Antitrust Case Over, Microsoft Ties IE 10 To Win 8 519
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by
samzenpus
from the same-as-it-ever-was dept.
from the same-as-it-ever-was dept.
deadeyefred writes "With the last vestiges of Microsoft's U.S. antitrust consent decree expiring earlier this year, the company is again tying its browser tightly to Windows. In pre-release versions of IE 10 and Windows 8, IE 10 cannot be uninstalled and is required to enable the new 'Metro'-style apps."
No longer a monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
IE's market share isn't what it used to be. Neither is Window's market share for that matter.
Incredibly Low Burden of Proof (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
From T (useless) FA:
For example, before we turned off IE 10, we changed the default privacy setting from allowing some cookies to completely blocking all cookies. We then turned the browser off, rebooted, and IE 10 appeared to have completely disappeared from the PC. But when we went back into the settings, turned IE 10 back on, and rebooted again, the browser was back -- but with our customized settings, not the default. That would appear to indicate that Microsoft doesn’t really remove the browser entirely, but rather just hides it – with customized settings and all.
OMFG! A conspiracy unmasked! User settings aren't deleted!
So, because IE doesn't delete your settings it isn't being removed? By this same stupid logic we can determine that almost no modern software is ever actually removed.
I'm quite astounded with the depth of these morons' investigation.
Re:I applaud Microsoft their tenacity. (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't hurting, but we've had some 10 years during which MS was under the watchful eye of the DoJ. I expect that had they not been under such "surveillance" then the last 10 years, and the current state of the industry, would be very different.
Microsoft is retreating to patent suits, as they noted in 1998, to attack Linux now so we're not remotely safe from future anti-competitive acts.
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's stupid to say that Microsoft cannot have a rendering engine on their OS that is required to be there by other parts of the OS.
I am more than welcome, I'm sure (hey look! a Bingy firefox!), to download my own browser of choice and use it. It just won't be used for the parts of the OS that require their own rendering engine. Which makes sense; how can MS make sure that Firefox would render Metro style UI apps correctly? They HAVE to provide something to render. The fact that it's the same engine as renders webpages is, in my opinion, reusing something they already had developed. Makes sense to me.
If they actually forced web browsing use it and didn't let you install Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc.... that'd be different.
Re:I applaud Microsoft their tenacity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit to all 3 points.
The OS is a kernel plus core system libraries. It has ZERO relationship to how the output is displayed. Which is why I not only should be able to run KDE and AfterStep under Windows, I can.
What I CANNOT do is run Internet Explorer on Linux. So what if it's compiled for another OS and I don't have the source? I don't have the source for Solaris-x86 Oracle but I CAN run that under Linux (different OS and no source) just fine. Have been able to for years.
Yes, when you open a file panel or a network browser under Windows, you are using IE. The desktop is IE. The control panel is IE. Friggin' everything is IE! Even if you install another browser, you CANNOT tell those components to use it. So, yes, if you use Windows, you MUST use IE. You have no choice. And must you use Windows? Well, yes. Many web applications aren't written to international standards, they're written to Microsoft-proprietary functionality within IE. This WILL worsen, with this news about IE and Windows 8, just as it worsened considerably after Microsoft violated the Windows 95 injunction by releasing the bundled IE as Windows 98.
The competition is hurting something chronic. IE has rising usage figures. Firefox is starting to slide. Opera is sliding badly. Chrome may run foul of the Apple vs Google battle-to-the-death. (And one of them WILL die in it, if they don't back off.) Linux has never been fairly or reasonably offered as a desktop choice by anyone other than the OLPC group - and even they are now getting into bed with Microsoft.
Microsoft is a devout monopolist and it WILL kill anything that threatens that monopoly, no matter how savage or ugly they have to get to do so.
Can't be uninstalled (Score:5, Insightful)
IE 10 cannot be uninstalled and is required to enable the new 'Metro'-style apps.
Thanks Captain Obvious, 'Metro' apps are HTML5-based so what did you think was going to happen? That they would have 2 separate rendering engines? What would be the point of that? So you turn IE10 off and you don't see it, then you install whatever browser you want for web browsing, what's wrong with that?
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the Slashdot crowd starts getting all fired up about history repeating itself, how Microsoft is the Great Satan, blah blah blah, let me be the first to ask, right now, in 2011:
Why does this really matter anymore?
First off, every OS nowadays comes with a Web browser. Indeed, we have reached the point in computing history where the OS is severely crippled if it didn't come with one. For all the IE hate that gets thrown around, how else are you going to download Firefox, at the very least? Mac OS X comes with Safari, which you can't remove. Many free software distros come with a browser (although I will concede that removing these are easier). Every mobile OS comes with a browser. Hell, iOS not only bundles Mobile Safari, but forbids you from any alternatives due to Apple's policies on not duplicating native features (and no, Opera Mini doesn't count).
Second, true IE removal hasn't been possible since Windows 95. De-selecting IE, as the article mentioned, only hid it from access. The only way to truly rip it out of your system would have been to use something like 98lite or XPlite, and then you would have to deal with all of the incompatibilities that followed. A number of applications on Windows assume IE is there, and actually removing the Trident engine from the OS will make you unable to use both Windows and third-party software that needs that component. Microsoft couldn't offer a true IE removal tool if it wanted to, because it would be accused of breaking both Windows and third-party applications that use the Trident engine.
