IE8 is Not Comparable to Windows Vista

A post from an Apple themed blog argues that IE8 is comparable to Windows Vista. What? That was funny.

In an excerpt:

In two years, a 93% market share has shrunk to 89%. Moreover, Vista only represents 22% of that market; 63.5% of the world is still using Windows XP. (That green slice, by the way, represents the Mac OS’s growing share.)

This isn’t entirely surprising. Although Internet Explorer enjoys the same built-in advantage as Windows — the software comes pre-installed on every Windows PC sold — there are better Web browsers out there, and it’s a whole lot easier for users to switch browsers than to switch operating systems. Hence the growing green (Firefox) and red (Safari) slices in the second chart.

How has Microsoft responded to the challenge? From what I’m hearing, Redmond’s strategy with IE sounds a lot like the one that brought the world Windows Vista: Stay focused on your installed base. Pile on the features. Sacrifice performance for new tricks. And act as if the other operating systems didn’t exist.

The biggest problem that Microsoft encountered was the inability of IE6 and IE7 to render websites consistently. So many sites that worked well on IE7 was broken on IE6 combined with the release of Firefox 3.0, and continuous monopoly lawsuits targeted at IE, the slow Windows Vista adoption, and the delayed release of IE8 prompted to the decrease of IE users. Nonetheless, Microsoft is way too dominant in this space and the would be release of IE8 would boost the user base once again.

IE8 doesn’t have the Achilles hill of Windows Vista simply because the browser is free and most enterprises have IE as their standard and acceptable browser of choice. IE8’s big improvements, should do very well on the market.