Originally posted by Risto:Weird comparisson. Internet Explorer ignored the market for 6 years.
Also they will still be behind the rest. Although the hardware accelerated rendering is pretty cool, the Firefox nightlies already copied that.
Problem is the slow release cycle. They should've released a version each half year for all Windows systems (including XP). Now only a part can get IE9, a lot of people are still on XP.
It's like Microsoft saying that Linux and Mac are their biggest competition. Wrong - IE6 and XP are their competition, and while Vista and 7 and IE7 and IE8 are good enough for next-gen usage, they made something so universally accepted by just those who aren't exactly up with what's happening in the tech world and a very reliable OS, that people just won't leave it alone - they have to use it. When people here want to use my computer they ask where the big blue E is. That's the internet to people. I know my dad wouldn't change from 98 for about ten years and when he went to XP he loved it.
When you ask them what OS they're on...what's an OS? I think they're more worried for the half-release per year is people are gonna get sick of being forced to upgrade every so often; but they upgrade their word processor, their iTunes and whatever else they use, so it's gonna be effectively backfiring on MS and the rest of us who want to see new technologies, but the noobs hold it back for us so we can't see the latest from big companies because they have to support legacy customers. Even though Vista and 7 are coming pre-installed on newer systems, customers are still asking for XP - maybe not 2000 but businesses might do - because that's what they know, that's what they've been bought up on for the last ten years and just try giving them Linux - that's not Windows, I don't have my solitaire game or Notepad available. You do, but you have to use your brain, not a start menu to find it. Too hard.
What I'm saying is if the users of XP haven't updated from IE6 in about ten years, chances are they're not gonna rush out for IE9. And accelerated hardware rendering...we know what it means, but how many of them would know what it means - and unless it stopped Facebook or MySpace or YouTube from working or doing what they do, then there's gonna be complaints - so yet again it's Microsoft, those users and the average end-user stopping it from going ahead with bigger future sights. Web developers, to support those hostage to IE6 have to code their sites to keep them working with IE6 rather than lose support, technically and virtually, totally.
The quicker bigger sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google, Gmail, eBay, PayPal - I could go on - lose support for IE6 and older browsers the better.
