“Apple’s Safari is making its way to the Windows platform with the serious intention of making a dent in the market. As brilliant as the people are at Apple, I can’t help but laugh at their, to put it politely, delusion. Before I ramble on too much, here are my five reasons why Safari will fail on the Windows platform.” My take: Safari on Windows isn’t here to take over the Windows browsing market. It’s here for the iPhone.
Very poor reasons in the article, but I tend to agree with the title. Apple really are being far too arrogant at the moment over Safari as a browser on Windows.
It’ll go the way of Opera – downloaded millions of millions of times, used once, and then uninstalled.
But you can bet Steve will be on the stage next year touting how great it is that Safari has had millions of downloads, even more than brand-x browser, but totally fail to realise that it’s regular users who matter, not downloads.
And probably you have a looot to learn about marketing
Bundling Safari with iTunes and installing it automatically, akin to MSN Messenger installing Toolbars, desktop search and all tons of sh!t is marketing, how?
Apple don’t have to market Safari/Win, they only have to bundle it.
Apple don’t have to market Safari/Win, they only have to bundle it.
Bundle it, how? They don’t distribute Windows, they don’t do PC’s (in the Intel-with-BIOS-and-Windows-or-Linux sense), and if they did their PC business would probably go the way of Commode’s, possibly taking their Amiga^WMac business with it.
There’s 100 million downloads of iTunes a day.
iTunes comes bundled on some manufacturers machines in Europe.
Firefox gets 50m a day. Just by including Safari with iTunes, 100m people a day will be unwillingly downloading Safari. This is inherently wrong, because those 50m downloads of Firefox are willing participants who know what they’re getting.
The Mozilla blogger’s comments about Steve Jobs bleak view of the Internet refelects very much on Microsoft’s view of the net when It was just them vs. Netscape, with Netscape with the larger share. They killed netscape by bundling IE, and Steve Jobs showed on stage that Firefox, Opera and all other browsers did not exist in their desired view of the Internet.
Those numbers cannot be accurate. I think a day must = a year?
Bundle it, how? They don’t distribute Windows, they don’t do PC’s (in the Intel-with-BIOS-and-Windows-or-Linux sense), and if they did their PC business would probably go the way of Commode’s, possibly taking their Amiga^WMac business with it.
Ever hear of the iPod =)? Works on Windows too. It requires iTunes to work, of which people download.
All Apple has to do is bundle it with iTunes, and leave the checkmark checked by default, and maybe even have it ask the user “would you like to use Apple Safari as your default browser?”
User: “Hmmm….iPod good. iTunes good. Sure, I’ll use it”.
If anything, Apple has a potential edge in getting Safari out there fast, due to the continuing popularity of the iPod, and its reliance on iTunes.
OK, when “OP” said “bundle” I just thought of “bundle with new PC’s”. My mistook.
I think its a lot more likely that it will be more along the lines of a checkbox “Would you like to make Safari your default browser?” checked by default, the user won’t read it, and now popups from AIM and such and clicking Internet in the start menu will now open Safari, and they won’t know how to change it back, so they’ll end up stuck with Safari. I know a lot of people who had to download Quicktime for some site, since its bundled with iTunes now, and iTunes set itself as the default for everything, they feel like they are forced to use iTunes, even though they hate it. Most people don’t know how to change defaults in Windows.
If so, they could put themselves in some hot water – AOL pulled the same kind of stunt a few years back and IIRC they recently had to settle a resulting class-action lawsuit.
Assuming they do want a (big) share of the Windows bowser market, which is not true by now, IMHO.
‘marketing’ was in response of claiming how good safari is and how many times it has been downloaded (but i think the world will become ‘chosen’
I’m *tired* of the word “arrogant” used to describe a company you are trying to knock. You could replace it every time with the word “confident”, and companies should be about their products. I’d describe Apple as innovative, in this instance I think its a *necessary* that they have a Web browser for windows.
Everyone knows that control of the web is what all main companies want.
Apple are trying to get control of the web through its lifestyle type applications.
Microsoft is using its OS to get control of the web.
Google is trying to control the web through its web applications and Firefox.
…Even Red Hat are trying to get control through their web Desktop.
