This is Sparta? No - it's Microsoft Edge, Son of Internet Explorer Microsoft has announced the official name for its new, modern web browser for Windows 10, hitherto known as Project Spartan: Microsoft Edge. Microsoft operating systems veep Joe Belfiore announced the new branding during his keynote presentation at Redmond's Build developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "The 'E' …
If MS has really done the decent thing and put a bullet in IE's multiple mutant heads, and developed a new standard-compliant browser that is up with the rest of them, I applaud them.
But why only Win10?
I mean all of the major browsers like Chrome, Firefox and the also-ran Opera (sadly now a skinned Chrome engine) manage to support various versions of Windows and also Mac & Linux. Why can't MS do this?
From the Windows standpoint, it's easy: Yet another carrot to get you to move to Windows 10. They're already offering it free to folks who have Win 7 - 8.1 for a year after release (or so they are claiming on their website). Why keep developing for two generations of the OS when you know it will be deprecated soon enough? I mean, aside from business who took years to migrate off of WinXP, and Win2000 before that. Even free licenese aren't going to be enough, though I'm sure that's part of the carrot as well.
As for the non-Windows OSes.... well, I would guess it's because the truth is that even with the steps forward taken by both OS X and the various Linux distros, they are still a small minority of computers in use today. Looking around, there aren't many good estimates of OS usage, but for March 2015, Wikimedia's requests show 79% of non-mobile OSes are some variant of Windows. In fact, WinXP was only slightly less common than all OS X 10.X versions (8.67% vs.10.8%). Even with an generous assumption of error, you can't really say that in the non-mobile arena there is much value to Microsoft to port their browser to Linux or Mac.
Perhaps it is due to their want to push Win 10 and Win phone as the same platform. All the other Microsoft OS's have been announced as obsolete already. The idea of write once, run anywhere is a good concept if it can be accomplished and if continued and maintained; could be a powerful reason to upgrade to Win 10 for the enterprise customer.
IE was always too deeply integrated into the OS in previous versions and would require major changes of obsolete OS software to work on these older systems.
I don't see Safari for Windows coming out anytime soon. Chrome is already an OS and a browser so it can run on the older and newer Windows systems or by itself on a Chromebook.
The idea of apps that run in both Microsofts and Googles playgrounds is a powerful advantage to the developers out there. I hope it works.
But why only Win10?
I mean all of the major browsers like Chrome, Firefox and the also-ran Opera (sadly now a skinned Chrome engine) manage to support various versions of Windows and also Mac & Linux. Why can't MS do this?
Like Eric mentioned, they're trying to sell a new version of Windows.
I'd like to point out that this business model isn't unusual for all commercial operating systems. Older RHEL, OSX, Androids et. al. can/could be made to run the latest browsers and other software too. Whether it is trivial - I don't know. I know Android isn't exactly commercial but my Android 4.0 devices are without love - the burden is just with the device mfgrs unlike with other systems.
Since consumers and many small businesses are allowed to upgrade Win7/8 to Windows 10 this is not a problem for them. Same with OSX users who can upgrade to Yosemite.
Some may wish not to upgrade for several reasons including amount of work, incompatibilities, certifications and so on but that applies to all the other operating systems too.
" Why can't MS do this?"
Why should they?
Windows 8.1 - you're getting a free upgrade to Windows 10
Windows 8 - why are you still on this when you get a free upgrade to 8.1? Also, see above.
Windows 7 - old, and Microsoft are clearly pushing 7 users to 8 and 10 anyway, this is yet another carrot. If you don't want to, fine, IE11 is perfectly fine, as well as the multitude of other browsers.
Windows Vista - LOL
Windows XP - double LOL
Windows 2000 - fool
Windows ME/98SE/98/95 - *pfffffffffftpppfpfpptptpppp!*
The Samsung Edge phone is designed to showcase "bendy" display technology just like their curved Ultra HD TV's. The fact that the "Edge" of the display functions as a notification area is only a secondary benefit. All MS and Samsung share is a generic name.
It's not a bad phone, just expensive but hardly as pretentious and useless as Apples iWatch. The only issue I see is that the curved edge of the phone will be easy to break and it will be difficult to provide a protective case for it while still seeing the notification area.
[Quote]
"be available on one billion devices"
Really?
Does he mean there are a billion devices out there that could run windows 10 and if they chose to install windows 10 could chose to run edge?
[/Quote]
Maybe they are counting on the Raspberry Pi 2 + to carry that number, since it is reported to be able to run Windows 10 in some fashion.
It's certainly possible.
