TechStuff Classic: The Story of Internet Explorer, Part 2

Nate Lanxon from Bloomberg joins the show to talk about the history of Internet Explorer and the future of Project Spartan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
job and Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are you? It's time for another
classic episode. This is actually the second part to the
classic episode we published last Friday. It is called The

(00:28):
Story of Internet Explorer, Part two and it originally published
on May sixth, two thousand fifteen, and has special guest
host Nate Langson on the show. Nate is awesome. If
you're not familiar with his work, definitely google Nate Langston.
He's got a ton of work to his name and

(00:48):
is just a really interesting, intelligent, and entertaining person. Hope
you enjoyed this classic episode. I know people who still
would prefer to use Windows XP to any of the
other operating systems that have come out since then. There
are a lot of legacy systems that depend upon Windows XP,
and you cannot migrate to a new operating system without

(01:09):
reinventing all these legacy systems that interact with it. Uh there.
There used to be a joke about how people would
stay on Windows XP, and now it's kind of a
sad one so I E six comes out bundled with
Windows XP. That also means that I E six has
continued to be used long after you would expect people

(01:31):
to have changed, you know, upgraded to some other version
of Internet Explorer. UM. PC World. This is where we
get the sad part. Called it the least secure software
on the planet because I had so many vulnerabilities. It
made the list of twenty five worst tech products of
all time from PC World. It was number eight and

(01:52):
number seven was a different Microsoft product, one that I
did a full episode of tech Stuff about Microsoft Bob
Oh Bob, so it's named by Bill Gates wife. Believe
we had a whole the episode. If you haven't listened
to the episode of tech Stuff, I highly recommend you
go and check that out. Lauren Vogelbaum was by co

(02:15):
host on that one, and we had a grand old
time dissecting Bob uh and and it was her first
time ever encountering Bob, and boy, I mean the fact
that I E six ranked higher on the list. Then
Bob tells you how bad I E six was because

(02:37):
Bob was atrocious. So this was another one of those problem.
It was ripe with vulnerabilities that allowed hackers to get
that same kind of level of access to a computer,
whatever level the user was logged in at. So if
you were a giant business and you only allowed your
employees to log in under a lower access level, then

(03:00):
that was bad but probably manageable. If you were one
of those businesses that allow employees to log in at
the admin level, it was catastrophic. And because I E
six was lumped in with Windows XP, and because Windows
XP was so popular, it meant that it was a
target rich environment. Now, Nate, you you being a Mac user,

(03:23):
Are you one of the Mac users who who very
smugly trumpets the fact that Max are largely UM free
from issues of viruses and malware. No, I'm one of
the people that says that they are. Well, yes I
am in a way, I am actually completely But what

(03:45):
I what I don't say is that MAX can't get
viruses or that they are more secure. Um. They are
in as much as everyone targets Windows, and therefore far
far a few of people are targeting MAX. But on
the other hand, MAX can also be conduits for viruses,
so you are able to pass on a virus even

(04:08):
if you are immune to it. You can you can
be a carrier but not be be affected by it directly.
That said, I don't run antivirus because I don't care
about Windows uses, Well why get vaccinated? Right? I mean,
uh yeah, yeah, this this this is a great but
this is a great point to make. And that again,

(04:29):
PCs had so much of the market share. I mean,
we're still at the point where Max had not really
made a big debt. It would be it wouldn't be
until the mid to late two thousand's that we really
started seeing the Mac take off on a on a
true market share level, which meant that if you're a
hacker and you're designing malware and you're trying to hit

(04:50):
as many people as possible that's your goal, then you
go to where the people are, and the people were
at PCs on Windows based machines, specifically Windows XP and
Internet ex or six had all these vulnerabilities. It was
open season for hackers. Which that's why it made this
this list of the wars tech products. I mean, if

(05:10):
if it's a gateway, if Microsoft had not patch call
of vulnerabilities, it's a huge issue. Now Microsoft did start
to issue patches very quickly, but it was still one
of those things that became a black eye for the company.
H In fact, the problem was so serious that the
United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team told people, Hey, if

(05:34):
you don't have to use Internet Explorer, don't use something else.
And then the only times you should use Internet Explorer
is when you have no other option, like it's it's
something that's only compatible with Internet Explorer. Um. I've had Uh,
I've worked at companies where the intranet would only be
accessible through Internet Explorer. Other browsers just could not render

(05:57):
those pages. Um, which could be a very frustrating experience
for someone who doesn't prefer to use Internet Explore unless
I can't I don't have any other option. Nate, have
you ever had that issue too, where you've had to
work someplace where the way a system was designed, you
had to use a specific type of browser to access it. Um.

(06:18):
I'm I work at one now, so I probably shouldn't
say very much. But it's a very secure internal culprit environment, sure,
and and I mean that that's one of the reasons
why I mean, I still have a version of Internet
Explorer that runs on my machine because, uh, there there
are certain internal technologies we use that it really only

(06:43):
works with Internet Exploring. Now once once it's up on
the web, any browser can see the stuff, but for
the internal purposes we use things that will only work
with Internet Explorer. And of course we're also very concerned
about security. So it's but it's one of those things
that you know, if if you had built it on

(07:03):
Internet Explorer six, this would be a huge concern obviously
because of those vulnerabilities. Um Fortunately, I think most companies
don't rely on that, or they are relying on one
that has been patched thoroughly so that those vulnerabilities are
no longer an issue. But it was, you know, for
someone who doesn't like Grandma, who doesn't necessarily know how

