

 Microsoft Still Chasing the Competition With IE9 - edw519
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Microsoft_Still_Chasing_the_Competition_with_IE9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+(Wired%3A+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))&utm_content=My+Yahoo

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omnigoat
This post makes one incorrect statement, I think:

"And that cuts to heart of why developers and anyone with an interest in the
using the web of the future today has long since lost faith in Internet
Explorer: The competition continues to deliver improvements at a pace that far
outstrips Internet Explorer."

The competitor's products are better, but they were waaay better before IE8
even existed. After IE9, assumedly, they'll still be better, but by far less a
distance. Google is really the only company in the world that can rival
Microsoft's speed in development (when it sets its mind to it). Honestly,
here's what I think happened: Microsoft missed the internet-apps thing. They
sort of grew, and Microsoft didn't notice for a while. Then they exploded and
Microsoft was caught off-guard with a browser the developers didn't like, and
a business strategy that was out-dated. But being Microsoft, and they're not
dumb guys, they started improving their browser and began to write some neat
cloud software (Web Office, anyone?).

You'll notice this thinking in what they concentrate on: To Microsoft, web
apps are where it's at, and javascript speed is important! It makes things run
better. But if you look to web standards, you'll see Microsoft talk about
"real world cases", or however they put it. They don't care about 100%
compliance, they don't have time. They're playing catch-up, and are focusing
on the areas that will make the most difference first. It's sort of like
Startup 101. My belief is that they'll continue to improve the standards, but
will devote, say, %20 of their efforts to it, until their javascript engine
and css rendering layout engine is humming in tune with V8 and Sunspider.

Maybe afterwards they'll decide to go with full-standards compliance, one
would have to look at the development cost vs. the predicted returns, but it
wouldn't be a terrible idea, really, to woo developers over from other
platforms: "Yeah, our performance is the same, and we're at 100%. You can
develop for us and on us with no problems, assuming the competitors follow the
standards like us".

But that's probably wishful thinking.

~~~
ramanujan
> Google is really the only company in the world that can rival Microsoft's
> speed in development (when it sets its mind to it)

I'm curious -- what MS product specifically are you thinking of here?

I think Apple at a minimum has consistently out-executed Microsoft. Nintendo,
VMWare, and Facebook also all come to mind (along with any other small company
that MS acquired).

The most interesting things from MS I've heard about recently are Project
Natal, Pivot, and Azure.

Are you thinking of something in particular?

~~~
omnigoat
I'm thinking about the (No Internet Explorer) -> Internet Explorer 3.0 jump,
which has been cited before as an example of what Microsoft is capable of when
it suddenly throws the 'code red' flag (ie, Netscape and the internet are
suddenly important). I can also think of Win98 -> Win98SE jump, and Visual
Studio 6 -> Visual Studio 2005 ( _remember_ , they didn't start development on
VS.NET/2003 until around 2000/2001).

Don't mistake speed of releases or popularity or innovation for the speed of
development. Nintendo is a particularly poor example, I think, since I'm
currently working with their tools... they are last-decade. I'm not even
talking about the Wii's capabilities (which are Gamecube-era), I'm talking
about their software: IDEs, compilers, etc. They struck gold with the Wii, but
Microsoft went from (No Console) -> XBox360 within... like, 5 years?
Nintendo's been playing this game for 25+ years, and without the unmitigated
success of the Wii their console division would be bankrupt now (seriously!)

Microsoft's ability to _develop_ (notably, but not limited to) software is
unparalleled save for Google. Innovation, iteration, or popularization are all
different matters.

~~~
bartl
>I'm thinking about the (No Internet Explorer) -> Internet Explorer 3.0 jump

But they didn't build that from scratch, they bought the original Mosaic
codebase.

------
teilo
This, in part, explains why it was a good thing for Google to release Chromium
to the open source community now, rather than later.

Consider: Microsoft could potentially compete in this arena. They have MinWin
now. They could, if they chose, build something roughly equivalent to Chrome
OS. However, they have a problem. Even IE 9 is behind the competition. In its
current incarnation, it is slower than the currently available versions of
Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, in everything except perhaps graphics rendering,
a difference hardly noticeable. As TA notes, it is still playing catchup on
standards. Microsoft boasts an Acid3 score of 32/100, and actually believes
that Acid3 is to blame.

So - what happens when ChromeOS provides a viable alternative to those who are
quite happy to live on the Web, use Microsoft Office Online or Google Docs,
etc.? Whatever is keeping them in Windows?

As I see it, Microsoft has only one alternative: Buckle down and bring IE 9
into the HTML5/CSS3 fold. Pour their reputed brilliance into dramatically
improving their Javascript engine. THEN, perhaps, with MinWin / IE9, they
could go head-to-head with Chrome OS.

But you know what? Say they succeed, and successfully provide a viable
alternative to ChromeOS. Google still wins. Why? Because every browser on the
market is, finally, standards compliant, and a suitable canvas for all the Web
App goodness that Google would like to market to everyone in the world.

