By Graham K. Rogers

For a number of years, those using the Mac browser, Safari, had difficulties accessing certain websites, because of the way some of these were designed. Particularly annoying for users in Thailand (and perhaps elsewhere) was the requirement of some banks that online access was only possible using Microsoft's browser: Internet Explorer. As there is no IE for OS X, Mac users had hit a blank wall.

A way round the problem in some cases was the emulation: the browser could pretend to be something else. If it worked, and it often did, it shot holes in that need for IE (the US visa site was one of these).

Now in an apparent case of "chickens come home to roost" Benjamin Mayo reports on 9to5 Mac that those using the Windows Phone browser are being forced to have this emulate iOS Safari, to make it work.

There are more details in the article by Benjamin Mayo, available online.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.