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Journal phyxeld's Journal: (fuck the) Internet Explorer update for OS X 14

Journal by phyxeld

Well, a friend just pointed out that IE 5.2 is out for MacOS X.

Microsoft's explanation of the update:

This latest version-- version 5.2-- provides all the latest security and performance enhancements for Internet Explorer5 for MacOSX and a new home page-- www.msn.com-- for Internet Explorer. It also provides support for the new Quartz(TM) text smoothing feature provided in MacOSX version10.1.5 and later, so text on your screen is easier to read.

It seems like, not long ago, microsoft was a pretty cool company from the mac user's perspective. Badass office suite (or so i'm told - i don't use it much), badass web browser (this i can attest to - ie for mac has long been a really great browser), and really cool no-installer installs that just involved dragging the Application from their disk image to your applications folder.

Well, no more. Could this have to do with Apple's rumored move to Netscape for OS X 10.2? Or with Apple's new "switch" ad campaign? I don't know, but in any case, for some reason, Microsoft has resumed their suckiness in the mac arena.

The new IE installer is an installer, first off. Double-click to install, select where you want to install, and - gotta love this - quit all currently running apps before installing. Fucking bullshit I say. I havn't installed this update yet, because (a) I don't want to quit all my running programs, (b) the only definite 'feature' I've heard so far is that it will change my homepage to msn.com, and (c) recent experiences have made me quite fearful of MS updates. Allow me to explain:

The new Microsoft Office updater which I installed last week totally fucked my office install. When I open office apps, it asks for a new CD key. Being broke-ass and not really needing office except for opening the occasional .xls or .doc file, I naturally didn't pay $449 of my hard earned pay for their software. BUT I also wasn't using a well known serial number from "surfers serials" (though I tried all four after that - they're all rejected if you install the update). I was using a legit serial from a local highschool where I had someone snag me a copy. This was a legit copy of office, with no more than a few pirate coppies like my own. How did they know to lock out my cd key? HOW??! I don't know. The June surfer's database, released just days before the office update, had a new key in it - but it appears that key too has been hardcoded into the updater as a baddie. So I'm stuck using the previous version of office. With a buffer overflow vunerability on the FUCKING OPEN PORTS it opens for piracy protection. Fucking fucks. And excel randomly quits. Don't know if thats fixed in the update, cause i can't fucking run the updated copy, but I know my version sure as hell sucks.

So, does anyone here know if there are significant security updates in the new IE? I really don't want to install this crap if I don't have to.

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(fuck the) Internet Explorer update for OS X More

(fuck the) Internet Explorer update for OS X

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  • When you pirate software, you are supporting communism.

    Office is not needed, use koffice if you really need it. You do have KDE on your laptop, so what is your excuse!
  • The update includes text smoothing, which is inferior to Silk. It does add some performance though: I find it about 10% faster on average, and (so far today) slightly less crashy.

    Sadly I have to use it to access a number of IE-only sites.

    Re the Office thing... it's possible that there was a file that wasn't deleted which caused the problem. I just broke down and bought Office (academic version, though, I saved some serious dollars) rather than deal with the crap. Luckily I had the money squirreled away.

    The Mac Business Unit is probably the most schizophrenic place to work in the entire world. You're part of the The Beast of Redmond, yet you make software for another OS. I have heard there is a considerable corporate tug-of-war between the rest of Microsoft and the MBU, WRT things like .NET adoption and similar corporate overtures. The MBU doesn't want to be like the rest of Microsoft, they simply want to make Microsoft software for the Mac.

    The quit all applications thing is probably so they could reset the homepage to MSN. Also, it's probably because once during testing someone left something open and it fucked things up, so the policy is "kill everything just to be safe". I have heard of things like that happening.
    • Re the Office thing... it's possible that there was a file that wasn't deleted which caused the problem.
      I don't think there are any files outside the Office directory that affect registration. I currently have an "updated" copy of the Office folder (with apps that all ask for a cd key on launch) right next to my old un-updated copy that works fine.

      I just broke down and bought Office (academic version, though, I saved some serious dollars) rather than deal with the crap. Luckily I had the money squirreled away.
      Be careful not use your serial number on multiple machines, or you may find it nullified on the next update!

      What really got to me with the office install wasn't just that they prevented me from using a pirated number... It's not that surprising that they'd disable well-known serial numbers. However, I know the people that actually bought the serial I was using, and I know that they didn't share it with more than a few students. I'm mystified as to how microsoft knew to disable that number. Hence my phoning-home suspicion. tcpflow doesn't show anything, but I don't think it catches udp traffic. I'll have to poke around with ethereal sometime and see if theres anything the be seen.
      • I've been poking around. Everyone I speak to (including a number of Apple developers - I should probably talk to Spymac.com :) swears up and down that Office v.X doesn't phone home. Contrast with the dozens, if not hundreds, of people seeing hinkey packets headed towards microsoft.com. I have personally witnessed the "broadcast address" checks, but nothing phoning home.

        There was a mailing list message - wish I hadn't deleted it - that said that entire keyblocks were invalidated, in addition to the few dozen numbers you could find on Limewire. It was supposedly based on keyblocks that were of a certain age, and had no registration info connected with them. Supposedly if you register (via the menu item) it will keep your key from getting hacked in subsequent updates.

