When IE 5 for the Mac came out, it was the coolest, most cutting edge browser in the world. It was way cooler than IE5 for windows, and WAY cooler than Netscape 4. There were rumors that it was so much cooler than the windows equivalent that the dev team got fired.
IE 5 is still the latest version for the Mac. The last release was Internet Explorer 5.2.3 for Mac OS X on 6/13/2003. The internet has progressed a bit since then.
Microsoft has officially thrown in the towel making a web browser for Apple’s computers. They no longer support it, and after Jan 1 2006, you won’t be able to download it. They suggest Mac users use Safari.
This is actually fairly significant for web developers. Officially, places like Amazon MUST make their sites work in Safari, or effectively cut out ALL mac users.
So in the end, this is a win for everyone.
I had thought they had done this a while ago. I don’t get any mac traffic on IE. Safari is #4 after “other”. On the other hand, part of the difficulty of Mac IE was separating it from WinIE, and deciding what special rules that it needed since it doesn’t work like IE, Gecko, KHTML, or anything else. I tend to ignore it, because I do like to use the IE conditional comments for fixing IE display.
And if their site works in FF, it probably works in KHTML anyway.