Mac Browsers - Is IE5.x for the Mac officially dead?

Question

I don't use a mac much so my exposure is minimal but can I safely presume that IE on the Mac is dead?

I know that Microsoft isn't developing it any further and that Firefox, Safari (Opera and Camino) all run on Mac (and from my stats they are most used, in that order)...

So the question is: Is it dead? and if so, when did it die?

I still see CSS templates with Mac IE hacks in place... but I'm thinking it is time to strip the dead weight. Am I right?

PS For anyone hosting a large commercial site, I'd be interested in the % of customers using Mac IE. (Customers being users that actually buy something, not just web developers ping'ing amazon.com to see what it looks like)

Answer 1

I used to work for a large commercial site just over a year ago, and IE5.5 on a Mac usage was below 0.5% - and that was in an organisation where many of the internal users used that browser (the main reason we had to support it)

I would say, unless the demographic you are targeting are especially likely to be using it, I really wouldn't bother.

Answer 2

It died around the time os x came out. I havnt seen it been used in years and i would say its safe to assume its not being used any more. I dont think it got ported to be a native os x app and the newer os x versions cant run non native apps.

Answer 3

I would consider IE on the Mac as dead. As a long year Mac user, I think nobody really uses this browser often.

According to this statistics http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm the usage percentage is under 0.3%.

Answer 4

Yes. Praise the lord.

Answer 5

It's dead. I just pulled up this months report and found 9 hits out of 3.5 million (about 0.0000257%).

If you need a time-of-death, I would say it was in 2006 when Microsoft released a statement urging users to "migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari."

Answer 6

Hello,

Please refer to this document.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/

The highest version of Mac IE shipped was 5.2.3.

And this for more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_5#Apple_Macintosh

HTH

Colby Africa

Answer 7

I'm seeing 0.22% usage of IE on mac. So, I'd consider it dead too. I'm also only seeing .23% on Opera.

• 22 hits on a monthly visits count of 10,025.

Answer 8

I really liked Mac IE back in the day, and still consider it one of the best browsers for old-school modem surfers and that it contains features still not replicated elsewhere.

Still, by the time Safari 2 came out Mac IE was way too long in the tooth, never updated and didn't match the slowly-evolving Aqua look and feel anymore. The last few faithful users gave up on it.

Answer 9

It is dead, It is good for it to be dead :D