Third, this should have been obvious from the moment Microsoft announced that Metro apps would use HTML5 and JavaScript. How exactly do you plan on running something in HTML5 and JavaScript without a rendering engine? So naturally disabling IE is going to disable Metro - there is simply no other way to run Metro apps. With that line of thinking, you might as well expect to run JARs without the Java VM installed.
The real concern with this news is:
1) How will this affect the security of the OS (as we're back to things like IE exploits affecting Windows itself, although reason 3 made that obvious anyway)?
2) Is Microsoft going to exert pressure on OEMs again to not bundle Firefox or Chrome with their computers?
If Microsoft makes it hard to get Firefox, Chrome, or another browser preinstalled on an OEM machine, then one can argue that there's an antitrust issue. Otherwise, this is just the logical conclusion of the path Microsoft chose for itself (Metro is the future, etc.) as well as everybody else more or less already doing the same thing.
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
If they merely wanted to re-use the code, then write it into Win8 so that Win8 can natively support the extra features and have IE10 leverage it off there.
Isn't that essentially what they're doing? IE has always been a DLL that you can embed in other programs. A friend of mine once embedded it in a Macromedia Director movie with about four lines of code. The only difference seems to be that now they're back to making it impossible to uninstall -- which is only logical, since they're building the new Start menu (Metro) out of HTML and JavaScript. In fact, to tell the truth I always thought the idea that you could "uninstall IE" was a sham that was just for show, to comply with the court rulings. The IE browser is just Microsoft's HTML and JavaScript engine with some chrome around it. Metro is the same engine with different chrome, and other applications that embed the engine use different chrome, and so on. Or am I missing something?
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually 5 will get you 10 when all is said and done it'll come down to a little thing called DirectX. As we all know DirectX 10 and 11 weren't backported to XP because they were calling parts of the new WPF that would have been a royal bitch to rewrite for XP (there is a hacked DirectX 10 beta for XP and i've tried it but frankly its buggy as hell) and i'm willing to bet my last dollar they are using DirectX to speed rendering and any video.
For those of us that's seen the Metro UI, which i personally think is gonna bomb HARD as i've shown the screencaps to over 120 customer so far and have YET to get a SINGLE positive comment about Metro, whereas those i showed 7 before it was released all wanted to know about features and what it could do, anyway for those that have seen film of metro in action they are using these little 'auto-updating" windows in the "desktop" that will have all kinds of feeds from weather to video, i bet my last dollar its all IE with DirectX under the hood which is why its tied in so deep and can't be backported. They do something similar with their Internet TV in windows 7 which uses IE and Adobe Flash tied together with some DirectX glue which you can tell by removing IE Flash or watching your GPU usage through the AMD System Monitor (don't know if there's a tool for Nvidia and Intel that shows how much load is GPU and how much CPU)
Personally i think windows 8 is gonna be the new Vista turkey and Windows 7 the new XP. I only hope this will be the final nail in the coffin for the sweaty monkey and the board will make him 'pursue other interests' as he makes the Pepsi guy look competent. That guy just doesn't have a fucking clue how to run a company and if he wasn't Bill's buddy from back in the day his ass would have never gotten past PHB middle management. kin, Zune, Vista, rushing the X360 when it had a fatal flaw, the man's resume is one clusterfuck after another and only the Office team being brought in saved Windows 7. Now I bet anything that Windows 8 Metro bullshit is HIS baby, its his classic "Me too, oooh me too!" badly done Apple ripoff that is just his style. at least Apple has the common sense not to try to stick iOS on the MBP, but someone forgot to give the sweaty monkey the memo.
Instead you are gonna throw away all the hard work the office guys did for Windows 7 by tying IE so damned tightly to the bowels of the OS that a single bug will slaughter the thing, all so Ballmer can have his own iPad OS bling bling nightmare on the desktop. are you listening Linux guys? you blew one shot with Vista DO NOT fucking blow it! We retailers want a simple as hell, all GUI, net friendly OS that is easy peasy for grandma and NO CLI. Hell you ALREADY have the basic idea with Expressgate/Splashtop, which is GUItasic and fast as hell. Write a ton of apps for it, make sure it works on the "80%" hardware, that the big three GPUs along with Realtek, SiS, Broadcom, Sigmatel and Aetheros and you guys could seriously kick some ass. This is your shot, and probably your last as i doubt the monkey will survive another epic fail, so do NOT miss, okay?
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was never prevented from installing an "alternative boot loader".
I guess you missed the recent stories about UEFI secure boot. All PCs that ship with Windows 8 (OEM version) are required to ship with UEFI secure boot turned on and with Microsoft's certificate loaded. They are not necessarily required to let the owner of a PC turn off UEFI secure boot or install other operating system publishers' certificates.
Re:No longer a monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
>For those of us that's seen the Metro UI, which i personally think is gonna bomb HARD as i've shown the screencaps to over 120 customer so far and have YET to get a SINGLE positive comment about Metro.
Wait until they start using it. You ain't heard nuthin' yet.
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BMO