After relying on third parties for several years - Internet Explorer, Netscape - Apple decided that it was time to take matters into its own hands. It was time Apple created its own browser (again). And so, Safari was born, and released unto the world ten years ago. These past few weeks, Don Melton, the project lead for Safari and WebKit, has been sharing a lot of interesting stories about the origins and development of Apple's browser.
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Member since:
2012-11-05
Though I'm not fan of a lot of Apple's practices, that they (both as a competitor to windows and to IE) helped to solidify an open web and web standards in the market place is clear. Competition is good, and there needed to be a company willing and able to stand defiant to the Microsoft monopoly machine. For the space made available for competition, for WebKit, for clang, for so many reasons, the open source community has benefited from Apple. Glad to see them get some credit now that the trendy thing to do seems to be Apple bashing.
Member since:2006-06-22
When it comes to bashing apple and nonsense postings, I must say that I am very trendy
You my friend seem to be living in the lala land. Apple and safari are not even close to being competitors of any influence to windows or IE. Had you said (in terms of servers) linux and among browsers firefox I might have subscribed to what you are posting. As for open standards, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Apple would destroy them if they could. Decision to use open source rendering engine was driven by pure pragmatic reasons, namely Apple cannot sustain heavy software development. They are aware of this therefore they grab whatever they can and modify it. Open source has benefited far less from Apple, compared with how much has apple benefited from open source!!
Member since:2005-07-06
I believe his point is that Apple took KHTML and created the (far more portable) WebKit, which in turn has become the basis of Chrome and a whole bunch of other Open Source web browsers. Without that work KHTML would likely have remained firmly wedded to KDE, and we'd be looking at Firefox and a few larger projects struggling along trying to keep their ports of Gecko up to date.
Member since:2009-07-18
Not to mention that the number of users on WebKit certainly DO compete hugely with IE if you include mobile & tablet numbers, and Apple with iOS (and Chrome/Android, which you'll have to forgive me for calling an sort of Safari/iOS knockoffs 
) crushed Microsoft like a grape in the mobile space, which is a LOT of users.
Samsung announcing they're not going to bother trying to do Windows RT tablets in the US market is not a sign of strength for Microsoft at this time no matter how much people want to pretend Apple didn't hugely influence the current market.
Member since:2006-06-22
) crushed Microsoft like a grape in the mobile space, which is a LOT of users. Samsung announcing they're not going to bother trying to do Windows RT tablets in the US market is not a sign of strength for Microsoft at this time no matter how much people want to pretend Apple didn't hugely influence the current market.
No I didn't include mobile and tablet as microsoft hardly has a monopoly there. It was Apple that had a monopoly (emphasis on had). It is in the PC segment that safari has failed miserably to present a meaningfull competition. Samsung has a choice to make and it would seem it is siding with google on this one, however we were not discussing tablets because MS did not have a monopoly there either ....
May I ask if you are stupid or just an apple fanboi
Member since:2005-07-06
) crushed Microsoft like a grape in the mobile space, which is a LOT of users. The amount of mobile browsing is still a small minority, compared to the desktop: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-200807-2013...
But of course, on the desktop Webkit is now also dominant, as Chrome: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200807-201301
Member since:2009-10-23
What's wrong with pragmatic? I far prefer a pragmatist to a ideologue. And what's wrong with Apple benefiting more than 'open source' (as if it were one coherent community), so long as the wider open source community benefits to some degree too.
Its called enlightened self interest, and its a damned good principle to run a company division on, not just for the division and the company, but for the industry and the customers too.
Member since:2005-07-06
Chrome is ahead of Firefox. And Chrome is also Webkit, giving large amount of influence to what Apple is doing with Safari.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200807-201301
Member since:
2005-11-10
We must not forget what happened after WebKit was released. Remember that WebKit code was usually released as a set of huge, unmanageable patches that couldn't help the KHTML team. After the KHTML folks complained, the WebKit project started being more community-friendly. This is the bit worth praising and indeed it deserves praise.
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I don't think the KHTML devs hate WebKit, on the contrary. And after KDE 4.5 you can also use Konqueror with WebKit instead of KHTML. "
They certainly did for a while. There were a great many calls to replace khtml and kjs with webkit earlier on 4.x but the devs always seemed to use FUDdy reasons for not doing so. They could have just said that they preferred working on khtml, but instead came up with other reasons.
Edited 2013-01-12 16:12 UTC
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2005-08-09
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Member since:2005-07-12
What FUD against LGPL? I've seen both FUD and legitimate concerns about the effect the GPL has on proprietary software that links to it, but never LGPL, for the simple reason that the LGPL was created in response to the FUD.
But, I've never seen anti-LGPL FUD. Is that a real thing?
Member since:
2005-07-06
Unlike the iTunes store, there's actually very healthy competition between browsers on Android and the best of them are actually very good indeed. Just because Chrome isn't that good on Android, doesn't mean its competition isn't.
Obvious examples (I'll leave out Mini and Beta versions) include:
* Firefox (the one I use personally)
* Opera
* Dolphin
* Maxthon
* One Browser
* UC Browser
* Ninesky
(and there are many more)
If you don't like one browser, move into the next. You don't get anywhere near that browser choice on other mobile platforms.
As for Safari, the Windows version appears to be dead (withdrawn from Apple's site) and the Mac versions are just average at best.
Member since:2006-06-12
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2011-05-12
Just when I started reading this, using Safari, iTunes decided to play a song by The Beatles, one of Steve's favorite bands.
Wouldn't it be great to have iTunes play music based on what you're doing? Well, probably not.
It would be nice if Safari got more love from Apple. It seems they do just enough on a number of products to keep them going, this includes Safari.
Member since:2005-07-06
Wouldn't it be great to have iTunes play music based on what you're doing? Well, probably not.
It would be great, I think. It could make me use iTunes from time to time, instead of foobar2000.
(a soundtrack of your life; that's kinda the idea with my Last.fm profile)
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2009-08-18
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2008-11-22
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2010-12-16
hehe... German school!
@vanders what would you say that it is a minimum speed of CPU for Webster?
Edited 2013-01-12 07:35 UTC
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2006-01-01
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2012-12-12
The reason Apple made its own web browser is simple. Before Safaris' release browsing on OS X was slower than any other platform and there was no willingness to fix it.
Microsoft would say it was slower because you are using a mac and mozilla due to the troubles it was going through did not do anything either.
The release of Safari lit a fire under other developers and their products were improved, except for IE and you might say the death of it improved the experience somewhat.
Apple will go out of their way to disrupt other businesses when they could be doing better things for the platform and refuse to do so.
A good example is Adobe and video editing. Apple bought the software it made into Final Cut because Adobe refused to update Premiere for the G3 machines that were just released, having stopped licensing computers and allowing access to hardware Avid were not making machines using the G3 either.
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Microsoft would say it was slower because you are using a mac
OSX was generally slow back then... the silly Apple PR of "PowerPC 'supercomputer on a chip' G4" (based on few hand-picked Photoshop benchmarks) didn't change that.
No, Chrome did that half a decade later. The times between the release of Safari and Chrome were the years of IE6 & stagnation.
Member since:
2012-12-12