Guest post by Microsoft has “set up and removed” having Windows 7 Service Pack 1 as a prerequisite to running (or, more correctly, “installing”) IE9, in the space of just 2 days.
I came across the linked article while reading the Homegroup article linked in a previous news item and thought it was worth sharing, not that I care about Internet Explorer. But I am shocked that a dumb browser would have such a high OS requirement. I can understand Microsoft wishing all Windows users move to Windows 7. This is still no justification for imposing this restriction.
Why? Because other browsers (looking at Chrome, Firefox, Opera, maybe all of the others) won’t be lagging far behind (my original wording was “will still be better”, which is an unsupported claim as I haven’t got a crystal ball yet) because of not needing 7 SP 1.
What is so magical about IE9 that it has such a demand? Or will it be, paraphrasing another slogan, a “revolution in browsing”? If I am not mistaken, had they not changed their mind, having a “trivial” software package such as a browser impose an OS restriction with such a short compatibility time span, would have been unheard of. Someone correct me please.
I am wondering how the Windows market share is divided among XP, Vista and 7. Unless the figures show an undeniable tide towards the latter, for a browser with (I can only guess) the aim of reconquering some browser market shares, Microsoft wasn’t making the best move. Good thing, for them and for the IE9 users, that someone sensible reverted that not-so-obviously-brilliant idea. Of course, that’s until the reverting is undone.
Don’t software companies have PR people dedicated to managing/taking care of/dealing with/protecting their image?
They are using bleeding edge directx stuff, and dx11 is windows 7 only.
Wrong. DX11 is available on Vista and supports hardware accelerated text rendering and other needed APIs with the Platform Update.
Looks like you are right. everyone just ignore my comment, didn’t realize they were supporting dx11 in vista
On the other hand IE9 will be available on Vista, thanks to exactly those technology backports from Windows 7. So I am not sure where this thread of arguments are going.
What we do know though is that IE9 is more or less a showcase of a lot of the newer Windows features, and as such probably exercise a lot of code paths earlier seldom used, so a baseline patch-level requirement for the OS is probably nothing to be surprised by.
As an aside; In many ways IE9 has really been a huge success for Microsoft even if it fails to get any users at all. All IE really does for Microsoft is that it ensures that Microsoft has a hand in making sure that Windows remains a top-tier platform for browsing the web. Adding good GPU acceleration (a key feature developed in the Vista/7 timeframe) nicely showcases Windows in that respect. Firefox adding Direct2D and Chrome being in the initial stages of doing so is really the best possible outcome possible for Microsoft, basically other vendors helping to add value to recent versions of Windows. Luckily it is certainly good news for consumers as well, plus other platforms get some of the advantages as well, making things better for everyone everywhere. Competition and all that
So bleeding edge that Firefox can implement faster hardware acceleration on Windows XP.
Who wants some kool-aid? Oh yeah.
bleeding edge doesn’t mean good, it means bad. And MS never uses technologies from outside the company, so obviously, directx is where it would be implemented.
The whole thing is moot anyways, since dx11 is supported on vista (which I didn’t know when I wrote that comment). So that doesn’t explain the win7 restriction, it should be available on vista too.
And we’re back to the “..and dx11 requires win7 because it’s impossible to access your graphics hardware otherwise!” ..
The requirement originally was that users of Windows 7 would have to install SP1 to get IE9, but it didn’t exclude Vista users. Now the SP1 requirement is dropped because many corporate IT departments lag far behind in installing SP’s. (My understanding is that 7 SP1 is going to just be a big roll-up release anyway, so there’s little risk to it.)
XP still won’t be getting IE9. It’s Vista or 7 only.
I don’t get corporate mind sets. Why on earth would anyone want to refuse to install bug fixes?
It’s not like an OS is more secure without Service Packs…
With good security practices (least privileged access), good firewall, and “security” software such as antivirus, why shouldn’t it be at least as secure? As long as the security hole being patched is already protected by another system or practice in place, the potential for more harm than good becomes the issue.
Corporations delay SP upgrades because they tend to have side-effects which may impact enterprise solutions already in place. In some cases, they’ll do a phased rollout of the SP/Updates to make sure there are no negative effects before upgrading the entire company. Even then, I’ve heard IT “horror stories” about unexpected changes that upset internal software before they realized it.
Like it or not – Microsoft can’t predict every side-effect of every software update… and corporate IT knows this. Worse, any system that “breaks” as a result of a security update may require scheduled/contracted development time to fix it – which could take months.
That’s what beta periods are for.
It’s not a matter of refusing to install bug fixes – it’s delaying installing those fixes until it can be confirmed that those fixes don’t interfere with any critical applications.
