M$ Ends Development of Internet Explorer for the Mac

according to this CNet.com article. There will be no IE 6 for the Mac, Microsoft told CNet, but IE 5 will be maintained for the near future. In other words, there will be no new features added to IE for the Mac but it should continue to work for some time.

M$ told CNet that Apple's web browser Safari was to blame, at least in part, claiming that Apple's access to the operating system gives Apple too much of an advantage to compete with--not just an edge, mind you, but an advantage so strong that even the mighty M$ can't compete. What hypocrisy! Didn't M$ recently announce that it is dropping the standalone version of IE for Windows and integrating IE into Windows? So, the monopolist M$ is admitting publicly that even they believe that their move is anti-competitive. A monopolist can't legally do such things but M$ also recently proved in its antitrust trial that that doesn't matter much in the end.

So should Mac users care? Afterall, Safari is an excellent web browser and the latest OmniWeb 4.5 may be even better in some ways. But despite this, many Mac users still use IE as a large number of hits on Macs Only! attests. This may be partly due to IE coming bundled with every Mac OS in recent history, partly due to IE being an excellent web browser and partly due to M$'s disdain for standards other than those it creates by force of its monopoly. The latter should concern Mac users but the continued development of a Mac version of IE would probably not make much of a difference one way or the other in the long run.

We won't miss IE. We simply say, shame on you mighty M$.