Microsoft Ends IE on the Mac

ron_ivi writes "Microsoft is to cease IE support for Apple's Mac on Dec 31st of this year." And with this change, every mac on the internet will become even more secure than their Windows based counterparts. CT Deja Vu 'eh? Sorry.

Re:Not secure...

[frodo from middle ea]

Just to play the devil's advocate.

How does an insecure application (which I don't doubt IE is ), with no hooks in to the kernel space (unlike IE on windows), make mac insecure ?

For argument sake, if IE/Safari/Opera/Firefox all have same # of vulnerabilities in their mac versions. Will they not be equally secure or insecure ?

This is obviously a strong contrast against IE on windows v/s Opera/Firefox on Windows, as IE seems to work a lot in OS or kernel space.

Re:Give 'em a break

[generic-man]

My point is that IE/Mac is more secure than Safari. IE/MacOSX was a lousy Carbon job so it's not tied into any framework besides Carbon. In much the same way as any malware app on Windows can embed an IE control to download files, ads, rootkits, etc., any Mac app can embed Safari to do the same thing. I agree that a WebKit app can do much less damage than an IE/Windows app assuming everyone's system is patched up, since most Windows users run as Administrator all the time, but both Safari and IE/Windows have had flaws that opened up users' systems in unexpected ways.

IE/Mac by contrast has just sat there for years, untouched by even long-time Mac users, never used by even IE-only web developers, because of its lousy quality as a browser.

Re:Would you like that article in English?

[tpgp]

Ok, so you're right. There, that's not something you see on a slashdot post very often, is it?

Nope :-) You're obviously a gentleman!

I guess our argument comes down to whether an architecture really is safe. Maybe IE's architecture is just unsafe because the current lines of attack are developed to target its architecture?

No, I think IE's architecture is unsafe therefore lines of attack were developed to target it...

Embedded into the O/S and activeX are a good starting point for things for MS to fix.

As a programmer, I'm fairly bias when I say this but hackers are very resourceful. I do not doubt their abilities to target different applications when it suits them.

True - and I'm sure that Firefox will recieve more hacker attention as it grows more popular (it allready has) - I just don't think that will translate into more exploitable vulnerabilities.

Uninstalling Mac IE

[rjamestaylor]

Luckily uninstalling IE on the mac is a simple drag and drop in the trash can away.

True, and coming from a Windows background this was of particular joy to discover. Amazing what happens when business rules don't get in the way of computer owner preferences. (However, I haven't and wouldn't want to try to remove safari to see if Apple allows it so easily.)