It’s come a long way in recent years, but even so, Internet Explorer may be Microsoft’s most reviled product: a web browser so bad it held web standards back for years. From a Mac fan’s perspective, the best that can be said about Internet Explorer is that, for the most part, you never have to use it at all: the most up-to-date versions only run on Windows.
But that could soon change. A new report suggests that Microsoft could be rebranding Internet Explorer while giving it a radical overhaul… while simultaneously releasing it on non-Windows systems like Mac and iOS.
According to a new report by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft is planning on replacing Internet Explorer with Spartan, a new browser that, while built on Microsoft’s existing JavaScript and rendering engines, would otherwise model itself after the likes of Chrome and Firefox.
Foley’s sources say that when Microsoft releases its latest and greatest OS, Windows 10, it will ship with both Spartan and IE11 installed. IE11 will only be included for backwards compataibility, though, and Spartan will be the way forward.
As for whether or not Spartan will come to the Mac, there’s no word yet, but it makes sense: now that Ballmer’s gone, Microsoft’s new strategy is to open up its software to every platform capable of running them. If we can have Office on the iPad, why not Microsoft’s new browser on the Mac?
Source: ZDNet
