Apple announced a rebranding of their .Mac service earlier this morning. It’s now called MobileMe and features online versions of Mail, iCal, and Address Book, so you can access your email, calendars, and contacts (watch a demo) from any PC.
Any PC not running IE 6, that is. From the email sent out to .Mac subscribers just a few minutes ago:
To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later.
There’s still a significant number of PCs out there running IE 6, usually corporate machines that need to access intranets or other web apps that only work with that browser. A quick look at the stats for Basecamp’s marketing site shows that 31% of all IE users are using version 6.
So it’s interesting that MobileMe is the first major web application (that I know of, at least) that’s dropped IE 6 support completely. It’s a gutsy move, since Apple’s billing it as a way to access your data from anywhere.
And I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a trend. IE 6 is definitely the most painful browser for us to support – it’s seven years old and doesn’t even fully support the CSS 1.0 standard created in 1996. Microsoft’s done an incredibly poor job of getting users to upgrade. It looks like it’s going to take pressure from big apps like MobileMe to seal the deal.
john herr
on 09 Jun 08or is that the level of the web that most users care to have?
Pete
on 09 Jun 08I was told once that the reason why there are so many versions of IE6 still being used is b/c you have to authenticate your copy of windows to upgrade and there are a lot of pirated versions of the OS out there. Especially in developing countries.
Matt Wiebe
on 09 Jun 08If you think about it, the move makes perfect sense. If you’re in an enterprise situation that has locked you into IE6, odds are that you also have an Exchange server setup. Which means that MobileMe isn’t really necessary for you.
Jorrit
on 09 Jun 08I don’t think that Microsoft is doing an incredibly poor job with the promotion of IE7. There is nothing more they can do. It’s on automatic update for a while, you can even install it with a pirated Windows version, what else can they do? Force you? That would be unacceptable. Microsoft’s money comes from the corporations, not from the pirating consumers.
Pelle
on 09 Jun 08Smart move by Apple. Using it’s own services to encourage users to ditch IE 6 will give more sites the courage to do so which in turn will make Safari and iPhone more valuable since more of it’s features can be used without being custom made for that platform.
Ross
on 09 Jun 08To be honest there’s not much stopping corporate networks from upgrading to IE7 – my college has done a fine job of it and that’s a two man job supporting the entire school network.
I’m glad a large company has had the balls to ditch IE6 – it’s CSS support is flimsy and has been a p[ain for me to develop with for a while.
That being said Microsoft have the money and manpower avaliable to create an IE7 that’s backwards compatible with older OSes (i.e. pre-XP) that “won’t” support IE7. Hell, I’d like to find a way to install IE7 on something like ME just to see what would happen (without the OS-restrictions).
Carry on Apple!
Peter Pistorius
on 09 Jun 08I also hope that this is the start of a trend.
Deano
on 09 Jun 08I don’t think it helps that us Windows 2000 users can’t upgrade to IE7. Then again it doesn’t take that long to install Firefox.
Peter Urban
on 09 Jun 08We’re soft-launching today into private beta supporting FF only at first. So we’re currently going through the huge pain of adding browser support for all mayor browsers and we’ll definitely get to IE6 last (if we don’t decide to drop it in the meantime… we’ll see)
We hope with you Sam, that IE6 will be phased out ASAP.
Sign up for beta at smibs.com if you want to share the ‘pain’ and help us make a better product for (almost) all browsers ;-)
Jin Y
on 09 Jun 08what stops a lot of corporations/government agencies from upgrading to IE7 is not the effort it takes. It’s about supporting ancient legacy web apps. a lot will be broken.
but, i do hope this is a trend.
Splashman
on 09 Jun 08Ah, life without IE6. Assuming that Apple does in fact kickstart upgrades to FireFox, or, um, cross-grades to IE7, that will be one more thing we can thank them for.
I expect Apple to continue to diss Flash as well, and for the same reason. Why support a problematic platform when you’re in the catbird seat?