For example, if SP1 breaks the software that runs a bank’s call center, that’s a business-breaker… bad publicity, and hundreds of people unable to work for as long as it takes to roll back the upgrade or fix the problem.
News flash: Service Packs have a beta period for that.
Nobody, since it isn’t a blessing until it is compliant.
IE8 was also introduced as not compatible with XP but eventually it was. MS tries to “scare” (although what they do best is *scare*, not just “scare”) people to upgrade to 7. But eventually they’ll make it compatible with XP. Say without full GPU acceleration or without some cool kind of integration, but IE9 in the end.
Now, once you asked, I really wonder if is there any current IE6/7 user (25% overall, 40% over IE) going to upgrade to IE9. I can imagine IE8 users and discontent Firefox and Chrome users giving it a try, but IE6/7 users? Sigh… could someone make a virus to fix that please?
IE8 was tied to WGA, not an OS.
That was a big mistake and they eventually changed their position.
This is because XP does not have Direct2D
http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2010/05/25/hardware-accelerating-firefo…
Direct2D was also the reason for the SP1 requirement. I read somewhere (can’t find link right now) that the IE team found a lot of bugs in Direct2D. These bugs where fixed, and where to be included with SP1, hence the requirement for it by IE9. Since then they decided to release them as standalone upgrades, so while SP1 won’t be a requirement, these updates will have to be installed.
insta-edit: here’s the source: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/09/microsoft-reverses-co…
Edited 2010-09-27 17:43 UTC
When is SP1 going to be released?
Edited 2010-09-27 16:11 UTC
So it will not work on windows xp ?
There are still a lot of winxp users. Atleast ms should have released ie 9 without acceleration for win xp users.
I wont be switching to win 7 for ie 9, I am happy with win xp
I won’t be downgrading to Win7, either…I’m quite happy with Linux.
And encourage XP holdouts? No way.
A lot of software development is held back because of XP users and their dated .net packs. Software companies are hesitant to target newer .net frameworks because so many XP users are still on version 2. In the gaming world the situation is even worse because of DX9.
XP “holdouts” might well be very encouraged that Firefox 4 and probably Google Chrome will work with GPU acceleration on XP. Both will have an extensions framework plus better standards compliance than IE9, and probably both will have faster javascript as well.
A lot of software developers might come to realise that if they target Qt for the GUI and system interfaces, and write their applications in C++, D, Python or even Java or Google Go, then they can target not only Win 7 and Vista users, but also XP users, Mac OSX users and Linux users.
In the gaming world one can write cross-platform games using OpenGl and an engine such as Unigine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unigine
Alternatively, one might soon be able to write cross-platform DX10/DX11 games due to a state tracker for DX10/DX11 becoming available for use with Gallium3D drivers on linux.
If one simply avoids .NET, and instead uses cross-platform frameworks, these days one can write great cross-platform applications and hence be in a position to sell one’s software to a much wider market than just Win 7 and Vista.
Edited 2010-09-27 23:01 UTC
Some certainly will but MS is also sending a strong message which is that they are moving away from XP.
Not that simple because of existing skill sets, productivity rates and features specific to .net.
No IDE is up to par with Visual Studio and there are additional benefits to working exclusively with .net.
Qt still has issues with OSX that need to be resolved but in a few years I think it will provide some good competition.
Are you really suggesting an alternative that doesn’t exist yet?
Sounds good in theory but you underestimate the amount of work required to target multiple operating systems. There is no “write once, run anywhere” framework but Qt is getting there.
Likewise, many Windows users are sending a strong message that they wish to stay with XP. If Microsoft do not wish to support that userbase, as seems to be the case, then that is a sizeable userbase to leave behind.
Since Microsoft has effectively signalled that they are not going to write new update versions to target the XP platform any longer, this userbase is effectively a gift from Microsoft (we won’t compete to this market) to any developers who might wish to accomodate them.
Debatable. Very debatable. A lot of software is written, very productively, using IDEs that are not Visual Studio. Visual Studio is almost alone amongst powerful IDEs these days in being single-platform-only.
Debatable about the benefits. There is a huge penalty to working exclusively with .net in that your application will likely be constrained to a smallish market (those running Vista and Win 7) compared with a much larger market (Vista, Win 7, Win XP, OSX and Linux) that rival applications could sell to.
Not really, but some developers might be stuck with DirectX rather than openGL, and be glad that the market they can sell to might one day expand (provided they don’t use .NET now).