(07:27):
this stuff works, it's a problem, right. It's it's not
easy to explain to someone who hasn't grown up around
the world of software and software patches that this is
an issue at all. It's I mean, it's hard enough
just to explain that this is not the Internet, it's
a browser. So yeah, so definitely it was a black

(07:48):
mark against Microsoft. Um and it's funny because I I
looked on granted, depends upon what source you use, but
I looked at one, uh resource that looks at the
market share various browsers, and three point one of users
in China, according to this source, are still using Internet

(08:11):
Explorers six. Three seems like a small number, but that
means hundreds of thousands of people are still using Internet
Explorers six and that's yeah, I mean incredible. China is
an interesting one, and because of the rempants piracy that
has taken place there over the last couple of decades,

(08:35):
in particular when it comes to computer software, and there
are so many old computers out there, computers that physically
can't run more recent operating systems that for some machines
that may be the limit of what they can even
install because of how old the hardware is. The same

(08:56):
in in in in parts of India, So that's probably
a factor. Um. The other the other thing is that
there are a lot of banks, believe it or not,
that have this really old software installed. I'm not saying
that's the case in China particular, but just generally there
are a lot of a lot of places and schools too,
I mean. And that's the other thing is that when

(09:16):
you spend a lot of money and energy and resources
on building an infrastructure and it's using a particular you know,
particular suite of software or a particular operating system. It's
you know, you've created this system that now we call
legacy system at the time. Of course, it's not a legacy.
It's just what you've built, and you built it because

(09:37):
you needed something, and this, you know, the suite, did
the stuff you needed. The problem is that, you know,
you don't necessarily have those resources to dedicate to reinventing
that every time there's a new operating system that comes out,
especially if you're talking about really big systems where it
would require a massive effort across multiple locations in order

(09:58):
for everyone to stay in communication with each other. And
that's where you run into these problems. I mean, if
there are no easy solutions, it's very easy for us
to say, hey, upgrade your operating system or upgrade your browser,
because on a user to user level, it's not as
big a deal. I mean, it might require some financial
investment if you're talking about having to get a new

(10:21):
machine that's capable of running a newer version of that software,
but ultimately, ultimately it's not as big a deal as
is telling a an industry or even just a particular
company within that industry, Hey, you need to do this.
It's a much larger effort on that their part. So

(10:42):
as flippant as I'm being, I do realize that, you know,
it's not so simple as oh, we need to we
need to install this new program. It's you know, sometimes
it's not the new browser. Like you said, Nate could
require uh, more advanced hardware or a more advanced operating system. Yeah. Alright,

(11:03):
So that was two thousand one. Now we're going to
skip ahead to two thousand four because there were no
updates in that time. But on November nine, two four,
a big competitor to Internet Explorer would launch the Mozilla
foundations Firefox one point Oh goes Live. Firefox was the

(11:25):
first real challenger to the dominance of Internet Explorer, uh
to to really you know, capture a lot of people's attention.
Before there had been devotees of other browsers, but they
were pretty small audiences. Firefox was one that actually threatened
to take some real uh chunks out of Microsoft. And

(11:47):
part of that was because there was still this ongoing
issue with Internet Explorer six and the security vulnerabilities that
had had such a you know, I had a pretty
bad reputation. Meanwhile, you might say, well, why why didn't
micro Soft come out with a new version. Well, until
Firefox came out, there wasn't really a need for it, right,
I mean, there were no If you don't have a competitor,

(12:10):
then you don't have a lot of incentive to improve
your product. It's one of the problems, one of the reasons,
one of the big reasons you don't want any monopolies
out there, because you would rather have competition that drives
the various entities to continue to innovate and invest in
their technology so that you ultimately get better stuff out
of it. If there are no competitors, then you've got

(12:31):
to just hope that the entities are motivated enough to
continue that innovation and investment, which is not always the case,
and it wasn't in this one. So October two thousand
six we see Microsoft launched Internet Explorers seven because Firefox
was starting to eat at Microsoft's heels. It was starting
to take up some of that market share, and Microsoft

(12:54):
suddenly realized, hey, we might have a problem here. We
might need to to start really looking at innovating in
this space again, because we're not the only player in
town anymore. So this was a five year, you know,
absence of updates, and then we finally get one in
two thousand six. Um. So Internet Explore seven was also

(13:17):
the first time they changed the name, because the previous
editions of Internet Explorer were all called Microsoft Internet Explorer whatever.
This time they were called Windows Internet Explorer whatever. So
Windows Internet Explorer seven. Uh. Interesting because of the settlement
with the United States Department of Justice earlier about how

(13:39):
they didn't really want to give the indication that Windows
and Internet Explorer were so tightly integrated. But after the
settlement of that case, I guess they were. Microsoft was
looking at it saying, look, if you if you use
the Windows environment, this is the browser you want. I
guess that was their marketing push as opposed, and it

(14:01):
became the bundle browser for a much maligned piece of software,
Windows Vista. We'll be back with more of this classic
episode of tech stuff after this quick break. I think
Windows visted it more from Macintosh sales than Apple ever did.

(14:27):
It wasn't It wasn't great to begin with. It was
basically all right by the end, but yeah, it was.
It was one of those that did require patches to
make it to the point where people gave it that
kind of damning praise. Right, well, it was all by
the end, it was okay, But when it came out
it was not okay. There were a lot of issues.
I mean, I remember all the different permissions windows that

(14:49):
would pop up whenever you wanted to do anything, and
Windows this stuff, and it was almost like Microsoft had
overreacted to the problems it had experienced previously with products
like Internet Explorer six, where I said, well, we want
to make sure that we are being really uh concerned

(15:10):
with security and safety. So now you're going to have
to go through five permissions pages whenever you want to
run anything on your machine, every time you want to
run it. So this was maligned, probably justifiably when it
first came out, But then, like like we said, it
got better with patches, although it was too little, too

(15:31):
late at that point, I think. And essentially you had
all these different people and companies, school systems, everything saying
you know what, We're gonna stick with Windows XP because
even though this operating system is the new one, uh,
it breaks everything, So I'm going to use this older
operating system. Uh. And I can say, like in my career,

(15:54):
we went from Windows XP to Windows seven. We did not.
We did not transition to Vista. I went Windows XP
to Mac. Um not particularly because of Vista, to be honest, Um,
but I but but I think that was the turning
point for a lot of people. It was either ignore
Vista and then moved to seven, or ignore Vista and

(16:15):
moved to the Mac. Yeah. I think, you know, and
and I think even you know, looking at at some
of the other operating systems out there, things like Lenox,
I mean, you know, I don't think well, Lennox has
its own like uh devotees who are all the developers
who who love to work with that operating system and
help make it better, and it's almost like a crowdsourced OS. Uh,

(16:40):
but they you know, I think things like Vista definitely
help fuel that kind of passion because you look at
what is the product of a corporation saying here's what
we think operating systems should be versus uh something like
uh Mac, which you know, Apple has done a great
job at positioning themselves as we know that you think

(17:03):
you know what you want, but we're telling you what
you want and you're gonna love it and it works
because it's designed so well. Uh and then you have
the Linux approach, whereas we know what we want because
we're the ones making it. Yes, well there is that
as well, and and and Linux is so infinitely flexible
from the you know, if you want to build your
own operating system. You know t version of Linux once

(17:25):
that was designed in the style of an anime series
called Serial Experiments Lane, which is very weird techie anime
if you want to check that out. But I wanted
to point something out that we actually didn't discuss and
put in show notes here, but it just occurred to
me as we've been talking that there was a there
was a a parallel change in computer usage at this

(17:48):
point in the Internet Explorer, a lifestyle, which was the
introduction and introduction and success of the netbook that did
the opposite of what Microsoft would have wanted with Vista,
which required um, you know, more of a high powered,
high spect machine. It was much visually it was much
more visually rich. Vista was that is versus XP. And

(18:11):
then the netbook came out and became this giant pre
iPad pre tablet craze of hundred dollar little portable notebooks
that needed to run really low power old stuff. So
they ran XP and they ran I six or they
run Linux. Of course, Um, you know, and I think
that that that was such a popular choice of machine

(18:33):
for admittually only maybe a couple of years, but I
think it may have made a difference at the whole
XP thing. And definitely once two thousand seven rolls around,
you had Apple introduced the iPhone, and that really changed
the game because suddenly you had well, at least here
in the United States, I mean here in the US.
This is where Nate can can kind of chuckle, because

(18:54):
in the US the smartphone was adopted very late on
the consumer side, whereas you know and your up you
had some some smartphones that had traction before the iPhone
came out. Here in the US, the iPhone might as
well have been the first smartphone ever. The only people
who had any other type of smartphone were executives who
had blackberries here in the US. That was very kind

(19:15):
of you. It was very kind of you to to
suggest that we were far ahead of the game. I
think really that the sort of we're in the realms
of these sort of Nokia communicate the sort of thing,
and um, they weren't they weren't particularly smart, but they
were more feature rich definitely than in some of the
U S phones because because no kid didn't do anything
really in North America at the time, right, yeah, here,

(19:38):
if you had a phone that could browse the web
via text like it was just a text based browser,
then you were ahead of the game. Then. But then
the iPhone comes out and uh, suddenly you have a
new way of viewing the web, which would get improved
considerably with future generations of the iPhone, and then with
competitors like the Android phone, and ultimately with Windows Mobile,

(20:02):
Windows Phone and then just Windows for mobile devices. Um.
But you know that really change the game big time,
to the point where now if you look at market
share of what's being used to browse the web, the
mobile devices are killing it. And so you see things
like iOS is a huge player in market share for

(20:24):
web browsers if you're if you include mobile devices, if
you look at just desktops, then Internet Explorer is still
a large a large player, especially once you factor in
all the different versions of Internet Explorer. They're still in use.
But two thousand seven ends up being a big year
because we start seeing mobile become a true competitor or

(20:45):
at least a a potential competitor in the web browsing space.
March two thousand nine would be when Microsoft launched Internet
Explorer eight, which was the first browser to pass the
ACID two test. Did not asked the ACID three tests,
but it passed the ACID to test, which was that's
a test designed to check a browser's ability to render

(21:06):
a web page based upon the intended design of that page.
This goes back to what I was saying before, where
you just painstakingly create a web page and you can't
wait for someone to see it. I mean by by
can't wait, I mean if you if you could go
back and visit the web pages of the mid nineties,
I guarantee you that more than eighty percent of them

(21:28):
would have a counter somewhere on that web page that
would tell you what number you were to visit that
web page. Uh. Those were ubiquitous back in the day.
Do you remember those where you'll be like, oh, look,
I I was the hundred and third thousandth person to
visit this website. I remember installing one of mine and

(21:50):
just thinking like, why do I do this? I can
like it's been three months and I can still count
the number of people who have visited my website on
two hands. But you know that was one of those
things where again, you know, you put this care into
it and you really wanted to make sure that all
the browsers were going to render it properly. Uh. And

