IE is standard with Windows Operating Systems and so piggybacks off the fact that Windows is the Operating System with the biggest market share. Windows also makes it jolly hard to remove IE off the Operating System and jolly hard to have another browser (e.g., Firefox) as your default.

So... Apathy is probably the attitude rather than willingness to dig out faults and issues and set them right.

I guess there has been a bit of a change since word has got around about Firefox and Opera and Netscape, and since Mac developed Safari for use on a PC as well (there have been improvements made to IE in response to that). But then since you can get these alternative programs for free it is unclear why you would expend a great deal of money and resources on improving on IE...

It is like... Improvements to Windows are mostly a response to alternatives (e.g., Leopard) and to people boycotting Windows (e.g., with Unix or Ubuntu). Most people don't realize that your operating system is one thing and your hardware quite another... And that your operating system is one thing and your internet browser quite another...

As for the 'oldest is best' idea, I'm not sure that it is generally true. There are specific occasions when we think experience matters. When we think that technical skill takes time to develop, I guess. Whether the IE development people have put that time to good use is quite another thing, however. It might be the case that when one has a monopoly on the market (as Windows had for a time) that there really isn't a drive to improve. Then the little guy sets up (Mac, for example) and really needs to work hard at having a 'better' product in order to be competative at all. Then when the former monopoly realizes that they are losing their market share there is a drive to improving their product. But... Not until then.

Vista (for example) is meant to boast 'features that mac users have had for ages'. Vista is buggy... But then so is Leopard in some respects. Apparently IE has improved a great deal since the start of the 'browser wars'. But still, they retain enough of the market share to be fairly complacent methinks (by way of biggybacking on Windows for the most part).

Sometimes things are discovered one place and (arguably) perfected another... That might be the case with this...