Mac Browsers - Is IE5.x for the Mac officially dead? - macos

I don't use a mac much so my exposure is minimal but can I safely presume that IE on the Mac is dead?
I know that Microsoft isn't developing it any further and that Firefox, Safari (Opera and Camino) all run on Mac (and from my stats they are most used, in that order)...
So the question is: Is it dead? and if so, when did it die?
I still see CSS templates with Mac IE hacks in place... but I'm thinking it is time to strip the dead weight. Am I right?
PS For anyone hosting a large commercial site, I'd be interested in the % of customers using Mac IE. (Customers being users that actually buy something, not just web developers ping'ing amazon.com to see what it looks like)

It's dead. I just pulled up this months report and found 9 hits out of 3.5 million (about 0.0000257%).
If you need a time-of-death, I would say it was in 2006 when Microsoft released a statement urging users to "migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari."

Yes. Praise the lord.

Please refer to this document.
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/
The highest version of Mac IE shipped was 5.2.3.
And this for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_5#Apple_Macintosh
HTH
Colby Africa

I would consider IE on the Mac as dead.
As a long year Mac user, I think nobody really uses this browser often.
According to this statistics http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm the usage percentage is under 0.3%.

I used to work for a large commercial site just over a year ago, and IE5.5 on a Mac usage was below 0.5% - and that was in an organisation where many of the internal users used that browser (the main reason we had to support it)
I would say, unless the demographic you are targeting are especially likely to be using it, I really wouldn't bother.

I'm seeing 0.22% usage of IE on mac. So, I'd consider it dead too. I'm also only seeing .23% on Opera.
22 hits on a monthly visits count of 10,025.

I really liked Mac IE back in the day, and still consider it one of the best browsers for old-school modem surfers and that it contains features still not replicated elsewhere.
Still, by the time Safari 2 came out Mac IE was way too long in the tooth, never updated and didn't match the slowly-evolving Aqua look and feel anymore. The last few faithful users gave up on it.

It died around the time os x came out. I havnt seen it been used in years and i would say its safe to assume its not being used any more. I dont think it got ported to be a native os x app and the newer os x versions cant run non native apps.

Related

Xcode development on Windows/Linux: Mac In Cloud or VPNing to your Mac Mini? What's the difference?

My Mac got stolen today. So now I only have my Microsoft Surface left. The problem is: I need to develop iPhone and iPad apps and I'm not too high in funds. I am now looking for an affordable and reliable way to develop iPhone and iPad apps that isn't too costly (so no new laptop). So I was wondering what all the legal ways of developing iPhone and iPad apps via a windows machine are.
I looked into:
- Hackintosh (not legal)
I briefly looked into (also via SO):
Mac In Cloud
VPN to a Mac Mini
Using other frameworks (seems tricky, I won't do this)
Buying a second hand MacBook or Mac Mini (seems tricky to since it is second hand)
My first question is: are there any other legal ways to develop Xcode apps on Windows? I think the answer is no (I just leave it here in case it isn't). So lets look at the real question at hand.
How feasible is it to use services such as Mac In Cloud or your own Mac Mini and VPN? When should I just develop directly on a Mac?
Also, is there a real difference between services like Mac In Cloud and your own setup, besides the obvious point that you access a pre-configured Mac in the cloud?
As it was sometimes pointed over articles in the internet, Mac in Cloud faces some performance issues. This article refers to may '2012, but can be considered nowadays as a point of concern.
On the other hand, taking in consideration that a brand new Mac Mini costs US$ 599,00 today in its most basic configuration, this value would suffice to pay for Mac in Cloud service for almost 3 years, if you stick to the most basic montly plan of 3-hours-a-day usage (and pay quarterly):
I'm not sure if this price is an advantage for you. As I live in Brazil, we face much higher prices: the price charged for Mac Mini here would suffice to pay for Mac In Cloud for almost 5 years - in fact, that's exactly the service I plan to use for my IOS needs.
On the other hand, it would be advisable to at least try to use a second hand Mac, if the price is interesting.
Best bet is to sell your surface and buy a used Macbook Pro 2011 from craigslist, i look up and researched all those ways, they never work as good as having a dedicated mac. They always remind you that you don't have a mac. Save yourself the agony...
Instead of paying for a cloud instance, you can also run OSX locally with VMWare player for free
In 2014 this was a tough question to answer, but since this year I have a fairly workable setup as I'm encountering this problem from time to time.
My setup at the end of 2021 (I'm using Windows or Linux on my laptop)
M1 Mac Mini at a trusted location
Google Chrome Remote Desktop
Zoom if I need to tunnel my audio (setup a Zoom meeting and connect computer audio to the Zoom meeting audio)
It works quite well. The biggest issue that I have is that I cannot restart my Mac.
What didn't work: all VNC software that I tried was too slow Google Chrome Remote Desktop was the only program that seemed to be fast enough in order to have an okay user experience.

Copy Protection and Trial Creation for OSX Applications - Suggestions Please?

Silicon Realms (Digital River - Armadillo) used to have a Mac application protection/trial builder. They discontinued it this year most likely due to Mac App store not allowing 3rd party protection mechanisms or trials. Does anybody know of alternatives for creating trials and generally wrapping apps for copy protection which will not be sold on the app store? I am not expecting iron clad solutions... just simple copy deterrents and 30 day trial mechanisms.
The only solution I've found is ExeShield. No idea how well it works, but since I just discovered that Silicon Realms discontinued their program I'll probably have to go with that.
Apple is working harder and harder to get you into their store - and take their 30% of the gross off the top. Eventually Apple will do anything, legal or no, to make sure that they make more money out of your program than you do...