(22:11):
it was very important for Microsoft at the time because
they were no longer like no one version of Internet
Explorer was now the dominant one because Firefox had done
so well. So if you're the dominant player, then sure
you could essentially define how web pages should look. Your
browser is the one that people should be designing for

(22:32):
because you're the one that most people are using, and
anyone who's using a different web browser is going to
have a potentially, at any rate, a less than ideal experience.
But who cares because you're the one who's the biggest
player in town. When you're no longer the biggest player
in town or there are viable competitors out there, you
have to start rethinking that strategy. So Microsoft did a

(22:53):
good thing here and building a web browser that was
going to be more true to the designs of the
web page administrators than what they had previously been doing,
and also benefited those of us who actually used Firefox
or some other browser at that time, so that was
that was good, go ahead. It's an interesting period because

(23:15):
all this time or this discussion, Opera was chugging along
in the background doing its thing. And just as we've
been talking, I just download and installed up on my
map because I just wanted to see what it looks
like these days. It's based on chromium UM, like like
Google chromes. And you know, Opera has always been this underdog.
It's just never done very well at market share wise,

(23:37):
but it's always had this incredibly loyal fan base and
does really innovative things on the mobile side and always has.
And I remember and about two thousand and seven I
wrote an article for s net saying Opera should stop
making desktop browsers and just focus on mobile as its future.
And I had one person who said that I should
throw myself off the top of the s NET building
for saying something so heinous against the beloved right. And

(24:02):
I still, you know, nearly ten years on, I stunned
by that they should focus on mobile UM And I
hope that person revisits my article UM from and says, oh, yes,
you were right. Well, you know, it's very forward thinking
because as it turns out, you know, mobile browsing has
become so important now that that's where everybody is looking.

(24:23):
I mean, you know, not the desktop browsing has gone away,
or that there aren't other platforms. I mean, heck, I
sometimes I browse the web very rarely, but sometimes I
browse the web on my Xbox so that I can
watch certain content that I couldn't otherwise, or that I, um,
you know, might want to have a podcast on in

(24:43):
the background and that's the easiest way for me to
play it. Um So, But the mobile certainly is is
at least as important, if not more important, than desktop
browsing is these days. So everyone really needed to be
looking at mobile. I think you were really just giving
some valuable advice, honestly. I mean I really I was

(25:04):
trolling for page views mostly, but but it was based
on it was based on real opinion and a fact.
I believe. You know, we we've all engaged in some
clickbait at some point or another. I mean, you know,
we've got more to say in this classic episode of
tech stuff after these quick messages. So the Internet Explorer

(25:33):
eight is currently the second most popular version of Internet
Explorer as far as market share, goes. Keep in mind,
we're up to eleven now, and in fact, in an
Internet Explorer eleven is the current most popular version of
i E on the market. I E eight is second,
So that means nine and ten didn't do quite so well. Uh.

(25:54):
And perhaps I'm not saying this is necessarily the case,
but perhaps it's one of the reasons that it has
done so well for so long is that is the
last version of Internet Explorer that's capable of running on
a Windows XP machine. So it may be that we
have still a significant number of folks out there who

(26:15):
are running the Windows XP operating system. They never upgraded
to Vista or seven or eight or ten now, uh,
and they're they're staying with Windows XP for one reason
or another, and they might be running Internet Explorer eight.
That's a guess, but I think it's a fair one. Yeah.
I mean, in the mobile world, it's I'm sure a

(26:36):
lot of people listening have had the experience of downloading
an app and then downloading an update. A week later,
firing up the app and being told that your OS
is out of date and you need to update, and
that's because Apple or or Android or something has been
up has a has released an update in the time

(26:57):
between you downloading the app and firing up the app,
and you've updated the app in that time without firing
it up or updating your OS, and it's already out
of date. Like it's crazy. Personally, I haven't had that issue,
but that's because I use the Next of six, so
I get those updates like immediately. But then although iPhone

(27:17):
users out there like, yeah, that's regular, I'll breaking procedure
for me, Yeah, I have an Next to six as well.
To be fair, I do. Yeah, that's so sort of
my Android sort of test phone thing because I I
used that for your main phone has to be an
iPhone night, I imagine. Yeah, alright, how do you like
the Next of six? I know this is a tangent,

(27:38):
but I have to ask. Um. I love it. I
really like it. Um. I use the iPhone six Plus
is my main phone, so the next is six just
feels like an evolution of that. UM feel wise and
the screens, the screens nice, The battery life for me
has been pretty good, and the I don't know. I
just like it, but I don't use it that much,
to be honest. It was it's just like a like

(27:58):
a sort of a dunny review unit type thing that's
been hanging around, right. I just wish it were a
little bit larger, so that way, if I held it
over my head on a sunny day, I could shade
my entire body. It is a big phone. It isn't
become But like I said, I don't use it that much.
It's it's mostly that for me to test Android and
if I need, if I want to review or right

(28:19):
about new apps, it's just there. Um, yeah, it's fine, Yeah,
I understand. Well, getting back to Internet Explorer, this is
where we're starting to talk about some of the boring
ones for me. So I guess that's why I'm so
eager to go off on tangents. But March four, Internet
explored nine debuts and it had the tagline the Beauty

(28:39):
of the Web, So finally we could experience that. I
was it was good that by two thousand eleven we
could finally see the beauty of the web after all
that text and the red exes for images that wouldn't load. Um,
this one wasn't tied to the premiere of any new
operating system, which might be one of the reasons why

