"I don't agree that just because a (competing) product has a feature that we don't have, that feature is important," he said. "It is not. It is only important if it is a feature the customer wants. There are plenty of products out there with features we don't have. We have plenty of features that our customers don't use.

You've got to be joking, Microsoft are oblivious to the needs of users, this proves it. Its a sad cop out reasoning behind why IE is so lacking (tabs, CSS, XHTML, security), and to add to that, they think they can decide which features the customers want! Its incredible, especially considering how everyone who uses tabs falls in love with them.

Im not a big fan of MS bashing, but stuff like this is ridiculous

Blue, be honest.
Do you just have a standard IE is vulnerable to attacks sentence that you just vary ever so slightly for your daily Tech Bits headlines?
I would.
It would save 5 seconds or so every single day.

Microsoft are oblivious to the needs of users

The proper word is "arrogant," not "oblivious." When you are a monopolist and there is no competition to keep you honest, you don't care what the customer needs or wants.

You cannot make anything fool-proof. The fools are too inventive

There are plenty of products out there with features we don't have. We have plenty of features that our customers don't use.

That's hilarious!

Call me a fan boy if you want, but who actually cares about a tabbed browser???? WTF, it isn't like the best thing since sliced bread, especially since it is just as easy to change browser windows as it is to change browser tabbed windows. I've used it, woopty-sh*t.

Security; the same old argument applies here as it has to all Mac fan-boys who have touted that Macs have far less viruses. If the people who find these security holes in IE spent as much time looking for holes in Firefox there would be the same number, but why focus time and effort on something less than 10% of users have? Some of these holes in IE security have been in IE since before version 5, and they are just now finding them? I would say that is a pretty obscure threat until an exploit is released.

As for your other two examples I have not been exposed to them and so i have no comment. (And apparently no need for them either.)

Call me a fan boy if you want

Okay FAN BOY!!!

but who actually cares about a tabbed browser???? WTF, it isn't like the best thing since sliced bread, especially since it is just as easy to change browser windows as it is to change browser tabbed windows.

Actually, I'd be lost without it. You're right it's just CTRL+ALT instead of ALT+TAB to switch between open pages, but on the other hand what if you have a few browser windows open along with a few other apps as well? Then with a tabbed broswer you treat all those open pages as only one window. You can then use one key combination to cycle between open programs, and another to cycle between open pages. Very handy sometimes.

The other big benefit (which isn't so much of a benefit in the days of pop-up blockers) is when you visit a site and 20 popup windows pop up. In a tabbed browser, you only have to close one window, where in a non-tabbed browser like IE you'd have to close each individually (although as I said, now that IE finally has popup blocking this isn't as big of a deal as it used to be).

Security; the same old argument applies here as it has to all Mac fan-boys who have touted that Macs have far less viruses.

Oh you mean the invalid one of if hackers spent as much time trying to hack Macs/Linux/Firefox/favourite non-ms product of choice, then there'd be as much security problems as IE has?

Firstly, IE is extremely tightly integrated with the shell, so when you have a security breach in IE, that basically means you have a system-wide security breach. That is a fundamental security issue that is not present in *ANY* other browser.

Secondly, you don't know that if people tried hacking non-MS products more than MS that it would result in more security issues for those products. It might, it might not. Nobody knows the answer for sure one way or the other.

One thing that is true about Firefox since it's open source is that when issues are found, they are usually addressed in a matter of hours instead of weeks or months as is the case with IE.

PZ
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Reading: Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation"