IE10 introduced auto-update. Once 11 came out, computers silently updated to it. No big windows update prompt asking them if they're sure they want it.
IE9 to IE10 was aggressively launched as well. I believe users got a basic prompt and IE turned on auto-updating by default. According to some of my users, IE10 just appeared, so my guess is that MS may have the prompt time-out to 'yes' instead of infinitely holding the computer.
Here in corporitstan, I had to put in extra blocks to keep 10 and 11 away, due to our CRM being suck on IE9 for the time being. Trust me, MS is trying real hard to get everyone to the newest version of IE.
You see I do understand that they try and I do applaud that. yet on my windows 8 machine I still haven't received IE11, even though I just recently did got a notice that IE has been updated, it is still IE10. To make matters worse even if I visit their website to download IE11 manually [1] they're telling me that I already have IE11.
So that experience alone tells me that not everything is done right yet. And even if everything would work, they have to keep doing things right for some time to regain trust.
IE11 didn't ship for Windows 8.0 it only shipped for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade on Windows 8.0, more like a service pack release (when you look at the changes). Why not port it to Windows 8.0, it didn't make sense, 8.0 should fade out as people install the free upgrade that comes via Windows Updates (or the store, I forget which) and is a mandatory update. Opting out of mandatory updates means you opt out of associated upgrades.
This isn't a new or unique policy in Windows, look at iOS, you won't get WebGL on Mobile Safari without iOS 8, OSX doesn't back-port Safari and Andriod has a lot of versions with terrible browsers.
IE11 is supported on Windows 7 and 8.1, but not Windows 8.0. So on 8.0 the auto-update feature is ineffective. According to StatCounter only 5% of 8.0 users have updated to 8.1. There must be something blocking people there, not sure what it is, but end result is the auto-updater doesn't actually auto-update everyone and fragmentation gets worse.
Those modes fail testing. They're not replacements for the real browser. Helps with trivial things like formatting issues, but for the handful of things I've tested that work in 9 and break in 10, the legacy modes have largely the same issues.
IE9 to IE10 was aggressively launched as well. I believe users got a basic prompt and IE turned on auto-updating by default. According to some of my users, IE10 just appeared, so my guess is that MS may have the prompt time-out to 'yes' instead of infinitely holding the computer.
Here in corporitstan, I had to put in extra blocks to keep 10 and 11 away, due to our CRM being suck on IE9 for the time being. Trust me, MS is trying real hard to get everyone to the newest version of IE.