I can’t see how you could measure their failure, simply having a product available is a success in itself.
Personally I fail to understand what is so bad about competition. I would actually prefer if they started putting real pressure on those that count so IE is not the default browser on Windows. IE6 is still the default browser on computers and that is shocking.
There’s a big difference between “confident” and “arrogant”, and I’m afraid Apple is rather guilty of the latter: Apple has a complete disregard of its competition on Windows, even going so far as to say it won’t exist soon enough, and it’s touting the superiority of its browser–when it has little to no edge on what other Windows browsers already have.
Safari’s compliance with CSS standards alone make it a much better choice than IE.
safari on Mac’s compliance… I haven’t tried myself, but from everything I’ve read the Windows version is having trouble rendering the ACID2 test.
With Apple arrogant is the correct word to use. They think that just because a product is made by Apple it will become a success. Isn’t that that the definition of arrogant?
I mean look at the Apple TV, it sucks as a set-top box. You can only use iTunes to stream stuff and they didn’t add support for MPEG4 ASP, let alone a plugin framework to let you run whatever codec/container you want.
Even the iPhone, it’s all fluff. No 3G support, no real SDK, just shitty mini-apps (like people on this site mentioned: when you code Skype in AJAX then you get to call this these scriplets applications). For anyone but an Apple fanboy or someone clueless about technology, the iPhone is simply an over priced feature phone.
This is called arrogance…
You’d describe them as innovative, but most people tend to be more sceptical than your average Apple fan. So what kind of innovation are we seeing from Apple?
Time machine? WOw, now I can buy an external HD. iPhone? Damn $500 for a feature phone! Apple TV/ love the Xvid support and in built torrent support! Spaces? Shit I’ve never seen anything like that on any platform!
Why is this 500.00 such a big thing is it me that only remembers that some carriers offered the blackberry for 500.00 dollars. Seems to me that everyone is overly critical of Apple. there are no current phones on the market that currently do what the iphone does and that is including crappy AJAX features you are referring too. The storage again not a phone on the market that offers 4GB-8GB. Google Maps, with the ease of use of the apple iphone. Email yes other phones have this but we are talking complete package. and currently the iphone has it.
BUNK! That’s YOUR bias. Apple FANS support Apple and believe their products will become successful. Apple has never said that they think that since it’s an Apple product, it will be a success. You do NOT know what they think.
Every company ought to ONLY release a product if they think it’s going to be a success, don’t you agree? It would be ridiculous if companies released something they thought was going to be a failure.
Your post shows a distinct dislike for Apple (and arguably, Apple fans).
As far as Apple is concerned in this overly-semantic discussion, this is “confidence”, plain and simple. I really hope you get modded down – your post is not insightful, it’s just biased.
For anyone but an Apple fanboy or someone clueless about technology, the iPhone is simply an over priced feature phone.
You seem to be forgetting that Apple’s success is not due to simple fanboyism, but rather the fact that they make intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces to their hardware and software, which make life easier for the common man. No amount of features or specifications on a competing product can make up for that factor. The simplicity factor.
Their Applications for Windows are just plain horrible.
They ignore the Windows Visual Style, that’s a big no-no when it comes to User Interface design. It looks awkward and performs often slower than an Application which doesn’t draw the Non client Area.
When they announced Safari for Windows, I was excited. It seemed like a good standards compliant browser and any competition is welcome.
What I have a problem with, is Apple touting this as the “Fastest bested omgyougottahavethisthing web browser” and then delivering this steaming pile of shit to users.
On it’s website, they say it’s the most secure browser yet HOURS after it’s beta release bugs were found. I realize that all Beta applications have bugs, but the mistakes they made were so elementary that they simply cannot be excused.
The pages render faster imho, but at what cost? Usability? It’s cool that Safari is lightweight, but it would be better if it had a few more things that more modern browsers like Firefox have.
With the security update, they seemed to have fixed a few of the bugs and made some of the crashes go away but it’s still pitiful in comparison to even IE7.
Apple is a great company, and over time they’ll give this some elbow grease and make it work.
Until then however, they simply cannot say this is even near the best browser.
