During the debates surrounding the anti-trust trial MS argued that that, browser tied to the OS, is a feature. They were close to saying that the browser is the OS.
Only because Microsoft made that stupid design choice, there is no reason it needed to be part of the OS. The numerous alternative browsers that work perfectly well illustrates that.
Yes, in recent years. However, Microsoft has being using IE to display information for a long time, it's just that recently it has become progressively more tied to explicitly IE to the point that things freak out and crash if you disable IE.
It wouldn't be a problem if Microsoft had been using the 'browser' as an integral part of the OS for displaying information etc. However, Microsoft is using IE as an integral part of the OS.
I remember back in my days of using MSN messenger it was easy as a drop of a hat to cause a BSOD by disabling IE and clicking the link in MSN to my hotmail inbox. It would try to launch IE, freak out, crash MSN, then Explorer and then you'd get a BSOD. From what I've heard, this problem has somehow gotten worse.
They would have multiple codebases to maintain then.
I think they were the IE engine for the main explorer folder view in Windows 98 - all the active desktop and custom folder backgrounds and theming the sidebar which slowly vanished in XP and onwards was MS-HTML and CSS based.
It wasn't a stupid design decision, it was just a design decision.
Now that is effective user education! Simple, amusing, to the point, and the text draws you right into understanding why upgrades are important. Somebody earned their money on that one.
It is a very impressive analogy to convey the message and neatly done as well. However, the biggest bummer for me was when I finally clicked on the "Download IE8" link. The page contained a "Install SilverLight" link on the premier portion of the page (and I was thrown off thinking why I need SilverLight for IE8) and the link to download IE8 was way below after a scroll.
it would help if microsoft allowed browser upgrading without checking for a valid installation of windows. i don't know if things changed, as i'm on a mac now, but when i had XP, i was stuck with an older version of IE cause i bought a computer with an invalid copy of the OS
considering its about impossible to buy a pc without paying for a windows license bundled, I would be surprised if the percentage of illegal copies was larger that 0.X%
1) Computer repair shops very frequently format computers and re-install pirated copies of Windows. Considering the spyware problem of not too long ago, this is incredibly common.
2) Many parts of the world don't have stores like Best Buy and Dell might not ship there. Many computers are sold as brand new with a pirated copy of Windows.
3) In some nations, pirated Windows copies are sold by street vendors right next to pirated movies and video games. If you don't understand or respect intellectual property rights, you might as well upgrade from XP to Win 7 for next to nothing.
I was under the impression that they did drop that requirement.
(Also, FYI, if you do buy a computer and it came with an illegal copy of Windows, you should contact Microsoft to trade it in for a legit copy. It's usually free to do so provided you rat on the sketchy vendor)
I for one am glad that Microsoft is marketing their browser a little more and I liked the little presentation. I hate IE as much as the next guy but IE8 is much better than IE6 and if it takes Microsoft to say that having a modern browser is important so that people believe it, then so be it.
I hope we see more of a campaign by MS to retire IE6. It's very difficult to get most people (and I'm not talking about people who post here) to switch browsers, except when they change machines. Anything MS does that gets people off of IE6 before that event is a public service.
Just read the whole thing and I'm not at all impressed. It turns out socially engineered malware is just regular malware. The report is very low on content. The methodology isn't described at anywhere near the level of detail required to actually reproduce this. The report just throws around a few percentages and repeatedly refers to increases in protection from 8% to 17% as 9% improvement, one of my pet peeves. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but for some reason I expected more.
The report describes an "in-the-cloud reputation-based system" for identifying URLs leading to malicious downloads (called "socially-engineered malware" in the report).
"From an initial list of 12,000 new suspicious sites, 1,756 potentially-malicious URLs were pre-screened for inclusion in the test ... Of the initial 1,756 URLs, ultimately 562 URLs passed our post-validation process and are included in the final results"
Since they don't describe their pre-screening or "post-validation" process anywhere in the report, you can't assume it's a completely random set of malicious URLs. In fact, the URLs they tested might have been cherry-picked to give IE8 a higher score.
In 2009 and 2008, NSS Labs did very similar reports with very similar results. They were paid for by Microsoft. I don't know whether this one was also paid for by Microsoft (it doesn't seem to say anywhere in its text, though I didn't look very hard).
Obviously there's reason to be a bit more skeptical about a paid-for study than a truly independent one.
Somehow I just don't see the point in comparing an internet browser to consumer goods (which are bought to be consumed) such as milk - things which are fast one time purchases.
About marketing. It's a metaphor that's hard to forget. And it makes the point that browsers can "go bad" after a time period because the rest of the industry has moved on. I think the goal was not to find a perfect metaphor but to get IE6 users to upgrade their browsers.
I do understand that but please, analyze it more carefully.
You're marketing a version of your product which is compared against a carton of milk. I tend to think that when you're marketing a browser you should regard them as valuable cars, as you wan't to build up some goodwill among your customer base.
If your customers regard your browser as a carton of milk which basically is just a carton of milk - a product that's fastly consumed - then what makes them to connect to your product (in this case, an internet browser)? Will it build goodwill?
What if mercedes benz announced that their old products are just tin cans - and that you probably wouldn't want to keep old tin cans laying around - what kind of a message would the company be conveying to the customer in view of their product?