Here’s one major difference between Apple and Microsoft: When Microsoft has been in this position, they’ve attempted (usually sucessfully) to create “new standards”, which gives them control via licensing. Apple instead pushes true industry standards (e.g., CSS & H.264).
Radoslav Stankov
on 09 Jun 08A great move indeed. For some of the application where I work we dropped the support for IE6 some time ago(at least for the control panels). And we encourage most of our clients not to use IE6. There are numerous benefits from that action.
Is interesting to ask if 37signals is considering something like this for your apps? or Do you see a benefit from such action ?
allan branch
on 09 Jun 08It appears Apple wants intelligent customers. Jobs has always pushed trends. We decided last week to stop supporting IE6 Shameless Link to Blog Article
Tim
on 09 Jun 08It makes sense for them to do that.
For one thing, people subscribing to MobileMe will mainly be Mac users. I’m not sure of the benefits to do so for a PC-only user.
So, of all the Mac users, only a relatively small portion will use MobileMe. (maybe slightly more than .Mac) Out of them only a small portion will need to use it on Windows as well. And out of these people, only very little will be stuck in a situation were they have to use IE6.
Even if many people are still using IE6, I wouldn’t be surprised if a very little number of them would find a problem in that requirement.
Michele
on 09 Jun 08On all of our new projects we try to support IE6, but we don’t guarantee it: it’s not difficult to have an app run on IE6, too, but it’s almost impossible to have it run smoothly… ;)
nowayjose
on 09 Jun 0837 says: A quick look at the stats for Basecamp’s marketing site shows that 31% of all IE users are using version 6.
You just artificially inflated your statistic. 31% of IE users, which is probably around 12 – 18% of your total traffic. And how many of your ‘users’ are on IE6? Probably even less.
A. Casalena
on 09 Jun 08We made a similar decision internally for Squarespace with V5 of our interface (launching in a couple of weeks). You can no longer manage your site using IE6 (though we’re making sure all sites render in IE6, of course).
The interface is just too advanced now to support those users. This also speaks to the sort of person we’d like to cater to. We’re not going to degrade experiences for the top 90% because of the bottom 10%—that’s ridiculous, especially considering that 10% also represents the highest tech support cost and lowest technical competence. Throwing out IE6 is a great thing.
Also—a few months ago we posted in our interface that IE6 will no longer be supported (and we explained why). Guess what? People UPGRADED, and a few even thanked us. Never hurts to ask ;)
JF
on 09 Jun 08nowayjose: 31% of our IE users which is about 38% of our total traffic. Firefox is roughly 52%, Safari roughly 14%.
A. Casalena
on 09 Jun 08Also—I never understood why they didn’t release IE7 as an ActiveX control that could run within IE6. Developers like us could make them install a quick control to make our site work, without breaking others.
Grant
on 09 Jun 08For web apps we basically start out without IE6 support (unless a client requests it) and add it later if enough complaints/requests from users warrant it.
While there are definitely some sites that should try to support as many browsers as they can, it just doesn’t make sense to bend over backwards to support something like IE6 if their aren’t specific needs warranting it.
Bryant Cutler
on 09 Jun 08Actually, I heard that the reason they don’t support IE6 is that IE6 does not support HTTP cookies correctly on two-letter domains (like me.com). Can anybody else confirm/deny that?
SS
on 09 Jun 08@Bryant, that’s hilariously awesome if true.
Kyle
on 09 Jun 08How many iPhone users are using IE6?
Splashman
on 09 Jun 08I’m not arguing, but I’m curious how you reached that conclusion. This report says 25% of iPhone users are Mac owners. Do you know something I don’t?
Again, I’m not arguing, but as a Mac user, I’m curious: Why wouldn’t MobileMe benefit PC-only users?
GeeIWonder
on 09 Jun 08Ouch, very dangerous territory recommending Safari above anything Paypal and so many others are saying is insecure (especially wrt EV stuff). It’d be ridiculously easy to turn this move against Apple.
Also, I’d look again at that 36%—it’s probably too high. Many clients (e.g. bots) use older IE user-agent IDs, so unless you’re doing in-browser verification, I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt.
