Sometimes I fear that Microsoft stopping the development of IE 6 is a lot worse than we think…
It looks more and more like they have a master plan beyond terminating the free browser program… (we don’t care, we have open source browsers, right?)… Actually, it looks like they plan to terminate the browser concept itself.
With their .NET client technology, they actually intend to promote applications that directly and transparently connect to web-services. You don’t “see” the internet any more. What you see, is the funky XP GUI interface of a native Windows application!
Once most online services will work only with their dedicated Windows client (yeah the providers don’t care, that’s 95% of their market anyway), what’s the use of a free open source browser going to be? Oh yeah… it will let you browse the old, poorly maintained, “compatible” w-e-b-site (which already only works well in IE! :/)
Wow! Waking up… I just had a terrible nightmare! Luckily something like this could never happen… right? right?
2015 update: something like this is actually happening with phone apps… Ironic? … or did someone take a page out of Microsoft’s early century book?
Comments from long ago:
Comment from: macmend
its not just microsoft, look at macromedias plans for new style web access!!
2003-08-27 13-02
Comment from: Kochise
Don’t be fooled guys, no everybody will buy Microsoft or Macromedia render engines. Even if http://www.boombastick.net/ or http://www.xiaoxiaomovie.com/ are obvious Flash-based jewels, there stills full of various platforms, such Unix, Linux, QNX, OpenBeOS, AtheOS, SkyOS, … that will not feature such engines…
And therez is various artists that don’t needs such render engines to create a beautiful web page. And why paying Microsoft and/or Macromedia to get the right to create a multimedia site if you can do the same with a handful of MNG and MID files ? Stop kidding…
How many times we were taught if a few years in the future, the face of the world would have changed, AI would have been everywhere in our life, music would have been freed, and so… Microsoft and Macromedia dreams to make their products necessary to make big money, but they don’t own the truth, and there will ALWAYS be other firms with better products they worked on, and envy to have some success with it.
Longhorn, which GUI is copied on the dockable workspace of QNX, will not succeed only on preinstalled computer. It’s the only way they will be able to sold out their brand new 400? OS.
For SCO and IMB, don’t worry. IMB will buy all AT&T rights about Unix and with their creative power will finish the job and polishing the Posix drafts. Linux will be more and more usable for the public, making the perfect replacement OS for Longhorn. The Posix drafts made up to date by IBM, a new carrer for Posix will starts, more coders will follows instead of MFC, ATL, WTL, .NET or so, making their programs almost compatible between Unix, Linux and QNX.
The new era just begins !
Kochise
2003-09-03 08-20