If microsoft itself views the explorer product family as cartons of milk and also conveys a clear message of it through its own marketing - then, in my opinion, as brutal as it sounds, it's time to rebrand the product. Even when you're publishing a new version of the product, essentially, you'll just be publishing a prettier carton of milk.
I do understand that the point they're trying to make and I am not arguing for that. Nor am I arguing that vintage cars might be popular - you're going into too much detail (the point was that in our modern world, in regard of products produced, "newer" usually translates to "better").
But what I do believe, is that they're asking the customer to think the analogy behind the idea of not drinking 9 year old milk and connecting that to the idea of not using a 9 yo browser (old = bad, new = good as you said). Wouldn't you agree that for that analogy to work with the message they're trying to convey, you need to make a connection of putting the IE Browser into the milk's place in that analogy?
I mean look at that page: half of your screen is filled with a carton of milk - the other half tells about why you wouldn't use a browser (IE 6) which also is 9 yo.
So wouldn't you agree that somewhere in there lies the notion of IE 6 being as good as 9 yo milk?
Probably?
And remember that most people are bad at remembering numbers. Names, on the other hand, are something that most people do remember better.
Therefore, imho, I don't understand what the marketing department was thinking, as in my opinion, the advert connects your thoughts about 9yo milk to an internet browser (of which we already have created our own views) - and in the long run people will most probably only remember 9 yo milk & Internet Explorer (and bear in mind that this advert comes from microsoft).
Therefore, the question of what was the marketing department thinking rose into my mind. I believe that the point of viewing and "comparing" IE & a carton of milk screams for some serious rebranding for the product called "internet explorer" - because nerds can really relate to that message or what?
And in the end of the day, they are the people who power the revolutions of switching browsers.
tl;dr I don't believe that the advert works in advantage for Microsoft & IE
I'm going to wade in here: the point the parent was making is that the analogy is bad on purpose. It's not supposed to make sense. They don't want to say IE6 is like 9yo milk except in that old-age means things have deteriorated. They want it to appear that IE6 was an excellent browser but that it has somehow decayed.
Clearly they couldn't think of anything really good to say about IE8 except that it's not [that] old.
Perhaps they should have compared IE6 to MS Windows ME or something else from that time that was really really bad.
Maybe "you've ditched Billy Bass, you've moved on from The Sims, you're not wearing those capri pants anymore; no more monotonic ring-tones, ugg boots are out; you've served your time as Apprentice and made and lost your million on the 'net; you're not going to stand for no more snakes on no more planes; so, isn't it time you upgraded your broswer for what's left of this new millenium? - IE8 get it in FTW".
By any chance, do you not work in marketing? Are you part of the target audience (that is, do you still run IE6)? No? Are you, rather, a fairly sophisticated user, maybe dare I say, a geek? Yes?
Then don't judge the effectiveness of that particular marketing, it doesn't make sense to you, and that's perfectly acceptable.
no - I don't work in marketing, and you're probably right about the fact that I am not even near the target audience.
But does it really matter?
I believe you can relate to the fact that the more further you're from the target audience the more objectively you can slice & dice the advert. Of course, I might be too far away from the target audience so my views might be biased in that sense.
I don't pass judgement. I started writing in the basis that I wanted to share my own perception of the matter and hear what you guys have to say against it.
I think the marketing department did just fine. Browsers do indeed have a shelf life. The blame rests with those who created the situation, not those who pointed it out.
If my memory serves me correctly, IE 6 was actually the fastest browser when it came out, and it correctly rendered more sites than Netscape since people often only tested their sites in IE. In 2001, running IE 6 was relatively pleasant.
I'm so glad we've moved toward a more objective definition of "correct". I remember trying to tell people that IE didn't do things the way it should, and they would just respond with that it was "correct" because they only ever used IE.
The analogy I have always used: surfing the web with IE is like eating food you find in the dumpster. If you're very, very careful you can stay healthy for a long time, but eventually, you're going to catch something.
Surfing with IE6 is like drinking 9-year-old milk you found in the dumpster. It wasn't a good idea when it was just-expired milk, but now it's even worse.
In a study by NSS Labs, Internet Explorer 8 caught socially engineered malware 85% of the time compared to Firefox 3's 29%, Safari 4's 29% and Chrome's 17%1.
Does anyone know if this is true, or is Microsoft twisting the facts as usual?
It looks like the source they show says that and IE8's other report on there is actually better than Firefox's results (for phishing). I'm not sure if there are other independent studies out there that suggest IE8 is less secure. (E.g. NSS Labs may only do two tests and those just so happen to make IE8 look good.)
Well, the target audience is people on IE6. Standards obviously mean nothing to these people, the majority probably wouldn't get it even if the whole thing was devoted to standards, hell, the average firefox user probably doesn't care about standards.
Focusing on how someone could come to financial loss by using a certain browser is a great angle. Money means something to everyone no matter how much they know about the internet.
Why can't you have IE7+ on Windows 2000 or IE9 on Windows XP? the latest version of Firefox (3.6) works on both.
And, why can't you install multiple versions of IE on a computer?
I think these things are holding a number of the remaining people back from upgrading.