I think we'd all admit it's getting better, but it's still years behind firefox and chrome where it matters. The IE release cycle is also so slow that it makes it even more outdated. IE still can in no way be considered a 'modern browser'.
Stats from a fairly popular webapp: Firefox=47.4%, Chrome=30.9%, IE=12.6%, Safari=3.3%, Opera=1.8%
So for me the question is when IE will drop below safari and opera...
IE9 is acceptable and IE10 is surprisingly good. I have a feeling the IE team is targeting WebKit as their competition and not FF.
I haven't liked IE best since IE5, long time Firefox user from Phoenix 0.4, but I'd really suggest trying out IE10, it's pretty much on par with FF4 stock from everything I've seen. I still really don't like that it doesnt handle tab closing properly (IE10), but I see that FF5 finally handles tab closing half way decently. Tab handling and the 'awesome bar' or whatever the Chrome team calls it were the biggest drivers of me switching to Chrome. Also, IE10 now has a single URL/search bar which is a vast improvement and puts it on par.