(29:00):
it's not as popular as I E eight or I
E eleven because it was not it wasn't bundled with
an operating system UM, so it could run on Windows
Vista Service Pack two or later versions of the Windows
operating system. There was no support for Windows XP. Like
we said, I E eight was the last Internet Explorer
to run on that platform. And you could do things

(29:23):
like you could pen websites to the application bar, which
would allow you to navigate straight to those right away.
So if there were sites that you always go to,
you know, you just you know there, there's always there's
three that I always opened up first thing in the day,
as soon as I load up my browser, then it
would makes sense to pen those first three just to
be able to click on whichever ones or even pin

(29:44):
them together. You could do that as well, where you
could open up multiple tabs and just associate the ones
that you always go to first thing. That way, you
don't have to spend those precious that calories typing in
the first few letters of whatever you are l you
go to each time. UM but a very innovative approach
at the time. And UH. It also had a download

(30:07):
manager that would allow users to pause downloads and alert
users to potentially malicious files. Very important as far security
is concerned. Something that is pretty much standardized throughout all
browsers now, but was brand new back in at least
for Internet Explorer anyway, and it includes support for HTML
five for audio and video tags. So we started to

(30:28):
see that that migration, which is still happening from four
to five UM. So you know, it was important. It
just didn't make a huge impact. Ah. In fact, I
can't even I don't think I've ever used E E nine.
I don't think I ever got to a point where
I used that. I yeah, I don't know. I think

(30:49):
I think I will have done because I was I
was all Mac at that point. My machine I was
at Wired at the time, My all my my machines
at wide would MAX as well. But I did always
have UM either a Parallels installation of Windows so I
could do my browser test because I always did the

(31:10):
browser reviews UM for seen it in the UK, and
then Wired as well after that, so I always sort
of kept I kept them installed, so I must have
used it at some point, but certainly I E seven
was the last one that I could honestly say I
really remember using. Possibly I E eighty. That so no, no,

(31:32):
no lasting impression here. Um. Yeah, I imagine that people
with MAX would yeah, I run boot camp, so I
could run I e nine. That would really shock me.
I would not be I would be a well why
please tell me what what's the I can tell you
why you might want to do that. Max or some
of the particularly quite a while was some of the

(31:53):
best Windows machines you could buy. That's like, buy a
MacBook Air and put Windows on It is a better
experience for most Windows is who didn't want to use
a map, or rather who didn't want to use those
turn right? Well did you? Uh? Do you? Do? You
find it amusing when PC users try to go the
other way and create hackintosh is. It seems like a
bit of a waste of time. But I suspect that

(32:14):
there are people that are probably doing it more for
the joy of making it work than the fact that
it's productive for them to do so. Once they've done it,
you know what I mean. But I also say I
and I am a Windows user. I mean my gaming
machine is a Windows PC. It's a big fat gaming
rig with a twenty one nine ultra y curved monitor
that's all Windows. But but it literally loads Steam and

(32:35):
most realistically, it really loads Elder Scrolls Online as soon
as I turn it on, like nothing else. I was
gonna say, like, with that huge screen, it's got to
be papers. Please, you're just playing papers please? Yeah, No,
it's my immersive Elder Scrolls experience. Well that's that's good now,
I know. I know what MMO. I could run into

(32:55):
you if I ever, if I ever dive into that world.
Oh please, do you are well? You would make a
fantastic Nord. I'm still playing. Actually, I'm still playing Skyrim again.
I mean I keep playing it through. I don't know
why I've played. I finally actually finished the game. For
the longest time, I was not finishing the game. I

(33:15):
was just doing all the side quests. So maybe I
need to Maybe I finally need to say goodbye to
Skyrim and jump on. We should take this conversation offline,
because I definitely want to persuade you to get into
eldest Rolls online. But we'll we'll save eldest Rolls for
a future tech stuff, perhaps because that in itself has
a rich history as a franchise. We'll revisit. Yeah. I
actually I remember getting to play the early build of

(33:36):
that at a c E three several years ago. But okay,
we'll say that for the next one. Let's let's let's
power on through the end of Internet Explorer. April twelve,
two eleven, that's when Microsoft announces Internet Explorer ten. It
was less than a month from releasing Internet Explorer nine,
so they released nine, and less than a month later

(33:58):
they say, hey, Internet Explored tennis coming, which seems like
a weird choice, especially when Internet Explorer nine wasn't being
bundled with an operating system. So I don't know why
they expected people to migrate to nine if they announced, hey,
something even better is coming really soon. That that to
me is a very odd decision. Um. I honestly don't

(34:20):
understand the motivation behind that, unless they probably for like
accounting purposes more than anything else, to show the return
on investment. Maybe I mean that since Internet Explorer wasn't
like a product that you would go out and purchase,
maybe they just didn't care. It's kind of hard to say. Uh.

(34:41):
They showed a demo of an early build of I
E ten at the MIX eleven conference in Las Vegas,
d M i x UH conference in Vegas, I've never
been to that one. That's one of the few that
I have not attended. UH. It was September two thousand eleven.
They showed a Meveloper preview of Windows eight UM that

(35:03):
ended up becoming available to the general public. So if
you wanted to get your hands on an early build
of Windows eight and then be one of the many
people who complained about the metro UH layout, you could
have done that. Then I was one of those people. Yeah.
We we actually just had a machine here at how
Stuff Works that was the Windows eight machine, and it

(35:24):
was a Windows eight machine that did not have a
well no one, no one was using it. Well, first
of all, there wasn't a whole lot of software we
could use with it, and secondly, we didn't have a
touch sensitive screen. So you were using this interface that
was clearly designed after the UI you would see in
a tablet, but transmitted transferred rather to a desktop experience.

