Carriers Don't Like Macs?

[ngcsu2477]

Anybody out there doing business primarily on a Mac? If so, how are you quoting through Safeco? Safeco website only supports Internet Explorer and you can't download IE to a Mac. I tried using windows 8 via parallels on a free trial but the website still doesn't seem to function optimally. For example, the tabs at the top of the page aren't "click-able".

I also found out that Progressive website doesn't support any browser accept IE so I'm currently using a cheap PC to quote Safeco & Progressive. Any thoughts?

 

[lrixford]

We have seen this across the board. We even see carriers that do not support IE 9+. This is becoming a critical situation due to the upcoming XP shutdown.

 

[ngcsu2477]

Considering the Mac market share, this kind of blows my mind really. If you're a huge insurance carrier, how can you build a website that only functions optimally on 1 browser?

 

[AgentWillN]

I am a Mac user and have come across the same issue. When quoting with Safeco (Auto) there is only a certain point I can get to before I have to switch to a PC. Pretty lame sauce, if you ask me.

Many Carriers should have developped an App by now for quoting and issuing Policies.

 

[Josh]

Considering the Mac market share, this kind of blows my mind really. If you're a huge insurance carrier, how can you build a website that only functions optimally on 1 browser?

It's a number of things. For business PCs make a ton of sense because they're inexpensive and everyone has them. I'm a huge fan of Apple computers (not so much phone/tablet), but even at that I have a PC to run some programs I just can't run on a Mac.

What's even more funny about the browsers is that less than 10% of folks using the internet use IE AND it happens to be the least secure of any popular browser. A lot of companies are starting to catch up with the times and transition to browser based applications that work on different platforms and different types of devices.

 

[lrixford]

A lot of it (Safeco) is due to the use of client certificates. This is a bit more difficult to support across multiple devices/platforms.

However, to another point 44% of all visitors to our insurance agency customer websites used IE in the past month (January 2014). Chrome and Safari were 21% and 15% respectively. Carriers might be catering to their base here if they look at their analytic numbers.

As for usage of our web based rating and marketing products (exclusively by insurance agents in January 2014), 89% of users surfed using Internet Explorer. Of those, 67% use a version older than IE10.

The newer versions of IE 10 & 11 are actually great browsers and follow standards VERY well. However, due the widespread usage of older versions of IE, you still have to design to them.

This post was written using Chrome.

 

[DHK]

Considering the Mac market share, this kind of blows my mind really.

Usage share of operating systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Let's look at the stats:
47% Windows 7
29% Windows XP
10% Windows 8
3% Windows Vista

89% Market share for windows-based OS.

OSX - 8%.

Where would you put your time, effort, and money as a financial institution?

Just because Mac users are more passionate (fanatical) about their computers doesn't mean that the rest of the business world shares that view.

 

[Norwayguy]

The premise of the question is totally wrong. How many people have downloaded an illustration system from a carrier that explicitly states they do not provide support for vista, windows 7 etc. It is easier to support just 1 operating system and 1 browser. On the browser issue if you force your users to internet explorer long enough you can then use the fact that 90% of your sites visitors use internet explorer (even though your site is the only one we use it one) as a reason not to support other browsers.

 

[ngcsu2477]

So is anybody using a virtual machine to quote through Safeco? If so, which one works for home quotes? That's the one I'm having trouble with.

 

[scagnt83]

Im not a mac fan. But most of the white collar corporate world (except tech/marketing/graphic design) use Windows. Mainly because lots of software out there does not support Mac. And as Peter has said, PC has a far larger marketshare, especially in the corporate world. So what does it make sense to spend money on?

Half (probably more) of the work software I use will not run on a Mac. And I could care less.


Although, companies need to get with the times and upgrade compatibility with Windows 7 at the very least.