The amount of that article which was focused on legacy was very depressing. When it started to go about how it would break some Little League site that was IE specific that got me very unexcited. Microsoft today needs to learn the lesson of Apple in the very late 90s and just say "no".
They can't. All of the success MS has is based on enterprise - Apple are lucky in not having that restriction. At this point, if MS decided to say F everyone it would come back to bite them very hard.
I have a lot of respect to these IE devs for not just quitting and doing something easier, to be honest.
Actually it seems strange now, but back in the 90s Apple (and NeXT too) were very focused on the enterprise. They were just "lucky" to have done badly at it. In fact they actually even made servers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server
Apple didn't have a huge market to lose. Or to sustain through several decades of compatibility.
Also, Microsoft makes the vast bulk of its income (90-95%) from partners. It can't just decide to change everything, it has to move thousands of partners along.