So I disagree with the point of the article that “Safari will fail on Windows”, that’s untrue it’s a good browser once you see past it’s initial pitfalls due to it being a Beta release.
I think that after a few months maybe a year or so, we’ll begin to see the browser Apple wanted us to see when they showed it off at their Apple convention.
>They ignore the Windows Visual Style, that’s a big no-no when it comes to User Interface design. It looks awkward and performs often slower than an Application which doesn’t draw the Non client Area.
Even Microsoft ignore Windows’ visual style. Office, Media Player, IE7, Visual Studio, they all use custom UIs.
In Windows Vista, you can almost pick any two bundled applications and find two different UIs.
>On it’s website, they say it’s the most secure browser yet HOURS after it’s beta release bugs were found. I realize that all Beta applications have bugs, but the mistakes they made were so elementary that they simply cannot be excused.
Elementary? I trust that you make a living writing web browsers then?
Seeing as Safari is secure on the Mac, the Windows bugs were obviously introduced during porting. Not knowing exactly how that process goes, I can’t really comment on how “elementary” these mistakes are.
My guess (and it is just a guess) would be that the port is based on the old OpenStep for Windows (OPENSTEP Enterprise) APIs. To get a modern Cocoa app to run on that would require the writing of Windows versions of several Mac OS X frameworks.
It is likely that these frameworks are currently in a very early state of development and therefore include many “elementary” bugs, such as buffer overflows and the like. (When porting software, it is common to write “minimally-functional” libraries in order to get the application running, then go back and improve the stability/security/performance of these libraries at a later date, often when preparing a final release).
The flaws were not all simple coding errors or buffer overflows. For instance, the URL handling exploit was simply a design flaw, and one that has no legitimate reason for existing today. Not for a company that claims to be committed to security.
Regardless of whether the vulnerabilities are being found as the cobwebs are blown out of an old framework, it’s inexcusable for a *beta* product to have flaws this easily found. It means that the product was not properly tested during the alpha stage, or more likely, it never really had an alpha stage and was rushed to market in order to cash in on the iPhone hype and dev conf. It also implies that the entire framework the product is built on needs to be broken down and examined, which means that this is in fact not a beta product nor anywhere near production ready, at least one hopes.
It’s also worth pointing out that due to the code sharing, some of the flaws discovered in the Windows version were then found to apply to the OSX version as well. That should be an alarm bell for both Apple and their OSX user base; if Apple wants to expand Safari’s footprint by dumping shared code on a Windows platform, they’d better be ready to batten down the hatches on their own platform as well.
Does the world need another browser? Who knows, I’m just happy that Konq/KDE has benefited from Apple’s involvement with KHTML. People can have pissing contests all they want over which browser is best, it’s a moot point.
But if Apple is going to start claiming the vaunted “Most Secure Title”, they had damned well better be ready to walk that walk, and not just talk the talk. Windows users don’t fall for that any more, not after years of being abused by Microsoft who once made similar claims before actually investing in the resources needed. Safari being broken, several times over, on it’s first day of release isn’t a coincidence or something to be dismissed because “it’s a beta.”. On the contrary, I suspect it’s a sign of things to come. Apple better be ready.
I think we’re running into a problem with different meanings of ‘beta’.
The pre-1.0 versions of Gaim were fairly stable; Filelight pre-1.0 was pretty stable, K3B was pretty stable and functional years before it hit 1.0; Firefox was… well, pretty usable… A lot of Google’s projects (such as Gmail) are still ‘beta’, and are basically just sitting there probably because nobody wants to change the label. And then you have projects like Knoppix, where Klaus Knopper (at least used to) labelled every release as a ‘beta’ because the Linux kernel wasn’t finished yet. Well, it’ll never actually be ‘finished’; it’s an evolving project…
And then you have beta versions where things actually aren’t working and have obvious bugs, like this Safari beta. And everyone gets up in arms about it being broken, because we’ve been spoiled by programs that work great even while labeled as beta or 0.x
I think this all boils down to what various people consider a beta release. Gmail probably ought to have been released as 1.0 by now; Safari apparently has a long road ahead of it.