About ICS on Lazarus

Do ICS in Lazarus is installed and works fine on all platforms?
I read somewhere that there is a problem with Linux. Is this problem solved?
I ported ICS to Free Pascal in the 2005 timeframe, but I never maintained it, because I needed SSL which was back then still a payed option. The backwards compatibility all the way to Delphi v1 was also very frustrating.
At the time I mostly worked on console level (since my target was a server), but the last attempts showed designtime components could be made to work too.
Current status is unknown, but at the time Francois merged back most fixes. That's 7 years ago though. My guess is a died in the wool porter could do it in a couple of days. FPC is more compatible than ever.
I kept a small notes page at http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/ics.html
I suggest to try Indy Components from the Indy project.
They work well under Linux, Windowd and FreeBSD.

Watir-webdriver: Safari

I've recently started using watir-webdriver and so far am a big fan. However I need to be able to test Safari too, and I don't have access to a mac to be able to use Safari-Watir.
Does anyone know a good alternative to use for testing Safari on a windows machine? (In Ruby of course)
Thanks
(important, see UPDATE below)
the Selenium Webdriver folks are apparently waiting for something from Apple in order to support safari. I would not hold your breath.
Apple does have a version of Safari for the PC, I'm not sure how good the current version is, the initial releases were.. um, well, lets just say they had issues (lots of issues)
Personally (mostly for security reasons) I would not run it nor recommend anyone use it for any purpose other than downloading Chrome or Firefox. But unfortunately a lot of apple users use it because it's what came with their systems, which means to the extent apple users are part of your target market, you have to test on it.
For the moment that means you'll need to use Safariwatir, which has not as far as I can tell had an update for a year or more.
the current state of support on both the Selenium/Webdriver side and the Safariwatir side was discussed recently in this thread in the watir general group on google
UPDATE
Webdriver now has Safari support, which makes direct support of safari (I think on a mac only at this point) possible. See http://watirmelon.com/2012/04/17/using-watir-webdriver-with-safari-at-last/ for more info.. still a bit DYI but I'm sure it will get more accessable soon.
Mike, seems this is available now. Alister Scott wrote up some instructions on his blog Using Watir-Webdriver with Safari At Last
Unfortunately this still a bit DYI because you have to build your own safari extension, which requires getting certificates and such from apple, and I'm not sure if you can create the right environment to build that stuff on anything other than a mac.

Is there a good Fogbugz client for Mac OS X?

And/or: do I need one?
I've recently started using FogBugz for my hobby projects, and I'm very happy with things so far. Having read more about it, especially the evidence-based scheduling, I'd like to start using it for my PhD as well. (Heh; something tells me my supervisors won't be opening tickets for me, though.)
Last night I stumbled onto TimePost, which looks like a tidy app that doesn't do much but could be a real bonus to logging my time in FogBugz effectively. I tried looking around for similar apps but came up a little empty-handed. Are there any other FogBugz clients that you've used and recommend for Mac OS X? Or are you happy with the web interface?
The official answer is no, there is not a dedicated Mac client, other than Safari :)
There's a command line version that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac.
There are also plans for an iPhone version although I'm not technically supposed to announce features before they are done or even spec'd so pretend I didn't say that.
I recently spotted this one which looks quite nice for additions:
http://manicwave.com/products/tickets
I'm happy with using the web interface. I've used Fluid to create a custom browser for it, and even gotten some help making a pretty icon.
We recently released a new Fogbugz client software for Mac, maybe you are interested to give it a try, http://lithoglyph.com/ladybugz/
I remember reading that there was a client in development, and I believe they're still looking for beta testers. See this URL
http://support.fogcreek.com/default.asp?fogbugz.4.24403.0
Shameless plug here, but you might wanna check out QuickBugz --- it is a lightweight program that integrates into your status menu. http://www.quickbugzapp.com
I have been very happily using the Tickets program from Manic Wave for a few weeks now. it provides a very fluid experience. I am using it in a pressure cooker of doing a competition entry in my odd hours around my day job.
Tickets makes it incredibly easy to create lots of small cases and juggle them between different milestones. I particularly like its outline view which helps when doing task breakdowns into sub-tasks.
Being a long way from the Fogbugz servers, in Western Australia, the speed of a searchable local interface is very much appreciated.
The UI has a lot of nice little Macisms such as mouse over a milestone and see the hours summarized.
Support has also been very prompt and comprehensive.
I don't think there is any other such Mac tool. I've never found the web interface too bad personally.
I don't know of any native tool, but like Matt I am pretty happy with the web interface.
The beta of Safari 4 and SSB feature is a pretty good option...
I found using a Mac browser w/ the screen snapshot and search engine add-on to be very useful. I think what you are saying is that it can be hard to edit your timesheets, but that is part of the web design.
I've just released Bee, which is a Mac client for FogBugz. (It also pulls in your tasks from GitHub and JIRA.)
It offers several benefits over the web interface and is designed to be simple, fast and elegant. You can check it out at: http://www.neat.io/bee/fogbugz.html

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