

After Google hack, Microsoft asks users to abandon IE6, XP - there
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/microsoft-wants-you-to-ditch-windows-xp-and-ie6-for-security.ars

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eli
This isn't new. It's not like Microsoft is happy that people still use IE6.
Can you imagine being stuck on the team that writes security updates for that
aging codebase?

I mean, jeez, they took heat at the time for pushing out IE7 as a _critical
update_.

~~~
geocar
You don't actually mean to suggest we should feel sorry for Microsoft do you?

It's not like they didn't do this to themselves, and _on purpose_ no less.
Stopping development on MSIE stopped the upgrade cycle, and the fact is: It is
easier to upgrade when you do it every week than when you wait a few years.

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jsz0
Good example of how far reaching bad choices can be for a company. IE6 had a
quirky embraced & extended implementation of web standards and, at the time,
ActiveX was still being actively pushed as an Internet lock-in to the Windows
platform. Almost a decade later we're still dealing with the fallout from it
because many corporate web apps are still tied to IE6.

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rbanffy
IIRC, South Korea is absolutely dependent on IE for all banking and
e-commerce. What will _they_ do?

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joe_the_user
Wow,

[http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/10/not-funny-60-still-
using-...](http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/10/not-funny-60-still-using-ie6-in-
south-korea/)

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ct
Instead of asking users to abandon XP/IE6 - why not just issue a simple patch
for the flaw? Of course that would mean less sales of Win7, etc. which I guess
is the real reason they're asking users to abandon it parlaying the security
situation into their advantage.

~~~
tereno
Unfortunately that's what they've been doing for years and years now.. IE 6 is
definitely reaching its end of life and companies that depend on it are
unfortunate. Probably at the time, they never thought of designing a system
that would be independent of the platform. All new PCs come with IE 7 or 8.
Applications that only run on IE 6 would mean they would only run on Win XP -
companies would have to upgrade as any new computer that they purchase will
most likely be incompatible with their application based on IE 6.

~~~
rbanffy
They are not unfortunate. They are just poorly managed.

It never looked like Microsoft would support IE6 forever. You should always
plan to upgrade your software or you will end up maintaining vintage hardware
because it's the only thing that runs your vintage software.

Not that it's not fun to maintain old computers - I keep a collection of
machines from the late 70's through mid-to-late 90's - but it's no fun if your
business depends on them working reliably.

Computers get pretty temperamental in their teens.

~~~
tereno
When you're a business who's non-technical, you probably wouldn't know a thing
about upgrade. All you cared would be minimal cost for maximum ROI. I would
agree they are poorly managed - some people assume IT is easy. Clearly, it's
not.

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megamark16
Why not just abandon Microsoft all together? :-)

~~~
eli
I would assume the vast majority of people using IE6 are stuck with it because
they need to use some crappy old web app that requires it.

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yardie
I guess the big bags of money aren't big enough anymore.*

*Refers to Microsoft's continued call to EOL IE6. Until a major company complains they have a huge ERP application that only runs in IE6. And then tosses Microsoft a few million $ to keep patching it.

~~~
rbanffy
...and congratulations to all those who used Microsoft development tools to
build such wonderful application that cannot be made to work on anything but a
specific version of IE...

I hope they now know how bad is the taste of vendor lock-in.

~~~
tdavis
So you chastise other programmers for writing business applications for the
dominant operating system, using a framework that allowed OS-level integration
that was in no way available at the time (and in many ways still isn't)?

You're right, they should have just looked 10 years into the future and
started writing full web apps using open technologies. Except that would have
cost orders of magnitude more than everything they've had to pay in IE6
support costs up to now, _because they would have had to invent them all_.

It's easy to judge the past from the perspective of the present.

~~~
rbanffy
Actually, it was pretty obvious that although Microsoft Windows was the
dominant OS of the time, it would not be in that position forever. You have to
plan your software in a way it's easy to port it to whatever you will be
running.

You know... There was a time OS/2 was the future.

Also, they could keep their apps modular (unlike what the Visual Studio code
generators would give you) so that you could strip the IE-only part when
required. Prefering Java over ActiveX and JavaScript over VBScript would also
help a lot.

~~~
rbanffy
Good morning, Microsoft employees...

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fjabre
Users don't need to get rid of XP. Microsoft needs to get rid of Ballmer.

~~~
michaelcampbell
Or both. I'm actually using XP still, mainly because I have some older
hardware on which it runs ok, and I'm a victim of the reality of the economy
and Win 7, even if it ran ok on said hardware, is a luxury I can't afford
right now.

But your second point is spot-on. In the 10 years Ballmer's been the head, the
stock has done essentially nothing. He's a train wreck, and a sociopathic
scary one at that.