Edited 2007-06-20 17:08
“Seeing as Safari is secure on the Mac, the Windows bugs were obviously introduced during porting. Not knowing exactly how that process goes, I can’t really comment on how “elementary” these mistakes are. ”
There is no real evidence that Safari is secure on the mac, it is OS X that is providing the security for Safari, because of it’s Next/BSD/Unix heritage and the fact that there is no real incentive for malware writers to bother with OS X. To state that the errors were introduced during porting is just nonsense
Sorry, that’s just untrue. On Vista Media Player, IE7, AND Visual Studio use the Common Windows UI.
And yes, the bugs were elementary. Why don’t you LOOK at the nature of the bugs? I’d understand if it was some obscure exploitation in a certain component of the Browser but something as obvious as this is simply unacceptable.
Now, do you agree they’re elementary or not? I really don’t know your stance.
As with the UI, no they dont.
Only a few applications included in Vista use a standard Windows UI. These include Notepad, Calculator and Paint.
Media Player: Draws its own nonclient area (although it is almost identical to the standard Vista nonclient), in order to catch right clicks and use a custom title font.
No menu bar.
Uses nonstandard toolbar.
All controls in the client area are nonstandard.
IE7: No menu bar. Completely nonstandard toolbar. Controls used for web forms and about window are nonstandard – note the lack of mouseover effect on scroll bars.
Visual Studio: Nonstandard (Office XP-style) menu bar and toolbar (and every other control in the application).
Just because Media Player and IE7 are both transparent in Vista, doesn’t mean they are standard.
Visual Studio has used an Office XP-style interface since VS.Net, it doen’t look in any way standard.
I’m sure millions of Opera users (including myself) would disagree with that reference
Whilst Opera is a great browser, it’s market share is the fact. It’s still below Safari, and Opera runs on three platforms.
As a web developer, I think Opera is a great browser, but when I was a Windows user it was only something I used to test with, and have always preferred Firefox over it, even IE before that.
Opera still defaults to identifying itself as IE6 running on WinXp regardless of whether you run it on *nix or Windows, so Browser ID generated statistics don’t tell the whole Opera story. As long as Opera continues to masquerade there browser ID**, the only way that we can get any accurate idea of Opera’s use is from pageviews on the Opera default search page and from download numbers from Opera servers.
**which they first started doing back in 2001 due to MS messing with stylesheets on pages when the site detected an Opera browser http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/18/2222204
Opera still defaults to identifying itself as IE6 running on WinXp regardless of whether you run it on *nix or Windows, so Browser ID generated statistics don’t tell the whole Opera story.
I think Opera began identifying as Opera by default in version 8.0. It even identifies itself without the usual mess of compatibility crud. For instance, my user agent is:
Opera/9.21 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
It wouldn’t be much different if I was on my SuSE partition, something along the lines of:
Opera/9.21 (X11; Linux i686; U; en)
I commend Opera Software on this. It’s about time we did away with the “like Gecko”, “Mozilla compatible” user agent thing. If Opera can function just fine without it, I think all browsers could; if not, they could change user agents on a case-by-case basis until virtually no sites require user-agent compatibility strings. Hell, I don’t think there are that many left nowadays, anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to speed up the process a bit.
That being said, you very well could be right–Opera may be spoofing user agents on a case-by-case basis. I’m not certain of the inner-workings of Opera’s browser.js file. All I know is it’s an automatically updated collection of rendering exceptions and fixes for non-compliant sites that don’t play nice with Opera. Opera could be using it to spoof user agents.
But I don’t think it’d do spoofing on a majority of sites, though, and us regular ole Opera users are still unfortunately few and far between. I think Opera Mini has a higher “market share” than their desktop browser.
Opera did’nt make it on the desktop, but they’ve got a hold on the wearable devices market. Somewhere along the way, they made a smart move when they started porting it to the prominent wearable OS’ like Windows mobile and Nokia’s S60. Since then, it has been endorsed by moblie phone heavyweights.
It makes sense for Apple to make Safari available for testing purposes, however, being ported to Windows, it might never render pages or behave like it would on a Mac.
I tend to disagree; I would use Opera all the time, but I have a feeling that most end users suffer from the same issues I suffered from – constant annoying bugs and incompatibilities with websites.
