http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/397003349731

Lots of hacks involved with getting it installed.

Plus, this is momentuous, since Microsoft last released IE for Mac back in 2000.

The funny thing about it is that IE for Mac used a different rendering engine than IE for Windows (IE for Mac’s Tasman, compared to IE for Windows’ wonky-ass Trident), one that makes better use of web standards than IE for Windows.

IE for Mac was killed off because the 5-year deal between MS and Apple had ended. Three years after its last release, Apple released Safari, and MS halted any further bug fixes 10 days before Safari 1.0 was released to the public. IE for Mac didn’t come as a default in Tiger (4/29/05), and all official support for it was ceased on New Year’s Eve. A month later, IE for Mac was taken off of Microsoft’s website.

Tasman is still used for the remaining Microsoft apps for OS X (Office, Messenger for Mac, and a few others), and Apple has so far made few moves to completely drive out MS from OS X. With IE6 being hacked to run on Intel Macs, its possible that other Windows-native MS apps will also be brought over by similar means.

In the “taken-way-too-seriously” scenario, Microsoft would cease development of any other OSX-specific apps by its Macintosh Business Unit, as it would no longer be needed.

Of course, Apple already has a system-level compatibility layer called Boot Camp, which allows for people to run WinXP on Macs. So if hacking Windows-native apps to run on OS X gets a bit more streamlined, Apple would also probably have to create yet another compatibility layer to allow WinXP-native apps to run on Mac OS X, just to make it semi-official.

This should be interesting.