Internet Explorer - Pure-Mac.com

[Hikermann]

Need to put IE on my MacBook OS X 10.4.11; went to pure-mac.com, found the IE download, tried it, was told my system did not support or some such; says: Requirements: Mac OS X 10.1.5 ... does that mean ONLY that edition, that + anything prior, or that + anything that follows?

Don't particularly care for IE but have a sales form with macros out-the-kazoo that I need to be able to use; attempted to use it in OpenOffice, but not all the mactros functioned.

Any suggestions (other than go spend $$) that might be useful. Much appreciated.

[Turboladdade]

There is no Internet Explorer for Mac OS X. The one you found was discontinued in 2003, and even when it was still being developed, it was completely different from Internet Explorer for Windows, so whatever need you imagine you have for IE, downloading ancient IE for Mac is not going to be your solution I'm afraid.

The reason you can't run it is because it far predates Intel Macs. It is a PowerPC-only application that you cannot run without Rosetta, which is not installed by default, but you can install it from your Mac OS X installation DVD. Rosetta is sortof an emulator that translates PowerPC programs to Intel code, then back again, allowing you to use old Mac software. Rosetta was included in Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. It was made optional in Snow Leopard. Mac OS X Lion will not support Rosetta at all.

Again, there's no actual reason to install it since it has literally no relation to IE for Windows, and will probably just be a waste of disk space and/or corrupt something on your computer. Your other options are to install a virtual machine (I recommend Oracle VirtualBox), use Boot Camp (which I definitely do not recommend) or find a PC somewhere that you can use.

Unrelated - the reason your first post "disappeared" is because posts by new members at Info-Mac go into a moderation queue. You'll notice while you're here that you pretty much never see any spam - this is why. Now that you have an approved post, you can post from now on without this limitation.

[dmcandel]

If you have an intel Mac, this might be a solution for you. I have tried it and it does work. It is a bit confusing to set up and work through but it works. You'll need to have X11 installed.

http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/

[Turboladdade]

I typically don't recommend Wine or similar solutions as it introduces too many unknown variables. Mac OS X is not designed to run Windows software. In order to do so, many workarounds and loopholes have to be installed, modified, or exploited. It's a very messy solution. Much better to use a virtualization solution which allows you to install Windows itself inside sort of a "walled garden" protecting the rest of your Mac. Oracle's VirtualBox is free and is very good.

[kriegvision]

I'll second the recommendation for VirtualBox. I am using it right now to write this post on Windows XP, in fact.

It's simple, fast, efficient and convenient.

[leonAzul]

Need to put IE on my MacBook OS X 10.4.11; went to pure-mac.com, found the IE download, tried it, was told my system did not support or some such; says: Requirements: Mac OS X 10.1.5 ... does that mean ONLY that edition, that + anything prior, or that + anything that follows?

Don't particularly care for IE but have a sales form with macros out-the-kazoo that I need to be able to use; attempted to use it in OpenOffice, but not all the mactros functioned.

Any suggestions (other than go spend $$) that might be useful. Much appreciated.

Are you sure it is Explorer you need to interpret Javascript forms, or is it rather Excel that you need to run VBscript macros?

LibreOffice has limited support for Excel macros, but as you have already discovered, most imported spreadsheets need to be saved in ODT format and then "tweaked" to function properly. But if you have a small number of forms that you use regularly it might be worth the effort.

If you need complete compatibility with Windows users of MS Office generated files, then WINE and its derivatives is not a bad way to go. Since WINE Is Not an Emulator, but only a runtime environment, it does not support the complete functionality of a full Windows installation and therefore has none of its more serious system-wide vulnerabilities. This is also why any attempt to install a current version of Explorer to a Winebottle is pretty much a non-starter. IMHO, MS Office is not only more compatible in a Winebottle than the native Mac OS version, but also runs better than in a VM. YMMV.

A VM seems attractive since it isolates the activity of the guest machine from the host, yet it would require purchasing a licensed copy of Windows, and opens up many more vulnerabilities for malware to work with in the first place than a restricted runtime environment. Courses for horses.

[Turboladdade]

A VM seems attractive since it isolates the activity of the guest machine from the host, yet it would require purchasing a licensed copy of Windows, and opens up many more vulnerabilities for malware to work with in the first place than a restricted runtime environment. Courses for horses.

I disagree entirely with this assessment. Using Wine or any of its derivatives runs software intended for use in Microsoft Windows directly at the operating level of your computer, rather than behind some sort of abstraction layer such as that provided by a VM. How sure can anyone be that the Windows software won't write to somewhere it shouldn't or corrupt anything? Additionally, whenever I've tried running anything substantial in Wine it always ends up super buggy and unreliable.

Using a VM is the safest, most reliable and most efficient way to do this (even more so than Boot Camp or installing Windows directly onto your Mac). Oracle VirtualBox is free and so fast and stable there's really no reason to mess around with anything else.

[leonAzul]

A VM seems attractive since it isolates the activity of the guest machine from the host, yet it would require purchasing a licensed copy of Windows, and opens up many more vulnerabilities for malware to work with in the first place than a restricted runtime environment. Courses for horses.

I disagree entirely with this assessment. Using Wine or any of its derivatives runs software intended for use in Microsoft Windows directly at the operating level of your computer

Totally ignorant goat blather. I suppose running a .jar with a JIT or an AppleScript is equally suspect.

[Turboladdade]

Totally ignorant goat blather. I suppose running a .jar with a JIT or an AppleScript is equally suspect.

If you don't understand the difference between a comparatively simple just-in-time compiler and tricking an application into believing its running on a completely different operating system and all the complexity and risk that entails, then you probably shouldn't be dishing out such advice as this.

[leonAzul]

Totally ignorant goat blather. I suppose running a .jar with a JIT or an AppleScript is equally suspect.

If you don't understand the difference between a comparatively simple just-in-time compiler and tricking an application into believing its running on a completely different operating system and all the complexity and risk that entails, then you probably shouldn't be dishing out such advice as this.

With all due respect, this isn't even wrong. WINE Is Not an Emulator. It is a run-time environment. Please explain how a Winebottle can install a rootkit if there is no Windows root. Please explain how escalation of privileges works in a Winebottle when there is no Windows administrative account to compromise. The very reason WINE exists is because Windows binaries cannot run without the supporting libraries. Please explain how any software compiled to Windows APIs can magically escape the Winebottle environment to run amok on a Mac or Linux OS. It is possible that someone will create a compound payload that will run on multiple platforms, but the sheer size of such a thing would make it difficult to hide, and social engineering tactics are far more effective and less fragile.

There are real risks involved with WINE. Software and documents can become corrupted. Attempting to run IIS, Exchange Server, or other low level services does incur security risks, in addition to intellectual property issues. Early in its history it was proposed as a goal to facilitate a comprehensive emulation, like Cygwin does for POSIX, but it was abandoned for these reasons. This is why the WINE community curates installers for supported desktop applications and not such services. These are facts that are very easy to verify.

[Turboladdade]

I don't understand if you're refuting what I said or are just arguing for argument's sake. I didn't say WINE is an emulator, and it certainly is not a just-in-time compiler, since it runs precompiled binaries, and now we suddenly seem to agree that there are risks involved, and I'm sure everybody recognizes that it's an infinitely buggy and unreliable endeavor, so what exactly are you suggesting here? What reason is there not to use a virtual machine like 99.99% of people facing this situation?