I’m was running Opera on Solaris, but given such absolutely huge bugs experienced when trying to update my blog with Blogger, I just gave up and moved back to Firefox 2.0.0.4.
What will kill Safari won’t be IE, or Firefox, or something else; what will kill it will be if end users can’t browse the websites they want. Yes, it might be ‘good’ for the iPhone, but a the same time, if all they were wanting was just ‘iPhone’ compatibility – why offer it as a mainstream download – why not just off a ‘compatibility tester’ instead.
Unlike iTunes which has no real competitors, Safari will be up against IE and Firefox. If they don’t fix the Safari experience on their desktop, it won’t be pleasant on the iPhone – it would be arrogant to then assume that if end users are unhappy about websites, by virtue of Safari being on the iPhone, the website owners are going to suddenly change their whole website for the sake of compatibility.
I subscribe on Thom’s take. Safari is here for the iPhone.
I agree with Thom. These are, in my opinion, the main reasons why a Windows user would run Safari:
1- Web Design: if you are a Win user, you can now preview your websites on Safari without a Mac
2- iPhone: 3rd party app development/testing for the iPhone (Web 2 ; AJAX) which also runs Safari
3- Better support for W3C standards (CSS ; Acid2)
4- Digital Photography: Color-managed web browsing on Windows for first time, as far as I know
5- Safari’s sub-pixel rendering looks great on all my displays (mileage may vary)
6- Hands down the best ‘inline find’ from all browsers
I’m a Firefox (Mac) user myself, I love the 3rd party extensions. Can’t wait for Firefox 3 for Mac with native form controls (Aqua), although I already use a patched FF2. 🙂
Edited 2007-06-20 10:09
I have installed Safari and I like the way that everything is smooth. But on a regular basis, I’m still a Firefox user, until Safari 3 is not anymore beta.
I use Safari more often in Mac because the interface is nice. But it’s failed “successfully” in Parallels, and crashed often in Windows XP. I hope the release version will get better, so I can rid of Firefox completely.
Nowadays, when security is so important even worse than using unpatched IE pre7 is using Safari for windows.
Bad english + Unfounded claim
Safari for Windows (3.0.1) has 0 known flaws.
IE? Why does spybot s&d have thousands of immunizations? Hmm…
I like safari, it works well and its quick… on the mac
On windows though all the fonts rendered look like a bad jpeg… hopefully this will be improved
The reason it won’t catch on to start with is simple, no import of bookmarks from other browsers, this to me is an incredible omission
People will use safari if they have to… after all why would someone download itunes when there is a perfectly good media player included?
“The reason it won’t catch on to start with is simple, no import of bookmarks from other browsers, this to me is an incredible omission”
When I installed Safari and I checked my bookmarks I saw a folder for Imported Internet Explorer bookmarks and one for Imported Firefox bookmarks. Maybe you mean manual importation, but I have all of my bookmarks imported on the first start up of the browser.
What a crap article. These aren’t reasons, just opinions and prejudice. Pop into your nearest bar. A couple of dozen other “reasons” could probably be rustled up from assembled beer-heads in a matter of minutes.
If someone wants to run Safari on Windows, why shouldn’t they and what business is it of anyone else? Market share certainly isn’t a guide. Safari could settle at a tiny share of the PC market and still be judged a success given the size of the market for Apple products.
I’m sure Apple have good reasons for releasing Safari on Windows, but whatever they are, they’re not in this article. One presumes this is all to lay some ground for the iPhone and probably other things in the Apple pipeline. But who knows.
Yes, I totally agree with you. That is the dumbest article I have ever read. Safari’s main target is iPhone, end of the story.
Safari on Windows is about the iPhone, not competing with Firefox or IE7. It will be seemless syncing of iPhone with Safari on Windows. Secondarily, it then becomes another means to woo Windows users to the Mac.
I think we see Safari on Windows for the money and the iPhone. Ever notice that when you search with the search field it uses Google and one of the parameters is client=safari. I would be willing to bet that Apple is getting kickbacks from Google every time someone uses that search field.
And why not ? Safari will perhaps have success ?
I can imagine it because of :
– IE: the reason which made me switch to Mac : the way of doing things at Micros is really bad and boring.