There are many reasons not to use IE6. MobileMe is not at the top of the list.
Josh N.
on 09 Jun 08http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310676
@SS,@Bryant Cutler: It’s true, but it seems MS fixed it in an update. Who knows how many copies haven’t been updated, though.
John
on 10 Jun 08My latest project currently does not have IE6 support. Although the only real problem with it appears to be the lack of alpha channel support in some of the PNG images which just makes it look a little strange.
But do IE6 users really need to have the site look like it came straight out of Photoshop anyway? The beauty of the standards we have for web development is that the site should still be usable, even if it does look or function exactly the same as it does on more modern browsers.
B.Ackles
on 10 Jun 08It’s 2008, spread the word…
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates/homepage
Mark Lee Smith
on 10 Jun 08Not to be pedantic, but Steve Jobs didn’t announce Mobile Me, it was Phil Schiller. It always amuses me when people use Steve Jobs as an archetype for Apple :).
SS
on 10 Jun 08Thanks Mark, I haven’t actually watched the keynote yet. :) Updated the post to reflect reality.
Tim
on 10 Jun 08@Splashman
I admit I might have jumped a little bit to conclusions before. The fact is that I hadn’t got a chance to watch the demo video before posting, so it wasn’t clear to me that the integration of MobileMe was pretty much identical between Macs and PCs. For example, I didn’t think that iDisk would be integrated in Windows as good as it is on Mac.
I did watch the video now and the offer looks indeed as appealing for PC and for Mac users.
However, I have the feeling that Mac users would still form a big part of the MobileMe users (or at least relatively to the marketshare of each OS) for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Mac users are already very familiar with .Mac and its tight integration into Mac OS. The web-apps, on top of that, are pretty much replicas of their Mac OS desktop counterparts, which will make the Mac users feel at home while on the road.
To me, .Mac was not an easy sell to Mac users already, compared to existing free alternatives (think about the Google options) for most of its features. The same should then be true of MobileMe and probably more true for PC users who, for not being familiar to .Mac, might not really see the benefits of MobileMe and its $99-a-year subscription fee compared to the free options.
All in all, it doesn’t change much the main point that I doubt many users or potential users would find a problem in not being able to use IE6. ;-)
Mike
on 10 Jun 08I hate how we as web developers have to conform to broken web browsers. By broken web browsers, I mean ones that don’t follow standards.
All web developers should just support the standards. If your users complain that your website is broken in IE, then advise them to send Microsoft a bug report. It shouldn’t be our fault that they suck.
Jeffrey Henderson
on 10 Jun 08If I only had access to IE 6 I think I’d kill myself.
Peter Hentges
on 10 Jun 08It seems perfectly fair to not support IE6 on MobileMe; after all, Microsoft didn’t release IE6 for the Mac.
(And, yes, we are all so very glad they didn’t.)
sensei
on 10 Jun 08@ A. Casalena – why don’t apple create a safari active x plugin? ;-) that way, all designers could create true web standards compliant websites, and they’d work in ie. wow.
(Shameless plug for rails video site: http://sensei.coretech.net.au/)
Mark Eagleton
on 10 Jun 08I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a trend, too. More companies who make web based software should jump on this trend.
That was meant to be an obvious hint, by the way.
Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it now. Do it.
kimblim
on 10 Jun 08Obviously all of our (talking about us developers here) lives would be a lot easier if IE6 would just disappear, but there is one thing that most people forget when developing: You don’t develop for a browser, you develop for a user. The user determines the market, and if 30% of the users chooses to use IE6, it would be stupid not to support that browser. Of course there are exceptions, but I would like to see the store owner who wouldn’t allow 30% of shoppers to enter his store. I for one think that Microsoft has done everything possible to encourage the users to upgrade to IE7 – except make it a better browser for the user! The logic behind moving a key UI element like the refresh-button baffles me! If they had released it with the look and feel of IE6, my bet is that most (~90%) users would have switched by now.