There is indeed a “write once, run anywhere” framework. Actually there are a few: java, Qt, GTK – this is why we have OpenOffice, VLC/Inkscape and Firefox/Chrome respectively, as examples, that are already cross-platform applications. Qt has already “got there” for a number of cross-platform applications that exist today. More and more applications are targetting cross-platform frameworks (because one can sell to a much wider market), and Qt is one of the the easiest but still powerful options for doing this.
It is no longer nearly as difficult as it used to be to target cross-platform these days, as long as one avoids .NET.
It is not a theory, it is actual practice.
Edited 2010-09-28 01:36 UTC
All versions of .net work with XP. There are however some feature and development limitations related to XP that I don’t want to get into especially since you haven’t read the basics. In a nutshell applications get stuck at XP level for .net devs thanks to XP holdouts but even with those limitations the productivity benefits typically outweigh being unable to target OSX. For enterprise it is an easy choice where every computer runs Windows.
I already said that in a few years Qt will provide some serious competition, why not be patient and wait? The market has not shifted to .net out of conspiracy. Java on the desktop just plain sucks and Qt has only been decent recently and still has some native integration issues in OSX that need to be resolved. Once Qt apps are indistinguishable from native apps then you will see greater adoption.
Fonts are one such issue and you can read about the problem directly from a nokia developer:
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/09/09/a-second-spring-of-text-rasteri…
You seem to not realize that I am not wed to .net or msft. I used to work with Java and if the world switched to Qt I would shrug and continue writing code. However a major switch does not make sense at this point but in a few years Qt will have a much wider appeal. There are plenty of factors working in favor of Qt, your advocacy efforts are not needed.
Cross-platform and “write once, run anywhere” are not the same thing.
Agreed. Unlike java, GTK and Qt do not provide “write once, run anywhere”. What they do provide is “minimum effort protability via a re-compile”.
With perhaps a few conditional-compilation statements embedded in your codebase, you can write a Qt application that you can compile for (and continue to upgrade and maintain) multiple different platforms. Even ARM platforms.
It is not quite “write once”, but it is close. Certainly the entirity of Qt itself has to be ported in full to each platform, but that is done already.
This was perhaps an original design ideal for .NET, but Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by trying to constrain .NET applications to be able to work on different versions of Windows but not to work on different platforms entirely. Trying to maintain the latter inability has crept into ruining the former ability. Newer features of .NET are not available on older .NET installations, and older versions of Windows are (or at least soon to be) no longer supported with .NET updates.
Hence, in their desire to try to get people to upgrade to Win 7 (and hence pay for Windows over again), Microsoft is leaving a large portion of what was previously Microsoft’s market (specifically users running Win XP, especially users of older hardware which cannot run Win 7) entirely up to other software vendors to cater to.
So Microsoft won’t provide GPU acceleration for IE9 on Win XP? Fine … other software vendors are more than happy to provide Win XP users with an alternative browser which does feature GPU acceleration.
Expect more of the same for other software products from Microsoft as time moves along.
It is ported but there are all kinds of issues that have to be dealt with like native UI integration, OS specific calls, weird platform specific bugs, and more. That nokia blog post I linked to showed that fonts are still a work in progress. Operating systems are incredibly complex, you have no idea as to how easy it is to run into a bug like this one:
http://www.qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt/merge_requests/791
Java tries to sidestep a lot of these platform specific problems with the JVM but it still has a whole bunch of issues that you can read about elsewhere.
The central problem is that they cannot go back and rebuild existing installations of XP. Those newer .net packs make use of technology that is built into Vista/7 at a much deeper level. They have not shot themselves in the foot, there is simply a transition at work. This transition along with the tendency of XP users to have older .net versions encourages software companies to keep development at an older level.
Again those features are typically specific to the underlying system, not .net. You couldn’t access them with Qt in XP either as they don’t exist. The fact that Firefox is only GPU rendered in Vista/7 is a good example of this.
The end result is that most Windows applications are built around XP in an older version of .net. XP holdouts discourage the use of technologies specific to Vista and 7 like DX10/11 and Direct2D.
I think what they should do is offer a $50 upgrade for XP users. The large install base of XP has too much market influence. The vast majority of ISVs cannot break from XP like MS is doing with IE9.
And get money from whom?
As long as Win7 SP1 doesn’t break any of my application, I will surely upgrade my laptop with SP1 whether IE 9 requires or not.
Moving to latest patches is always good.
Your post here isn’t clear on this, but Windows Vista was never excluded from IE 9 by Microsoft. Vista users need Service Pack 2 to install IE9, as noted when MS originally said Windows Seven users needed SP1 — http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/operating-systems/3241057/micro…
The question is…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_T9YtA1mRQ
Edited 2010-09-28 19:59 UTC