[netburnr]

Originally Posted by Ambrosius

I suspect MS could put Apple out of the computer business pretty easily if it wanted to

Bwhahahahahahahahha

Thanks I needed a good laugh.

[Tritian]

As someone who does web dev for a living, MSIE is the surge of the internet. It laughs in the face of almost every standard. It handles everything WAY different then it should, and is a constant source of angst for me and my fellow developers.

Everything I code, literally, takes twice as long to get working under IE due to the plethora of CSS and JS bugs and inconsistencies. IE7 didn't help matters either. Besides being FUGLY, it retains many of the same disregard for standards that it's predecessor had.

Firefox is 10x better. Also, Firebug is an awesome plugin for web dev.

[Ambrosius]

But for the average consumer, for whom MSIE is completely intuitive, automatic and "invisible" (and when it breaks its the web dev's fault! ) -- it's a wonder.

[ELPIRATA]

I seem to remember that Bill Gates has a big amount of apple shares

[Jump]

And he also has stock in every other enemy. He is retiring anyway. The retirement video put out was pretty damn hilarious.

[Tritian]

Originally Posted by Ambrosius

But for the average consumer, for whom MSIE is completely intuitive, automatic and "invisible" (and when it breaks its the web dev's fault! ) -- it's a wonder.

Please show me how MSIE is more 'intuitive, automatic, and invisible' then firefox?

I think you're just old and afraid of change. =)

[netburnr]

Or a microsoft employee maybe. Well maybe not, I've heard even MS employees use FF at work.

[Ambrosius]

I'm not talking about me. I use MSIE because I can't be bothered changing from something that works good enough -- not because I'm afraid of change.

But I'm talking about marketing to consumers. MSIE (and Windows) is there when you open the box and plug in your new Gateway or Dell. It automatically updates itself (after saying "please" very nicely). It always surfs you over to Gooogle, Yahoo and CNN very reliably. It blocks annoying pop-ups if you want it to. You don't have to think about it very much at all, you plug in and use it.

I'm not talking about whether it compares to the technical verisimilitude of Firefox (or whaverever). I'm talking about consumerism -- not geekism.

You can rail all you want about Microsoft. They do marketing right and they undestand the pulse of the average-joe consumer. Winning marketshare in the personal computing market is not about technology -- it's about marketing.

[GrimGriz]

Or about tricking IBM into having to install your OS on all it's computers and just riding the wave from there...