So, can somebody explain what's preventing Microsoft just fixing it rather than apologizing for it. Just patch it in the next security update to run ie 9 in an ie 6 window.
1. The latest IE version to run under Windows 2000 is IE6
2. The latest IE version to run under Windows XP is IE8
Both versions are still widely used (especially Windows XP) - especially in the setting of big corporations
3. There are business applications that either depend on IE6's rendering model
4. There are admins (especially in the corporate field) that fear updates because they could break essential applications
You could have an ie6 mode that you could make difficult to re-enable for those sysadmins. I don't know what to say about ie9 requiring vista, it's so obvious that ie8 will be the ie6 of 2013 when we are all trying to rely on HTML 5 features. That's just a bad decision.
I'd imagine that their marketing department doesn't get to make too many tech descisions, even if they do seem to be more aware of their product's problems.