Count in:
- All Windows phones sold in the past 3 years. That's in the ballpark of 30 million a year, so call it 90 million.
- All Windows PCs currently running Windows 7 or later. Practically, that probably means almost all PCs purchased since mid-2009. Given that the average depreciation period of a PC is considerably less than six years, that's probably well over 75% of all business desktops in the world.
Microsoft is Rome -- impressive organization and bureaucracy, but almost no original ideas of their own.
IBM is Sparta -- Authoritarian, militaristic, and rigid, but very powerful when it sets its mind to something
Open Source is Athens -- a dozen philosophers generating hundreds of ideas and at least three contradictory answers to any question
I think you have it back to front.
Microsoft is Athens. Big player. Very influential. Used "alliances" as a way to consolidate their own power and ultimately build an empire out of a federation (Delian League, cough cough). Having a bit of a Peloponnesian War moment with the Spartans right now.
Open Source is Sparta. Populated by highly talented if crazy people who wouldn't hesitate to leave their firstborn on a mountaintop for the wolves (e.g. if little Alcibiades said he liked systemd).
IBM is Rome. Glory days long past but occasionally news of jaw-dropping feats comes from some far-flung outpost. The Emperor (Empress) is toying with breaking the empire into two.
Google is Mongolia. Rapid rise, intent on world domination, not just through force of arms but also by seeding their DNA throughout the online world. No one really likes them, but hot damn, they can ride horses well.
>The Emperor (Empress) is toying with breaking the empire into two.
Surely that makes HP Rome? HP Inc. will be the Eastern empire: serious, stable, but a bit dull; and the consumer half will be the Western empire: wild fun, hopelessly debauched, and rapidly falling apart.
So, Apple would be ....
Britain! - huge empire, controlled by insisting everyone uses your own esoteric set of rules?
See here: http://spreadofcricket.weebly.com/reason-2---deliberate-export.html
Hasn't MSFT been making a bunch of noise over the past couple years about how amazing and fast and standards-compliant IE is?
I remember them making a big deal about how IE is the only browser that has hardware-accelerated rendering, or somesuch, with the implication that it's the fastest browser. (Getting from point A to point B in that argument requires a big leap of faith IMO...)
And I remember Microsoft announcing that IE was so phenomenally standards compliant that they actually had to make it less standards-compliant on purpose to be compatible with more web pages. (Something about supporting special Mozilla language for gradients in CSS or something...)
Somebody write a story when it's independently verified that this new Microsoft thing is any good.
Yes, IE 11 is very standards-compliant. Unfortunately being standards-compliant can be scuppered by idiots who write stuff like this:
div.i-am-a-css-god {
-webkit-super-css3-attribute: wow;
-moz-super-css3-attribute: wow;
}
There are lots of stylesheets around that don't have the non-prefixed CSS attributes in them, and the very worst offenders only have the "webkit" prefixes, especially on mobile sites.
These days, the people who bitch about IE are the ones who haven't used it since IE8, if they ever did at all. "Internet Explorer is crap" is a shibboleth - it lets know-nothings appear knowledgeable to other know-nothings, but it's not true today. (Compare with the 1990s version: "Macs are toys")
Don't get me wrong: before IE9, IE was a basket-case, and was a royal pain in the hole. However, now it's no more or less trouble than Chrome or Safari... once you write to the actual standard, not the vendor-specific extensions...
>>These days, the people who bitch about IE are the ones who haven't used it since IE8, if they ever did at all. "Internet Explorer is crap" is a shibboleth - it lets know-nothings appear knowledgeable to other know-nothings, but it's not true today.
Or is it the opposite? Because IE is still not good. I use the latest version on my HTPC. It doesn't respect system-wide high DPI settings. There are pretty frequent multiple-second delays to do basic things like switch between tabs. And once a week or so the program crashes completely, which seems like it shouldn't be possible if all the tabs are in separate processes.
IE may be better than before but there's still a lot to bitch about.
It's almost as though not a one of you has actually seen Spartan/Edge in person nor Windows 10 nor any other technology mentioned today. Microsoft may well stumble but you know what....I'm betting they don't. Things have really changed in Redmond. You can hate them forever but the momentum is building, the partners are lining up, the collaborations are happening and all the venom in your veins will not slow it down. You folks are living a decade ago.
$20 says that it is a universal app using some backdoor API that allows it to have access back to the old Windows desktop not bound by the "Apps for Windows API" it will then also have some integration into the OS that causes it to be horrible and require constant updates.
Call me skeptical but if it is truly universal and independent then it would run on W8.1 at least as well as being fully and wholly removable from Win10.
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