# No more M$ IE for Mac

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-more-m-ie-for-mac/182753>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [June 18, 2003, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-more-m-ie-for-mac/182753 "2003-06-18T18:07:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![5\_time\_champ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/5/278dde/32.png) [@5\_time\_champ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5_time_champ)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-more-m-ie-for-mac/182753/1 "2003-06-18T18:07:34Z")

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Microsoft announced last week that it is halting development of future Macintosh versions of its Internet Explorer browser, citing competition from [Apple Computer’s Safari](http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-1017126.html) browser.

Not bad news really, I switched from IE first to Omni, then to Safari some time ago. The Tabbed Window feature in Safari is great.

In what is probably the most ironic comment of this young century

> [@](#):
>
> Microsoft felt that customers were better served by using Apple’s browser, noting that Microsoft does not have the access to the Macintosh operating system that it would need to compete.

:rolleyes:

Well, yes, software companies could make better products if they could have better access to the operating system.:smack:

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**Author:** ![modro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@modro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/modro)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2003, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-more-m-ie-for-mac/182753/2 "2003-06-18T18:24:46Z")

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Except that Safari is actually based on the open source KHTML (Konqueror) browser from KDE (A Linux GUI).

Apple basically just polished up the open source rendering engine, dumped their improvements back into the open source community, and wrapped it all in an Apple-style GUI.

Losing MSIE for the Mac isn’t really a great loss. I’ve been using Safari almost exclusively, and it is definitely the better browser. It has a smaller footprint, is a whole hell of a lot faster, and offers tabbed browsing, which is a signifigant feature when one uses a lot of message boards, such as myself.

MS is also killing all of the other stand alone versions of IE, including the Windows versions. I guess the reason is that they are combining it more with Windows or something.

This is not to say that they have ceased making the current version of IE unavailable, just that there will be no new versions.