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Comment by gloob | Hacker News Reader

There are a few possible reasons for Microsoft to put IE9 on Windows XP that I can imagine. The first ones that come to mind (all hypothetical, incidentally): (1) it would, somehow, earn them money, (2) they have contractual obligations to do it, or (3) they get their giggles from updating a decade-old operating system.

1 seems unlikely. 2 also seems unlikely, since if they had a legal obligation to put IE9 on XP, they would probably be putting IE9 on XP. 3 seems deeply implausible.

I suggest that the largest group of people who care about this is not users or companies but web developers. If this is true, then Microsoft has no motive to put IE9 on Windows XP, and plenty of motives not to.

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>"[...]a few possible reasons for Microsoft to put IE9 on Windows XP that I can imagine."

How about demonstrating that they care about UX of current users. They care about good internet experience and they care that their users don't have to use someone else’s free software to still have a vaguely secure and usable internet experience. Or simply just as an opportunity to showcase MS's improvements to their apps and demonstrate the great benefits (ahem) to updating to newer versions of other apps. It could also be a ready advertising opportunity in many countries, have the homepage fixed to an MS page with upgrade offers and info if you're on a legacy OS version. Lastly as a way to softarm Bing as being the default search engine of millions of business users.

Why not design it to work on XP, OSX and Linux from the off? The other browser makers seem to manage it. Perhaps they secretly feel they can't contend in the browser space?

IE9 was built from the ground up to use technologies like DirectWrite, GPU Accel. etc. Porting all these to XP would not be trivial. I guess MS wants to nudge people off that platform so that software can start using new technologies instead of getting stuck in 2001.

Anyway, they supported it till IE8 and MS has one of the best track records for backward compatibility(if not the best) in the industry. Just see Apple to see how quickly things are deprecated.

I am sure developing IE is an enormous cost since MS has to be careful about not breaking corporate software. The benefit to them by making it for OS X and Linux would be negligible or even negative (how many would even install it? Most run those OSes because they don't like MS).

>"IE9 was built from the ground up to use technologies like DirectWrite, GPU Accel. etc. Porting all these to XP would not be trivial."

Indeed, hence why I asked why not design it to work (even in a limited form) with other platforms from the off. I realise going backwards now is not really possible what I was questioning was the original decision.

>I am sure developing IE is an enormous cost since MS has to be careful about not breaking corporate software.

Couldn’t they plug in the past DLLs as other apps do so as to render as if it were IE6 under XP(SP2) or whatever?

OT :you say "Most run those OSes because they don't like MS". Do you think this is true? I'd have thought the majority run OSX for [perceived] usability or possibly lifestyle reasons and maybe Linux for price reasons. Personally I run Linux based on a mixture of ease of usability and price. Despite being vehemently against MSIE (due to time served web developing) I thought MSIE8 was quite good and should it be available for my distro I'd give it a trial despite being pretty entrenched with FF. It's not really me that I'd see them marketing too though.

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