Category: Microsoft

Andrew Cunningham, writing at Ars Technica:

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has died many deaths over the years, but today is the one that counts. The final version of the browser, Internet Explorer 11, will no longer receive support or security updates starting today, and it will gradually be removed from Windows 10 PCs via a Windows Update at some point in the future. It was never installed on Windows 11 PCs at all.

[…]

That’s the end of the line for Internet Explorer, a browser that annihilated all competitors in the late-’90s browser wars only to be decisively wiped out in the early-2010s browser wars. For those who weren’t there, we’ve put together a brief history of the life and times of Internet Explorer. IE’s heyday is a distant memory, but the entire story is worth knowing. Google Chrome is on top of the world today, but that didn’t happen overnight, and the browser wars have been nothing if not cyclical.

My pal Florence Ion, writing at Gizmodo:

I want to thank whatever stars aligned that surfaced this video of the Windows 95 launch event in my algorithm. While clips from the presentation have floated around online for decades, the full 90-minute keynote has been harder to track down. Uploaded this week by the angels over at the Blue OS Museum YouTube account, the complete presentation is an absolute time capsule of technology culture as it existed on Aug. 24, 1995. It also features some incredibly cringe moments, most of which stem from Jay Leno’s cheesy and problematic joke-telling.

From the ability to run Android apps, to the new design and window snapping features and its ability to properly manage windows when an external display is added or taken away, there’s a lot that to like with Windows 11. Over on The Test Drivers, Myke and Austin spoke with Microsoft’s Panos Panay about the new release. It’s a fun interview, and it is really cool to see it on Relay FM.

Sam Byford, writing at The Verge:

Let’sLet’s play a quick game of word association: Microsoft — Windows? Excel? Xbox? All solid answers. But for me, for a while in the ’90s at least, I would have immediately answered “Flight Simulator.” Microsoft Flight Simulator is the very first thing I can remember ever doing on a computer, sat on my granddad’s lap as we soared across blocky landscapes together with a Sidewinder joystick. It is one of Microsoft’s all-time iconic brands.

The new version, dubbed simply “Microsoft Flight Simulator” ships in just a few weeks, and Byford has a nice look at it.

Some things never change, I suppose.