I'm sure.
 
I really think Apple will dump IE soon too. All signs point to it.

Navigator has come a long way very quickly. And who knows what Apple is doing with the Gecko rending engine, deep inside Cupertino. Apple's browser may not be based on Navigator, but just on the Gecko engine. Apple could develop it's own front end, as that leaves only the rendering engine as the open source component.

If Apple uses the current Navigator front end, it will have to make the source code available, which is not really in Apple's style.

I do hope Apple is actually working off of the Navigator code, as it will give them a leg up in development time, and the collaboration between the mothership and the open source developers would be a boon. Any help Apple can get maintaining it's software for free is definitely a plus.

Then again, maybe Apple hired David Hyatt to work on some other project completely unrelated to a Gecko based browser, and just plans to use Navigator as is instead of IE.

Either way, IE is slow, buggy, and is woefully neglected under OS X. 3 years ago it was the best browser on any platform, and Microsoft has seemingly completely abadoned development on it, leaving it in maitenance mode.
 
Apple seems to be trying to dump Microsoft altogether, given the recent scores of Switch ads and the lack of Microsoft's support for OS X. Windows recently got WMP 8, and we're still stuck with 7. It appears that we'll soon be switching browsers as well.

Could this mean that we may finally be blessed with another Apple-branded browser? :D

This is very exciting news. If we can get Chimera developed to the final stages, we can also be certain that IE will be history.
 
Sorry to interrupt here, but 'lack of MS support for OS X'? There's MS Office v. X, a completely carbonized version of Office. It has some features over MS Office 2001 mac:edition and even some over Office XP. If you call MS' support for OS X lacking, look at Adobe. It took them half a year longer to finish Photoshop 7.

If - at all - it was Microsoft critizising Apple for 'lack of support for OS X' which started Apple parting ways with Microsoft. And if that's a good thing or a bad thing, we'll see later, as for now Microsoft is still selling Office v. X.

Whether or not MS is developing further versions of Internet Explorer for Mac OS X doesn't really matter, as there are plenty of good alternatives, but as of yet, there is not one good alternative for Office v. X that has good compatibility.

I don't want Apple to push another browser instead of IE. I want Apple to include a crop of new builds of all good browsers around with Mac OS X and ask the user which one to use, when the user first wants to use the web.

To push their own browser (or another if they don't make one of their own) means to neglect others.

If Apple thinks there is no decent OS X browser, they should create their own iApp for it, but there's enough, no need to 'choose' one. Shouldn't Apple be pushing people to the fact that there IS choice in software today? The attitude of 'there can be only one' should be restricted to Microsoft and Highlander sequels.
 
I agree. I think installing multiple browsers is the smart thing to do. And I think it's about *$%&ing time that Apple dropped M$.... the biggest problem will be dropping Office. Perhaps an Office-compatible mutation of AppleWorks is in the.... works?
 
openoffice.org perhaps?

Originally posted by adambyte
I agree. I think installing multiple browsers is the smart thing to do. And I think it's about *$%&ing time that Apple dropped M$.... the biggest problem will be dropping Office. Perhaps an Office-compatible mutation of AppleWorks is in the.... works?
Click to expand...
 
I think it's perfectly fair to say that MS has abandoned the Mac since they've carbonized all their apps, but they haven't actually developed any of them. Heck, they didn't even bother to put a real cocoa interface on IE when they carbonized it, and Office v.X featured almost no new features beyond the ones it got for free from the OS (i.e. Quartz).

I would say that Adobe's support of OS X, while it took longer coming, is at a quite acceptable level and far superior to Microsoft's. We get the same versions of all their apps as Windows users, at the same time as Windows users, with actual new features. MS just charged everyone $200 to use the same app with the same feature set on a new OS.
 
Originally posted by viktor
I hope they will... I use chimera all the time.. it's a fast browser but feels some times incomplet, but with apple supporting it that would change I'm sure.
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Chimera is the best browser on Mac OS X so far. I really like the tabbed new window feature. Probably why it is so fast with multiple sites open at once since it doesn't have to resort to system calls for new windows for each web page. There are no MDI windows in OS X either which is also perhaps why Office v.X appears slower than Windows equivalents of Office.
 
I don't think that it would be a good idea for Apple to develop its own webbrowser!

Just think of all the webdevelopers who don't have macs at their workingplaces or at home. And if they don't have the ability to test their webseites on a Mac, most Webseites will look ugly or messed up on the Apple Browser, as long as it is not 100% MS IE compatible.
 
I disagree. If Apple did develop their own browser, it would almost certainly be based on the mozilla open-source project which is the basis for chimera, netscape and even - to some extent - internet explorer. so compatibility would be not as much of an issue as you'd think.
The open source mozilla follows the guidelines of the W3C (world wide web consortium) a lot more closely than MS ever does.
 
Apple has been very loud about their support of Standards, so any developer who follows the standards shouldn't need a Mac in-house (they may use it as an excuse to buy one, though ;) ).
As far as the multiple browser idea goes, I think it is always a good idea to know what your choices are. However, most users (AKA potential switchers) don't know anything about the advantages and/or disadvantages of browsers other than IE. I spend much of my time helping college/High School/Grade School students, teachers, adults, and senior citizens how to use computers - and a surprising number of them don't even know about Netscape anymore. Your average computer user, in my experience, knows IE for Windows, and assumes that everything that doesn't workthere doesn't work anywhere else.
Now, maybe if Apple gave these choices with a list of at least the advantages of each (in terms an average user can understand) then the choices will be a good idea. Otherwise, the people who tell me "using a Mac is confusing, I don't know where anything is and nothing makes sense, Windows is simpler/easier" would be right when it comes to the current #1 use of computers in homes and computer labs: Browsing.
 
