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I received this excellent letter from reader Mike Donahue in response to my story yesterday about Netscape 6.1 heating up the browser Wars, and my informal "Microsoftless computing" campaigning in general.

Mike writes:

Hi Charles.

I really enjoyed your great article, "Will Netscape 6.1 Reignite The Browser Wars?"

And I hope it does.

I was one of the ones who tried Netscape 6 and 6.01 and quickly became disgusted. It was ugly. It was slow. It crashed and crashed and crashed. (This was the future?!)

I buried it somewhere on my hard drive and lost all interest in it.

So my expectations were quite low when I gave Netscape 6.1 a try. But I was pleasantly surprised -- VERY surprised!

To me it felt fast and snappy as well as stable and crash proof. I have yet to crash it.

It renders pages cleanly and sharply.

Pages seem to pop up on the screen and the back button brings them back up instantly.

The gaudy, distracting navigation toolbar has been toned down with a more conservative and respectable appearance.

Gene Steinberg at MacNightOwl.com totally trashed the OS X version of Netscape 6.1 and I wrote him an email lambasting him for being so rough on Netscape for a BETA version of an OS X product.

I thought he was sending the wrong signal to Netscape.

I think we should all just be counting our blessings that the second largest browser maker is writing an OS X version AT ALL!

But in his replies to me he came off as a Microsoft worshipper and a "Microsoft can do no wrong. Microsoft is a kindly, well-intentioned, but misunderstood company that means no harm" kind of apologist.

Which brings me to the questions I have for you:

1. I'm sure you've heard about the recent flap whereby Microsoft made a change to its browser which rendered QuickTime unusable.

Microsoft explained that the change reflected a move away from Netscape style plug-ins and toward desktop helper apps like RealPlayer.

My question is, do you know if Microsoft gave Apple and other major plug-in makers advanced warning of the changes before it made them? And did Microsoft offer workaround solutions for these plug-in makers to employ in order to maintain compatibility?

Apple certainly acted as if they were taken by surprise by the change to IE.

2. Do you think it's possible, or likely, that if Microsoft becomes the totally dominant browser maker (more so than it is now) that it could then break the platform independence of the Web by encouraging site designers to use Windows-specific ActiveX controls, Direct3D functions, and have sites use and rely on certain Windows desktop apps?

As you can see, if Web sites did begin using and relying on Windows-specific technologies, it would screw up the platform independent nature of the Web and instantly render Mac users second class citizens on the Web.

Under such a scenario, a new selling point for PCs over Macs would be that users would enjoy a richer, more complete Internet experience on the PC.

Mac owners might experience a less-rich, less complete experience on the Web -- perhaps 40% of the experience a PC user would enjoy.

It would be like WebTV -- a second rate experience over other platforms. (Or like how Mac AOL clients and AOL Instant Messenger clients always lag far behind their Windows counterparts in versions and features.)

The recent shenanigans Microsoft employed to render QuickTime unusable under IE really scares me.

This is why I'm pulling real hard for Netscape and hope their browser gains ground on MS IE. It will foil Microsoft's plans.

Microsoft's defenders in the Mac community always seem to say to us critics "Grow Up!" and "Microsoft's not evil -- it just gets a bad rap."

But I can't help it -- I just don't think it's wise to err on the side of giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

It hasn't earned it.

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Mike

Well, Mike, Apple of course doesn't confide in me about such matters (or anything else) but I suspect that they were blindsided by Microsoft dropping QuickTime support in Internet Explorer.

In general, I think that was a move typical of Microsoft's philosophy of attempting to impose its own proprietary protocols as industry-wide "standards," thus gaining more complete corporate control of the IT sector then it already has.

I don't happen to like any Microsoft software, so boycotting it is no hardship for me, but as I have said before, even if Microsoft made the best applications available for the Mac, I would not use them on principle because of Microsoft's bullying and hegemonistic ambitions.

I think your speculations about what a Microsoft-controlled Internet would be like have it pretty well nailed. Independent browsers, if they worked at all, would be forced to incorporate Microsoft proprietary technologies (and likely pay license fees), and you can bet that the surfing experience using anything else would be pretty mediocre.

If, perish the thought, Microsoft ever succeeded in stomping out its competition in the OS and browser sectors (which was surely its ambition before the anti-trust trial -- remember "cutting off their air supply" -- and I am convinced is still their objective through more subtle means) then you can bet the farm that we would all be paying hefty Microsoft subscription fees for our software, and you could kiss "free" MS applications like Internet Explorer and Outlook Express goodbye. Just look at the way Microsoft is screwing Windows junkies with the XP release -- jacking the already high price, imposing draconian and intrusive copy protection, and soon to phase in mandatory subscription fees.

In Richard Adams' novel Watership Down, the sojourning band of rabbits visit a rabbit warren where food is plentifully supplied (by humans) and life seems superficially good and easy. However, Fiver, the clairvoyant rabbit protagonist, immediately has bad feelings about it all, and senses that something is terribly wrong there. The fact is that the magnanimity of the human benefactors is in aid of keeping a stock of wild rabbits conveniently handy for hunting and snaring purposes.

I felt a lot like Fiver in that warren when Microsoft began giving away Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. The operative question was, why would a profit-oriented corporation spend a great deal of money developing complex software to hand out for free?

The answer was of course soon obvious. Microsoft's design was to crush Netscape and in so doing increase its leverage in controlling Internet standards and protocols.

But what of the fact that Microsoft has the largest Mac software development organization outside Apple itself? Well, back to that rabbit warren in Watership Down. Microsoft has a vested interest in keeping Apple around. They can then say to the Department of Justice -- "See; we're not a monopoly; there's competition in the OS market." They also turn a pretty good profit, I would imagine, selling Office to Mac users, where their productivity software has better market penetration than in the PC sector.

However, they don't want Apple to get too uppity, thus their move to torpedo QuickTime as an Internet standard.

Microsoft's naked ambition to command-and-control is, IMHO, the most malignant threat to the future of the IT community and the Internet, and is why those of us who value freedom and open standards must avoid supporting Microsoft by refusing to use its software.

This is also a pragmatic reason why Mac fans should be encouraging the use of Linux. It is not practical to hope for a mass conversion to the Macintosh in the foreseeable future. Too many users have to much invested in PC hardware, peripherals, and infrastructure, for that to happen. And anyway, there is no guarantee that an huh monopoly would be any more benevolent than a Microsoft one.

I love the Mac OS, and Apple makes the coolest personal-computer hardware available, but intellectually and idologically, I see the open source software sector as being the healthiest avenue for the IT future. It makes good sense to install Linux in a dual boot environment on your Macintosh as well, and to learn how to use it. I've managed the first part of that so far. ;-)

Charles W. Moore

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