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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm perhaps being naive here, but I'm not sure "a simple patch" exists. It could be one of those bugs that requires something non-simple. But I of course have no idea, not having access to the code (nor really even understand the flaw).
of course they want people to buy windows 7 or vista, but it's not like this is the ONLY bug. IE6 has been buggy for it's entire life, who's to say this is the very last time it will need patching?
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.
...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.
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.
No, they should've looked ten years into the past and seen this is what Microsoft does: They get you to write software on their platform and then they fuck you.
Your post seems to suggest that open web standards have only recently been developed. You do realize that even 10 years ago there were open, cross-browser standards? Granted, they were more primitive, but it was still perfectly possible to write web apps in them.
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.
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.
I mean, jeez, they took heat at the time for pushing out IE7 as a critical update.