09.19.10
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Marketing Comprises Lies, Angers Mozilla, Mocked by Analyst, and Bound to Fail
Summary: Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is marketed using misleading claims that Microsoft has not corrected and the decision to make it incompatible with Windows XP is insanely stupid
IN MANY RECENT posts about IE9 [1, 2, 3] we showed that deception merely continued as it had started months ago [1, 2, 3]. Reality is not so important to Microsoft as long as lies it tells sell and do not harm sales. It’s as simple as that. It works better for shareholders. For users and customers? Not so much. For competitors? Hell no (this is false advertising and we mentioned this before, so no need to go through it again).
“A lot of proprietary software has already died on Windows due to Microsoft’s despicable actions.”Microsoft is making misleading and arguably false claims (“misleading” is the polite term to use, maybe “inaccurate” too) and Microsoft conveniently assumes a Windows-only world (especially when it comes to hardware acceleration, e.g. with Microsoft DirectX). Mozilla should pay attention to this and realise that Windows is a hostile platform and should therefore not be treated as a higher priority than GNU/Linux, for example. A lot of proprietary software has already died on Windows due to Microsoft’s despicable actions.
Some say that Microsoft’s comparative analysis of Web browsers is not up to date and that Microsoft has not corrected out-of-date information, either. The latter is even more shameful because it means that Microsoft is deliberately misleading. Is anybody shocked by this? IE9 fake 'leaks' were mentioned here about a month ago. That too was an example of dishonesty for the sake of hype.
One cited article states: “Microsoft created some controversy on its IEBlog this past weekend with a post claiming that the IE9 beta release was “the first and only browser to deliver full hardware acceleration of all HTML5 content.”
“Mozilla chucks Roc at Microsoft’s new hardness,” says The Register:
Microsoft has claimed that Internet Explorer 9 is the only browser offering “full” hardware acceleration.
And Mozilla has accused its old rival of talking nonsense.
With a Friday blog post, Microsoft web graphics program manager Ted Johnson laid out a trio hardware acceleration “phases,” before telling the world that only IE9 does all three. “With IE9, developers have a fully-hardware accelerated display pipeline that runs from their markup to the screen,” Johnson said.
To quote another headline, “Microsoft has made IE9 a ‘non event’ for enterprise says analyst”:
The 800 pound software gorilla Microsoft has rendered its new web browser IE9 virtually useless for enterprise users. This is the conclusion drawn by a senior ICT market analyst who believes that the software giant has completely missed the mark with its new browser.
Watching the Microsoft boosters talk about IE9 is especially regrettable. It is hardly coverage and more like promotion. Mary Jo Foley published a Q&A and her colleague at ZDNet says (based on readers) that “No IE9 on XP is a mistake Microsoft will regret” (hello… people can run Firefox, Chrome, Opera and just about any other Web browser on XP, so Microsoft’s Vista 7 rush may backfire rather than spur sales of Vista 7).
“Microsoft’s IE9 incompatible with widely-used Windows XP” says this headline, so they might not buy Vista 7 but rather get the latest Web browser from the competitors. Besides, as IE9 is just aping Chrome, why not just use the real thing? “IE6 Screws IE9″ says one last article about IE9. This smells like a problem in the making. What on Earth was Microsoft thinking when it ignored compatibility with prior versions of Windows? It’s just common sense, is it not? █
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