        YMMV, etc.
        • If that's true, then genuine law-abiding one-copy-only customers could get locked out simply for not registering on time. If thats true, well, then that is really really *really* bad.

          I can't believe there wouldn't be more complaints/demands-for-refunds/etc if that were the case.
  • Phyxeld, I have told you before and will tell you again: drop IE 5.x for the Mac. It sucks: it's slow eats up resources like Al Bundy's Mother in Law and on top of that it's Microsoft ;-)

    So what are the alternatives? Mozilla...yes, but I had some strange behaviour using 1.0. For some reason, when leaving the Mac unattended (and on, I run Seti@Home so I don't want it to go into Sleep mode), it logs out the user. Not sure if it is Mozilla that causes that, but it doesn't happen when I don't use it.
    I use Chimera: version 0.2.8 until yesterday. I couldn't use it at work (proxy stuff I suppose) and there were other issues. Now yesterday I downloaded 0.3.0 and guess what: it works at home and at work, some of the issues are resolved (one is not...). Yes, I'm posting right now with it and it'll surely replace my standard browser from now on. Honestly, just ditch Microsoft software on the Mac platform. You don't need it.

    Microsoft Office you tell me? As you mentioned earlier, you don't use it often. Neither do I: I don't even have a copy and I survive. Appleworks does the job "okay" enough for me and since it came with my Mac I'm even not using illegal software (I think the Mac is the first machine where I do not have a single pirated software on...)
    Besides, OpenOffice for Mac OS X is out. I didn't try it personally, because I'm not not a big Office user and wouldn't make a good beta-tester (and that is what the team needs). Perhaps you would be a better candidate.

    • Before you test Chimera and tell me it's absolute crap, I just want to tell you that I crashes quite frequently. Much more than IE. I don't mind too much, but you might.

      If only I knew where I could file bug-reports. They point to bugzilla but it seems to be the Mozilla repository. Oh, well...

      • Yup, I've got Chimera installed and am quite familiar with it's instability :)

        It's a nice browser; if they get some more features and make it a bit more stable, it will be awesome. Until then, however, it's not going to be my primary browser.

        I've also got Opera, and Mozilla (both the native version and the X11 port from fink). Still, IE seems like the most stable, polished, usable browser. I use the other browsers regularly, but IE remains the system wide http:// handler.
        • I'm a bit drunk right now but I'll reply anyway. I don't like the page-down bug that Chimera has while posting slashdot....neither do I like it's instability.
          However I'm very pleased they fixed the "location" problem. (Apple->Location). I can now at least use it at work. It's the first browser that does that, Neither Mozilla nor Opera does that. (and if Opera did, I'm not too cheap to pay!) So I was able to use Chimera the whole day at work. Yes, it crashed 10x, I admit. I wouldn't keep an eye on IE for Mac. It will just get more invasive and more straining to use. Yes, perhaps not version 5.2, but the next one will be even more irritating.

          Yes, I do not trust Microsoft anymore....I had too many bad experiences, thank you. I'll stick to chimera even if it kicks me out once about every 5 hours. Mozilla did a logout of my user on OS X while my OS went to the screensaver..so chimera is better ;-) Chimera is my default browser now. Why would I use that resource eating IE anyway?

          If any of you out there knows where to report Chimega bugs, I'd be willing to contribute. Any help does help, isn't it?

          • I just installed the new moz ("Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.1a) Gecko/20020610" to be exact) and I'm liking it. Installed the new Chimera too, but havn't used it too much.

            Moz may actually become my default soon... Time will tell.

            I'm not sure what you mean about the Apple->Location thing. I've got quite a few network profiles I switch between (ethernet/DHCP at work, airport/wep/manual at home, airport/wep/DHCP elsewhere, modem/ppp elsewhere, etc) and it seems to work fine with all my internet apps. Is this what your refering to?
            • network profiles

              Yes that is what I refer to. Especially the proxy settings: at home I have NAT at work they use a proxy (yup, I use my iBook at work...technically I'm not allowed to, but who cares) Most applications behave, but Chimera version 0.2.8 (the one I had) didn't look it up there. I just could not use Chimera at work because of that (from version 0.3.0 on of course I could).
              Mozilla has a setting internally for proxies (Edit->Preferences->Advanced) and you need to put your proxy setting in there too. Strangely enough Mozilla seems to ignore these settings when back on my NAT. So Mozilla works on both networks. However I think it would really suck if you had to connect to two networks with each a (different) proxy. It would probably break on that. The Mac version of Mozilla needs to remove the proxy settings in the Preferences and look them up in the OS.

              Btw....I also have Opera, which is a really good browser. However it has a separate setting for proxy too and that is the only reason I did not register it. As soon as they change that, they will have another customer. (Opera on Linux rocks too by the way...especially on underpowered machines...oh, and I run Opera on my Psion but that is of course another leage ;-) )

              • Especially the proxy settings
                Ah, I don't use proxies much, so I didn't even know the system-wide location manager handled them.

                I use my ibook at work too...

                in fact, since getting the ibook, my win box at home and my iMac at work have both been used primarily for playing mp3s :)

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