– FireFox: is constantly hanging, blocking… certainly have a main lock global to all its windows, very annoying.
When Safari on Windows will work as well as Safari on Mac, I CERTAINLY will use it all the time.
It is only a beta now, but a bad beta 🙂
This is a bit offtopic but…
Does anyone else get a lot of text (most of the time links) simply not rendered at all? On this same page, the title of the news entry, all the menu links on the left on the Ads from Google I can see but the underlined links only display the underlining ut not the text, the text of the news item also (I only see Thom’s “Safari on Windows isn’t here to take over the Windows browsing market. It’s here for the iPhone.”), etc.
Is this normal or is it maybe wrongly installed or something?
That sometimes happens on very old browsers; whatever darling-standard-of-the-week OSNews is using isn’t implemented on old software. I’m on IE7, it shows up fine to me.
Oh, uh… I’m sorry, what I meant is this is happening to me on Safari 3 on Windows.
Than whatever standard-of-the-week OSNews is using isn’t implemented in Safari 3
I have the same problem. Until solved, Safari is useless for me.
This is an issue related to bold text not rendering on Safari 3. This is an issue with Safari 3, and has NOTHING to do with OSNews. It is related to how Windows renders non-English unicode text or something. I’m having the same problem.
Yes, thank you. I know it’s not related to OSNews. It happens in a lot of pages. I just explained the problem using OSNews as an example.
I just wanted confirmation that this is happening on all Safari 3 on Windows, not that my particular installation was corrupted or something.
this is bullshit to port safari to windoz. http://www.prevedgame.ru/in.php?id=20508
I deinstalled Safari because it crashes. Granted they will fix it. Then I’ll use it to test my web sites. Only for this purpose, just like IE and Firefox. My default web browser remains Opera 9.
Bonus point to you for using “deinstalled”! I’m glad to know that some people still get it right.
And it never will be. Safari just isn’t as feature rich as IE, FireFox or Opera (nor does it come with some of the associated bloat). nor is it intended to. Just because it is well suited to the Mac environment (it is) doesn’t mean that it’s well suited to the windows world (it isn’t), and Apple knows this.
Safari on Windows is about 1 thing and one thing only, compatibility. With Safari on Windows they might see 1-2% using it daily (those are probably high), but there is a good chance that web developers without access to a Mac will install it and use it for compatibility testing, and that is *all* this is about, making more websites around the internet tested under Safari, that’s it. Everything else that it may gain is just icing, and the other tidbit, is that by doing this, they also get to use Safari in iTunes, which they weren’t always doing. At one point iTunes on Windows embedded IE, not WebCore.
1. Who ever said Safari’s goal was to kill IE? Hello McFly?
2,3. What about FireFox and Opera?
4. I like Safari
5. I don’t know hy OS news cared to post this crappy article.
I think the more browsers out there the better.
I would think it would make the web sites (html and css) better as well as the browsers.
The important thing is to take share away from Internet Explorer, the single thing that is ruining the internet. I’m tired of reading books on css and html saying how to do something only to have a section at the end of each chapter saying how to hack it to work in IE.
It used to be that you would code for IE and you’re getting to 95% of the people on the net….Don’t know where it is at now, but once it falls enough people will have to start coding to standards and hope their visitors are using a standards compliant browser. It should also help the browsers, they’ll be competing each other for compliance, not gimmicks and features.
I agree with the people who state that this is a bad article that is little more than prejudices, but …
I never really liked Safari, and seeing the Safari 3 beta made me realize why: aside from rendering web pages, Safari 2 was a very primitive browser. Now I know that people claim that Safari 2 has inline spellchecking, but I never knew about it because it is a hidden feature. So Safari 2 was pretty crumby for sites like this one. The search function was clumsy to use, and was only fixed in Safari 3. Worse yet, there was nothing to stop you from quitting or closing a window when multiple tabs are open — which seems to be a fairly common issue.
Then it made me think more clearly about what Safari 3 still lacks. There is no real session manager, so you cannot save your state (which is important if you’re working on multiple projects). The search field is still limited to searching Google, Google, or Google (not even Google Images, Google Maps, or Google Earth). And while the built-in RSS reader is better than the one built-in to Firefox, it pales in comparison to Firefox plugins like Sage (which will show me what I’ve read at the very least).