The only browser that displays my web site correctly so far is Chimera because it follows HTML guidelines so well. ;) I've compared a lot of pages in IE and Chimera, and to be frank, there is no noticable difference. There are some areas where Chimera lags behind IE right now, though, such as managing the cache, Java support is also sub-par, and Flash and Quicktime loading are a bit buggy. With Apple behind the project, though, it could become the best browser out there. No doubt in my mind.

iBrowse (No, not eyebrows. ;)), here we come. :D
 
Here's my take on the current browsers available: (Correct me on these if I'm wrong; I don't want to be missing out on any good web browsers!)

IE - Too basic. I can't filter images, or script actions. It seems like it's designed for the benefits of advertisers and spammers rather than the users.

OmniWeb - Slow, but allows the advanced user to filter things like images, scripts, cookies, and all that other evil stuff on the Internet.

iCab - I really wish this would get developed more, because it stands to be the best. It's customization features are mind blowing, but it currently has too many rendering and stability issues to be completely usable.

Chimera - It seems to work quite well, since it's based on Mozilla, but like IE, it's just too basic. I wouldn't be surprised if this changes in time, though, since the browser's Cocoa interface is being built from the ground up.

Mozilla - This one has gotten much better lately. Pre 1.0 versions were completely unusable for a number of reasons. The 1.1 build seems quite nice (I'm using right now,) but I would like to be able to filter images based on URL patterns, rather than just by originating server. Oh well. One complaint isn't too bad.
 
Originally posted by wtmcgee
openoffice.org perhaps?
Click to expand...

Good point, we need a good build of OpenOffice.

For browser, they are more than enough excellent browsers... as long as you don't Java !
 
I still think that the best alternative right now, Chimera, is a little unstable on my iMac G4 after the x.2 update. Darn, what did I do wrong? But even this slighty "under powered" browser is still a dream to use. I am so addicted to the "Open in new tab" function that I don't think browsing experience can be the same ever, without it.

Chimera rocks. Until someone comes along and toppli it with something better. IE... pass... they can have that few MB back. I don't need it.
 
plastic: try one of the latest nightly builds, if you haven't already. They are now building under 10.2. There's a really cool app called Chimera Knight that will automatically download and install the latest nightly builds for you. Even backs up the current one in case of a problem.
 
I love Chimera, but what I'd love to see is for the Mozilla team to release a version of Mozilla with just the browser and none of the other bundled applications that I simply do not use. There is no technical reason that prevents it. It's an option for OS 9 and below users and Windows users, so what about use OS X users?!
 
Originally posted by Dradts
I don't think that it would be a good idea for Apple to develop its own webbrowser!

Just think of all the webdevelopers who don't have macs at their workingplaces or at home. And if they don't have the ability to test their webseites on a Mac, most Webseites will look ugly or messed up on the Apple Browser, as long as it is not 100% MS IE compatible.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree as a web designer, though I use my Mac when designing. I usually test on IE, and double check in Netscape to make sure everything looks good. However, every site I've designed harldy sees anything but IE. Most are hit by IE 85% (was the lowest), many are hit 90+% of the time. On one site I had more hits from Konqueror and iCab than Netscape, and Lynx almost had more! Below is the visit stats by browser from a fire department site I do, for the past 90 days.

IE 1856
(known robots) 1238
(likely robots) 198
WebTV 158
Konqueror 87
iCab 63
Mozilla 41
Netscape 19
Lynx 17
(unknown) 8

To the average person, they use what comes on the computer. Everybody knows Internet Explorer. A few know of Netscape, some think AOL is a browser, and a few of us Internet Junkies still use Lynx. Getting rid of IE would IMHO hurt Apple because people know the name, and trust it.

Personally I do like the idea of having competition, and definately have a disgust towards Microsoft. However, as a designer I like only having to worry about how it looks on 1 or 2 browsers, makes my life easier. If the world was perfect, everyone would follow standards. It isn't though, and in reality IE is the "assumed" standard of the internet...those numbers above kinda prove it beyond doubt.

If they'd put some energy into tweaking IE on the Mac, they would have the market. A bit more stable, quite a bit faster, etc...that's all it needs. I haven't had the chance to test it on 10.2 yet or on a newer machine. I'm on 10.1.5, IE 5.2.1 on a G3 300 desktop. Netscape is useless due to the turtle like pace, Chimera is unstable, Opera is fast but lacks usability, and OmniWeb is a bit slow and lacks usability.
 
I use IE most of the time, but I also use OmniWeb. I set OmniWeb to be recognized as IE because so many sites are designed for IE. Whether this makes any difference or not I don't know.

I do have Java problems with OmniWeb, so my online banking only gets done with IE.

Oh, and for what's it's worth, I love MS Office on X. Sure, Word is bloated, but I still love it.

Originally posted by mdnky


However, every site I've designed harldy sees anything but IE. Most are hit by IE 85% (was the lowest), many are hit 90+% of the time.
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