(35:50):
But if you didn't have a touch screen monitor and
you were navigating it through your basic keyboard and mouse,
it was not a very satisfying experience, at least not
for me. I could easily see why it would be
very attractive if you were using a touch screen device,
although I'm not big on touch screen monitors because I
don't like having big, old, greasy fingerprints all over my

(36:12):
monitor all the time. Um. I prefer my desktop to
be still keyboard and mouse until something better comes along.
What about you, Do you use touch screen monitors? Noo? Yeah, here,
I don't see. I don't see. I don't see a
benefit to that, at least not in the current hardware
iterations that are out there. Yeah, I don't. I don't

(36:33):
like the idea of having to reach across and touch
the screen anyway. I'm also lazy, so anything that smacks
of effort I would like to edge away from unless
it was absolutely necessary. I e. Ten would end up
being bundled with Windows eight and Window Windows Server in
the fall of and it had two modes. It had

(36:54):
the Metro mode, so if you launched it in the
Metro they no longer call it Metro, but at the
time that's what we all referred to it as. If
you launched it when it was in the Metro layout,
which was that tiled layout of Windows eight, it had
a limited limited features, and it also ended up eliminating
UH pretty much the entire user interface was eliminated from

(37:16):
casual glance. You would have to swipe from the bottom
of the top in order to pull things up, But
otherwise it was meant to give the website the entirety
of your screens landscape. I can appreciate that on one level.
I liked the idea of slimming down your your frames
so that you're giving the website as much attention and

(37:39):
as much of the focus of the user as possible.
But at the same time, I want to be able
to easily navigate to other sites if I need to,
so I'm not crazy about completely hiding it away. Ah.
I think that might have been a bit much. If
you launched it in the desktop version of Internet Explorer,
it was a little more like the earlier versions. It

(38:01):
had more of the capabilities built into it. Um I think.
I think Windows eight was really Microsoft's approach to trying
to make the operating system as accessible to as broad
range of people as possible, and I'm not sure clearly
they weren't entirely successful. They The rapid development of Windows

(38:21):
ten kind of points to that, and also just the
upgrade to Windows eight point one, which ended up kind
of reversing Microsoft decisions on a lot of their original points.
But Microsoft tends to do this. It sort of take
the talks between between big success and at least the
perception of complete disaster, which is Windows uh, you know,

(38:43):
Windows XP great success for our style, Windows Vista disappointment,
Windows seven great success, Windows eight bits of disappointment. So
I sort of feel that they are due a great
success on the next on the next one, I think so, uh,
and I guess they'll go out on a high point

(39:04):
because it's the last one. Uh. You know. It's also
interesting because this to me parallels a similar thing that
happened with with Microsoft with the the announcement of Xbox one.
I remember you and I had a conversation about which
console we thought one E three that year when when
the PlayStation four and the Xbox one we're both announced. Yes,

(39:26):
I remember actually eating a very messy hot dog with
you while we had that conversation, and then we we
talked about how Microsoft made all these uh at the time,
they sounded very bold and sometimes slightly dangerous, you know,
as far as they're there the the way people would
view the Xbox One. They made these these announcements that

(39:48):
ultimately I think would have benefited them had they stuck
with them. But they listened to the initial reaction that
gamers had and they reversed some of their initial sholl
their initial pronouncements, which ended up negatively impacting certain features
down the road. And I think it's very similar to

(40:09):
the way Windows eight and Internet Explorer ten the same
sort of situations, they went through the same kind of cycles.
They went through this like we're gonna we're really trying
to push innovation. The problem was they were pushing the
innovation in a direction that the the public just didn't
get behind. And you know, I think this is really
it's it is a problem born out of the business model.

(40:33):
And it's not to blame Microsoft at all. This is
just the way business is. But they needed to They
need to give people a reason to go through what
is a particularly in the corporate world, a massive, dramatic
and expensive and disruptive decision to move operating systems through upgrade.

(40:55):
So they have to change something significantly, which is why
it seems to go from great too bad, too great,
too bad to potentially next great again, because basically what
they then change is they go back to what people
wanted in the first place. You know it's a it's
the problem with if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But if it ain't broke, but you need to make

(41:16):
more money because that's what your business relies on, then
maybe you don't fix it, just try and do something
to it and then fix that, right right, Yeah, I
mean that's that's a that's a great point, and I
think it has to be endlessly frustrating to Microsoft executives
to really push for big, big change is big risks

(41:38):
and innovation and seeing it fall flat. And then watch
Apple where it seems like Apple is able to make
that kind of declaration and uh and do really well
with it. Now that being said, there are clearly examples
in Apple's past where updates to certain operating systems or

(41:59):
software packages have been met with lots of criticism. Uh,
there're certain OS updates that people absolutely despised in the
in the process of the evolution of mac os. There's
also I mean, anyone here at how stuff works who
works in video could go on and on about changes

(42:22):
to certain video editing suites. I love that change is brilliant.
I ditched Premier to move to final cut when they
change that. Really, everyone here with the other way. That's
because they were probably doing it for for a living,
whereas I do it semi professionally, So for me it
actually sped up a lot of stuff, particularly things like
multi cam. I wasn't doing anything professionally professionally with it,

(42:43):
like it wasn't my sole job. But but but on
the other hand, the big differences that Microsoft now does
these big, giant, huge overhauls and pushes it as the
next big thing and like the latest innovation and leap
in personal and professional computing. Apple makes a big deal
about its os is, but they're actually incremental. They'm all
like service packs now and they are free. An Apple

(43:05):
will trump you know, this new innovative feature and that
new innovative feature, and yeah they are convenient, but you know,
would you pay for it? Really? I mean people did,
but it never really felt like a big deal to Apple.
It more felt like just because they were making boxes
and putting them on shells and shipping them around the world,
they should probably charge something for them. But once it's
all software and download based, it's just like me have it.