~~~
sirrocco
"Microsoft boasts an Acid3 score of 32/100, and actually believes that Acid3
is to blame."

Can we get a quote on that one ? I saw on PDC (it was broadcasted live ) the
presenter saying that IE9 displayed was just their most recent build and that
it will get better. Nothing about Acid3 being to blame.

~~~
thwarted
From [http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-
at...](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-
developers.aspx) which was posted to HN a few days ago:

 _Some standards tests – like Acid3 – have become widely used as shorthand for
standards compliance, even with some shortcomings._

I read this, at the time, as a somewhat whiny "if Acid 3 was a better test,
we'd be able to pass it".

As for the "boasting", they included a screen shot. And to be honest, this
score is so low, I didn't even remember what a 32/100 Acid3 result looked
like, so the screenshot was useful.

------
CWuestefeld
_Microsoft needs to hit a home run with IE9, or the IE franchise is going to
go the way of Geocities._

That's not necessarily true. It could be that the current version(s) of IE are
_good enough_ for what most users need, or at least that the cost of changing
browsers exceeds the benefit. If that's true, then the level of performance
that IE provides will prevail, and the recent standards and performance
achievements of other platforms will just be sales talking points.

HTML 5, etc., does not represent user demands (at least not directly). It
represents what developers want to be able to do. If our users refuse to
provide the requirements for those developers' apps to run, then it's going to
be the developers who have to change.

(I make no judgments about the merits of this, just observing where the
balance of power lies.)

------
msie
Sigh, this browser war will never end. Please MS, just support HTML5. Why
wait?

~~~
tumult
Makes Office and Windows less relevant.

~~~
qeorge
Please explain. This sounds like a kneejerk, snarky comment, but perhaps I'm
wrong.

~~~
tumult
It's much easier to make powerful, cross-platform browser applications when IE
compatibility is not an issue.

I don't think I can stress how important that "much easier" is.

~~~
qeorge
Thanks for elaborating. I don't personally agree that HTML5 is a threat to
Windows or Office, but I see your point.

~~~
bretthoerner
Do you have any reasoning?

Full HTML5 support makes the Windows platform as a whole less important (Note:
I did not say unimportant). When only the web matters you can run OS X or
Chrome OS or Linux and get "the same web". Of course they'd love to stall
that.

~~~
qeorge
I love the internet, but HTML/CSS/Javascript apps that run in browser are not
a panacea. Don't get me wrong - the web has changed the game, but whatever the
de facto HTML standards are is somewhat of a sideshow.

I often feel as though we're cramming certain applications through the filter
of HTML while we wait for native apps to catch up. Google Docs is the
canonical example for me.

Here's what I like about Google Docs, other than being free:

    
    
       - Docs are stored in the cloud, not tied to one machine
       - Collaboration
       - Rapid introduction of new features
    

There's no reason a "dektop app" can't do all of this. iPhone apps are a
perfect example of desktop apps that have taken on many of these defining
features of web apps.

At some point, the web app vs. desktop app argument becomes little more than a
question of whether the browser's Chrome is wrapped around it.

tl;dr: always available broadband is the real revolution.

Worth addressing separately is the idea that MS is attempting to sabotage web
apps by dragging its feet on updating Trident. I hear this a lot.

I'm an Occam's Razor kind of guy. There's myriad reasons to explain this, all
of which are less cloak-and-dagger. Here's a few:

\- IE has a huge userbase, which is slow to upgrade, and IE is deeply
integrated with Windows. This means tons of inertia. Big companies move
slowly.

\- They won't make any more money by implementing HTML5, XHTML, CSS3, or
whatever the currently en vogue standard is, and it would cost a _ton_ of
money.

\- Their customers don't give a shit (extension of the previous point). Those
who do are using another browser already.

\- What web app has put a meaningful dent in Microsoft's revenue?

Good discussion, thanks.

~~~
tumult
Right. I personally think browser apps will become less relevant. The only
reason people are using browser apps is that installation and management of
applications on desktops has historically sucked very badly.

Install/Update/Uninstall is no longer a good metaphor. Something like iPhone
App Store (but not managed by Apple like it is now) or Ubuntu/Debian-esque
package management might be the future.

~~~
ryanpetrich
If Sun wasn't incompetent in this area, Java Web Start could have taken off.