Tor Løvskogen Bollingmo
on 10 Jun 08What ‘bout Opera? :-(
Ric
on 10 Jun 08We’re not supporting IE6 either – We plan on only supporting the latest versions of the major browsers.
Anonymous Coward
on 10 Jun 08Lets face it if people are running IE6 their IT Department isn’t doing their job.
Probably have a lazy, incompetent and stuck in their ways IT Department who really deserve to be fired on the spot because they have no good reason not to upgrade
IF YOUR TERRIBLE INTRANET ONLY WORKS WITH IE6 THEN YOU INVESTED IN THE WRONG INTRANET, correct your pissing mistakes
Paul Montwill
on 10 Jun 08I don’t get it why me.com does not work while www.me.com goes through. Kind of lame. Or is it only me?
Gordon
on 10 Jun 08@Paul: You’re right. It appears to be poor DNS management, and it’s sad how many sites suffer this same problem. With small sites I usually chalk it up to them not understanding MX records, but with Apple that’s no excuse.
I too hope everyone starts following this no-IE6 trend. Upgrade, improve, or bugger off.
John Topley
on 10 Jun 08me.com works for me. Redirects to http://www.apple.com/mobileme/
Terry Sutton
on 10 Jun 08In complete support of this. This might sound fascist, but people shouldn’t be using IE at all. If you don’t use firefox you shouldn’t be on the internet.
Ok…...so I should change “might sound fascist” to “will sound fascist”. But I’m sticking to what I said.
Benedict Eastaugh
on 10 Jun 08You don’t sound fascist, you sound like an idiot. Opera’s upcoming 9.5 release and recent WebKit/Safari releases both have better web standards support than Firefox, but people using them “shouldn’t be on the internet”?
Eric
on 10 Jun 08That’s great…. I wish I could drop support for IE6 :)
魔兽私服
on 10 Jun 08好火爆啊，好文章，顶
Michael Geary
on 10 Jun 08@Bryant: “I heard that the reason they don’t support IE6 is that IE6 does not support HTTP cookies correctly on two-letter domains (like me.com).”
me.com is in a three-letter top level domain, so it isn’t affected by IE’s cookie restriction.
IE won’t set cookies for a 2×2 domain, i.e. a two-letter second level domain in a two-letter top level domain with no further subdomain below that. IE7 has the same restriction as IE6; I don’t know about IE8.
http://www.google.com/search?q=two+letter+domain+cookies
For example, IE won’t set cookies for my blog:
http://mg.to/
But it will for HP’s website:
http://hp.com/
website design
on 10 Jun 08Cool. Now can we all (web developers) drop support for IE6 ? PLZ PLZ PLZ :)
smr
on 10 Jun 08Hm; I agree that IE6 should’ve been forced down in the market a long time ago, but I think assuming that an Apple product is going to force Microsoft to start shoving folks off of one of their own products is a bit silly.
Jeremy
on 10 Jun 08I’m currently languishing in a corporate environment that FORBIDS the use of any other browser but IE6. Our “intelligent” IT powers bought into an ERP system that isn’t approved for a modern browser – thus, we stay stuck back in 1996 for now and into the distant future.
I doubt that I am alone with this constraint.
Note to web-app programmers of the world: leveraging browser-specific features is a stupid idea for imbedding functionality into your code.
Ian
on 10 Jun 08HOORAY.
Dave Rutledge
on 10 Jun 08I’m super-jealous of Mobile-Me, and fairly jealous of you guys. We’re at 15% of our total, where you guys are at 12% total.
When it hits 10%, for me, it triggers “new things no longer need to look perfect for you” and when it hits 5% it triggers “I don’t care about you beyond most the basic functionalities.” Sub-1% equals “I likely won’t bother to look” but we’re a long way from that unless Microsoft forces an across-the-board push as a security fix.
Scott
on 10 Jun 08What a relief if IE 6 would die off!
Sam Granieri
on 10 Jun 08I wish that IE 6 would die a horrible death. Cheers to Apple!
Matt Radel
on 10 Jun 08Dude, I’m stoked. There’s some poetic justice in Apple making a big move to remove the rather large, painful, toxic thorn from our sides that is IE 6.