(43:27):
So they're like completely different. It's they're not chicken and eggs,
not chicken egg Sorry, they're not chalking cheese. Now, they're
just we're not comparing apples to apples by comparing os
tend to windows updates wise. Was that chalk and cheese
that I read? Yeah, that's it's water past eleven at night.
I've been up there like eighteen hours at this point.

(43:49):
I'm fried. I'm just curious if that's if that's a
common saying, or if that's just a yeah, okay, all right, Yeah,
that's really common. Yeah, they're like chalk and cheese. They
don't go together. I'll take your word for it. I've
never heard that phrase. But I'm I'm a clause. You know,
I've been very you know, sheltered my entire life, So
it's quite possible it just hasn't made its way to
the Deep South yet. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion

(44:13):
of this tex Stuff Classic episode right after we take
this break. Alright, so we're in the home stretch. October
sevent Microsoft releases the final version of Internet Explorer Internet
Explorer eleven, which had a lot of performance improvements. It

(44:37):
actually went when it came out. There were a lot
of reviewers who put it through various speed tests and
said this was competitive against all the other browsers that
were current at that time, faster than a lot of them,
that it had made some incredible improvements and was a
true contender in the browsers space that if And in fact,

(45:00):
I remember reading so many reviews that said, hey, if
you switched the Chrome because you wanted it to load
web pages faster, you don't have that reason anymore because
Internet Explorer eleven was doing it as fast or faster
than Chrome could. So it suddenly became clear that Microsoft
had really pushed to to not just have new features,

(45:22):
but to improve the performance so that it wasn't going
to be viewed as, oh, yeah, it's this thing that
everyone has because it's bundled with your operating system. It
was actually a valuable browser that could stand on its
own against uh, all these other competitors. So it was
one of those things where you started hearing some real

(45:42):
positive thing, you know, reviews about Internet Explorer. And yet
it's also the last Internet Explorer. Uh. Microsoft announced this
year that it is no longer going to be developing
Internet Explorer. I sort of think that it's a necessary

(46:02):
it's a necessary change because I think that the name
I E. Is a lot worse than the product itself.
Internet Explorer is a perfectly good, great, modern, fast browser
now like it is. It's fine. It's a decent browser.
And and if I feel that people say who you
know who say, oh, I use Internet Explorer, most of

(46:24):
us in the tech world kind of go really really,
But you know what if you if you're using the
latest I E on Windows eight point one, it's not
a bad browser you might like. And I mean there's
objectively speaking, not subjectively like objectively it's not a poor browser. Um.
But the word I E. Just it just brings with

(46:45):
it this history that you know, people just associate with
either bad technology or horrible compatibility issues like you had
with i E eight where you have to build basically
a version of your website just for warm browser. Um,
there was a lot of problems and obviously the security
issues with i E six. It's you know, get rid

(47:08):
of the name. It's a it's a real problem. Is
why people don't really name their children after murderers, because
well there's a yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, and and so
the the next one, and who knows, by the time
this podcast goes live, maybe they'll have officially announced the name.
But it's code named Project Spartan, which is built on

(47:30):
different codes. It's code that if you trace it back,
you know it has roots that are common to Internet Explorer,
but again it's a different evolutionary path um and it's
going to uh be the new approach for browsers. There
will be continued support for Internet Explorer for a while,
but we're going to see that gradually taper off until

(47:54):
we are left with whatever Project Spartan is named at
the time. I am curious where they came up with
that name because they have the personal assistant Cortana and Quartana.
That's a character from the Halo franchise, which Microsoft owns.
Now it's good PR, it's good PR. Yeah, so Halo
is cool. Xpox is the coolest thing Microsoft's ever done,

(48:17):
named after the most popular thing. That the most popular
thing is named after. Yeah, I mean they weren't going
to call it master Chief, so master Chief. The main
character in Halo is a Spartan soldier. They the type
of armor he wears is designated as Spartan. So it's
possible that this is another Halo reference. It could be
that Spartan is totally is a Halo reference, like it's

(48:39):
spartan either because it's a very bland, open interface, and
then possibly but it's not, is it it's it's it's halo.
I still think they should call it Windows grunt Well,
I guess, I guess they could call it elite. I
mean that would be that would be something I would
have possibly an is our connotation than gruntwood. Although honestly,

(49:03):
depending upon what version of Windows you're running, grunting might
be your natural reaction to booting up your computer. Um,
because I remember running older versions of Windows on older
machines and thinking, all right, I've turned my computer on.
In about half an hour, I'll be able to do something.
Uh at any rate. That's that's it. That is the
the full blown history of Internet Explorer, from the early

(49:26):
days before there were even web browsers to the current
situation where Internet Explorer is is surfing into the sunset.
I guess since we're talking about the web and we're
going to get this this new type of browser in
the future, Uh, it's an interesting story. I mean, you've

