Thursday 17th February 2005
Software for software’s sake
So Microsoft are flip-flopping and have now decided to release Internet Explorer 7 after all. It’s going to be a security-orientated release, focussing on “even stronger defenses against phishing, malicious software and spyware”. (Hopefully there’ll be some improved CSS handling, but I doubt it.)
Whilst it’s all “yay! Firefox is so successful that it’s proded the slumbering dragon into action” and stuff, there was just something about the announcement that left me with a feeling of “umm, so?”, even more than you would expect from me about a Microsoft product. But from another recent topic on the intarweb, Cornelius Schumacher summed it up for me nicely.
“Being useful doesn’t include protecting the operating system from viruses, spyware or dialers, helping to move around files between the internet and home or defragmenting your harddisk. These are all solutions to problems I never would have had if I wouldn’t have started to use a computer […] I’m really fed up with this kind of software that only addresses software-related problems.