Still though, I maintain that IE 6 is an evil beast with a source of power fueled by the gates of hell. One of us is going to have to man up (not it!) and find the source to kill it. After that, all instances of IE 6 will shrivel and die.
Josh A.
on 10 Jun 08@Terry Any browser that passes Acid2 is an excellent browser. However, Opera 9+ and the latest build of WebKit both pass Acid3; FF3 doesn’t. FF is a great browser, but they need to pass Acid3. Any half-decent web developer can easily write sites to work in Acid2-passing browsers. So to say just Firefox users are okay is stupid. Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE8 are all great browsers – from standards support and interface – it’s really just a matter of personal preference; with IE7 and below out the picture, you have no need to complain.
Lazlo
on 10 Jun 08Yeah, well, here’s how this actually works in the real world:
On the open web, IE is a “web browser”. On tens of thousands of intranets, IE is a “web browser” and an application platform.
With Microsoft’s hearty encouragement, enterprise customers have spent billions of dollars developing applications for that platform. Because most of these applications were designed during the IE6 era (which lasted over five years), and were written for a captive audience that was guaranteed to have IE6, they frequently rely on behaviors specific to IE6. Web-focused developers will sneer at this, but application development isn’t web development. If you’re writing Mac applications, you don’t ignore all the Mac-specific features and APIs available to you on the off chance you might want to do a Windows version someday.
Along comes IE7. It can’t peacefully coexist with IE6 so enterprise customers have two options: stick with IE6, or test/fix every app that relies on IE to ensure that it works under IE7. And the latter path requires another choice: you either limit the fixes to stuff that works in both IE6 and IE7, or you get to deploy all the application changes simultaneously, while deploying IE7 to every single desktop in the entire organization at the exact same time. And if anything mission-critical breaks as a result, you get to back it all out again. Every last application, every last desktop.
Not a lot of orgs have hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars to burn on development and QA just so they can have the exact same business functionality on a slightly more up-to-date platform.
James
on 10 Jun 08This all brings back fond memories of the GOPHP5 initiative.
Brett
on 10 Jun 08Actually Mailchimp dropped IE 6 support with the new release of their web app (which, btw, absolutely rocks).
Mr B. Gates
on 10 Jun 08Basically suggest to everyone they get a decent web browser, have to fly to play Golf in Ireland.
B.
Shawn Oster
on 10 Jun 08Microsoft has done a great job of putting out the good word that people should be on IE7, it’s on Windows Update, it’s on all new computers, etc. Problem is these massive companies running on decades old technology by a shoe string. I have huge clients that still require everything to run on Win98 and 2000, seriously. Thousands of computers… Win98… it’s like my hell.
I applaud Apple dropping IE6 but it’s not that gutsy a move, most people that will be using the service are probably already running Safari or IE7 or FF simply because they are more than likely Apple users, which at this stage tend to be early adopters and not large corporation users.
Now, someone like Adobe or Microsoft or HP dropping IE6 support, now that would take some balls.
Juan Pablo
on 12 Jun 08IE6 is a total pain! We just launched a new application and our statics says that 2,114 people has it, thats the 76.07% of our total traffic. I cant believe ms launched such a buggy product.
Len
on 13 Jun 08If everyone from the get go would have just ignored IE6, that would have forced microsoft to adapt to the same standards as everyone else. Why should they change if everyone keeps developing fixes for their screwball browsers?
Anonymous Coward
on 13 Jun 08I can’t believe I work for one of the large corporations who are still using IE6 (as standard), because some apps are not compatible with IE7. – The crazy thing is, I can’t believe the software policy is to support a particular browser (IE6) rather than web standards themselves.
When we finally upgrade to IE7 the software policy will be to support IE7. – The problem will start all over again when IE8 is released – most likely breaking support for some sites written specifically for IE7.
Good on you Apple for making a stance for proper web standards, and ditching this terrible browser!
- Although looks like I’ll have to buy an iPhone now to check my mobile me (.mac) email in work.
This discussion is closed.