(49:46):
got so much drama there, from the the any trust lawsuits,
the whole dot com bubble, the intense focus on the web,
Microsoft getting a little maybe not lazy, but complacent perhaps
with its place. I mean, it's it's a You can
also look at this and the development of the you know,
the company Microsoft as well, just what that company was

(50:10):
going through during that time. We could do a parallel
timeline and really see how there was a lot going on.
Oh there really was, and and and the popularity of
Windows in an Explorer six and by extension, Internet Explorer
six itself was both the best and the worst thing

(50:31):
that happened to i E. As a franchise of browsers.
You know, it's popularity. It accounts for over nine of
all browser installations at one point around two thousand three,
I think. And yet that was the one that effectively
caused the downfall, you know, in terms of actual security issues,
public perception, um, you know, the the the need for

(50:55):
something to challenge the dominant monopolistic looking i E. You know,
all that stuff. It caused its own ultimate downfall, and
the complacency just made that worse. Yeah, without without i E.
Six you don't have necessarily the the incentive for a
group like the Mozilla Foundation to really push for an

(51:19):
alternative like Firefox. And then Firefox ends up becoming not
just like first it when it debuts, it's it's definitely
the underdog, but then very quickly in the grand scheme
of things, became a true contender. Uh yeah, I mean
without without the problems of I E. Six, there wouldn't
have been I don't think there would have been a

(51:39):
drive for the alternatives. Uh. And ultimately, when you look
at the way things have shaken out now, again, like
we we barely touched the mobile world, but it's also
what helped drive the development of things like Chromium. Uh.
And then therefore you could also say it helped drive
things like Android as well as chromos. Uh. You know,

(52:00):
the world is definitely affected by Internet Explorer. Like we
we would not have the same experiences that we have
available to us now were it not for I E.
Whether it's whether it's from Microsoft or from someone else
that was trying to compete against them. So I agree.
I mean, broadly speaking, what a successful product, you know,

(52:23):
and what a great product for you know, for the
last two decades. I mean, you know, I say this
is a Mac user, but as someone has a deep
amount of respect for Microsoft and and what it does
and what it has done and Internet Explorer has to
go down as one of the most popular, if not
the most commendable piece of software ever made. You know,

(52:45):
and I know that's a controversial statement, but but I
think even the you know what I'm getting at that
it's it has itself done so much for what the
modern web is, even if it was by being too
popular or too bad at one point, it has and
a driver of change for the modern Internet. Hey god,
I mean, I think I feel pretty safe in saying
that if Internet Explorer had not been If it hadn't

(53:10):
been for Internet Explorer, for one thing, more people would
never have been introduced to the Worldwide Web because since
it was bundled with the operating system, it took that
barrier to entry and throw it out the door right.
It made it It became something that your computer could
do as soon as you got it plugged up and
connected to the Internet. There's still a bit of a

(53:30):
barrier because you still had to get connected, but once
you got past that, it was already ready to go.
And so there was that it helped remove that barrier
to entry. And because of that, because it had this
uh enabling factor that drove more people to the Web.
It allowed for the creation of things like websites like
how Stuff Works dot Com, which means that I ultimately

(53:53):
was able to land my dream job. So like, I
don't know that things have unfolded the same way had
Microsoft not gotten into this. I'm sure. I mean, it's undoubted,
there's it's impossible to say, but I mean, I'm pretty
sure that there's no way the World Wide Web wouldn't
still be an incredibly influential uh part of our lives.

(54:17):
But whether it would be to the same extent that
it is now without Internet Explorer, I don't know. Um.
I mean, something that powerful and useful and uh and
and ultimately profitable uh could not remain obscure forever, but
it certainly could have taken longer without Internet Explorer for

(54:39):
it to to get the traction that it got. So well,
here's to the next years. Yeah, who knows, who knows?
What you know? Maybe maybe we'll both be using a
Microsoft machine and at that time and Mac will be
a distant memory, and my my Chrome U my Chrome
browser will be seen as as antiquated and cute. Yes,

(55:02):
I doubt it, but we'll see. I'll be just I'll
be passing through a midlife crisis and planning a sixtieth birthday. Yeah,
I'll be. I'll be through my midlife crisis and well
into my decline. All right. So Nate Lank said, thank
you so much for joining me for these episodes. It
has been a pleasure having you on the show. I

(55:23):
greatly appreciate you taking the time and as as people
have heard and maybe you maybe you didn't notice, but
Nate has stayed up passed as bedtime to be on
my show. So I appreciate that. Now it's much if
I if I can stay up for two epic podcast episodes,
time to talk about the history of a piece of software.
I mean that is that is nerd tactic in my book,

(55:44):
and it's I'm just about to relaunch an entire publication
in Europe. And I am well past my bedtime definitely,
and but but it's been a lot of fun and
kept me kept me awake despite what I probably should
have been. Well, well, Nate, I'm going to take that
as a positive and uh, I hope I can have

(56:06):
you on the show again in the future. I would
love to have you back on and chatting about some
some other great tech topics. Nate is incredibly well versed
in tons of technology. Uh. He very graciously agreed to
be on this episode next time, I promise I will
give him the full list of choices and just open

(56:28):
up the option so he can pick whatever he wants to. UH,
because it was I was playing unfairly this time. And
that wraps up the story of Internet Explorer, at least
as far as it went there. Obviously, we could talk
a lot more about Internet Explorer today and the emergence
of Edge as well, and UH probably will do that

(56:50):
at some point. Maybe I'll even get Nate back on
the show. If you have suggestions for topics I should
cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out
to me. You can do so on Twitter. The handle
for the show is tech Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech Stuff

(57:11):
is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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