Which brings me to the biggest problem with Safari. Safari is very much a one-size-fits-all web browser. Firefox steps beyond that by allowing for plug-ins. For example: no web browser on the market is really suitable for research. But plug-ins like Scrapbook and Tab Mix+ (which has a better session manager) can help you make Firefox better for research. If you want a better media browser, there are extensions in Firefox to do that too!
Does Safari 3 have the lead anywhere? I like how it makes keyword search results much more visible. I also like how it deals with PDF integration. But I can fuddle along for the next little while without those because Firefox is more sophisticated overall. And I’m sure IE is too.
EDIT: italicized text added.
Edited 2007-06-20 13:43
Reading you, one would believe it’s impossible to improve Safari, that it doesn’t accept plugins. I use safariStand to save state, for searches from the adress bar (g for Google, i for IMDB, wp for Wikipedia, etc.). Inquisitor allows to search Google, Amazon, Flickr, images and more. There are plenty of plugins for Safari.
Safari 3 changes the plug-in options. The architecture has been completely rewritten invalidating many of them and eliminating some.
This is the most pathetic list i have read for a long time.
Please, put some work behind a list instead of writing sh_t like this.
Yeah, i know, i do not use Safari myself on my Mac, but it is not a bad browser because of that.
Apple Arrogant? How about Bombastic Bozo Balmer? How about Bill Gates? How about Microsoft? Geesh, get over yourselves already.
The article writer must be in a great distress. There was no mention of “it does not maximize the browser window”. How could this happen ?
I particularly like a “Windows-type” maximized browser windows on 32″ displays. It looks só cool :/
Of course Safari is there for the 400+ million iPhone users that will be there in 2017. It is so obvious! Lets hope Microsoft Windows will still be there for Safari users to sync their Safari browsers with iPhone in 2017. But who knows.
“It’s simple math” ->
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/13971/
Edited 2007-06-20 14:58
Anybody know the mechanism of Dashboard widgets? I know they’re html/javascript based, but do they run off the Safari engine somehow? If Safari brought Dashboard to Windows, it would have a huge killer app.
There are better applet type products out there for Windows than Dashboard. I wouldn’t think anybody would use Dashboard on Windows, unless it was bundled without permission with iTunes. Konfabulator for example.
if I want to use a simple little app, why would i want to switch to an entire other desktop? I wonder why Mac users even put up with it. Please, don’t wish that on Windows users.
I think Safari on Windows will be a good thing, even if I never use it (and probably won’t). More choice is better. and it won’t fail, as Mac users all over the world will install it on their Windows boxes (if they have them) and their bootcamp installs.
imho all software will fail on windows. http://www.prevedgame.ru/in.php?id=20508
I’ve never heard some of the allegations the guy is making in this article, and it doesn’t seem internally consistent.
Mac users hate Safari? I’ve heard of Mac users not liking Firefox for Mac, but I thought by and large they liked Safari. Huh.
Also, did anyone else notice how in his first point, he claimed that not even Firefox could beat Internet Explorer (fair enough, it’s like 20% marketshare versus 80% marketshare)… but then in his third point, IE and Firefox are (somewhat) dominating the market?
So is Firefox good, or bad?
Personally, I’ve been using Opera for a while, and trying to use Opera exclusively… but it doesn’t seem to play well with Java, and it doesn’t seem to play well with Flash, and it tends to render my system unstable when I have like, 10 tabs open. This is likely one of those plugins, though. I should probably test this sometime.
Why all this chaos about this browser?!
I don’t see it harming us. If you prefer firefox then use it, if you like IE then use and if you like to try others then please do so, I see more browsers as a rich development maturation that will benefit all.
And I personally use:
Ubuntu: opera 9, firefox, konqueror
Vista: IE 7, firefox
XP: firefox, opera
If Apple is not a good company, or evil they would not have reached 108 Billion $ Market Capital ,of course by us the consumers, who appreciate their efforts with money.
“The flaws were not all simple coding errors or buffer overflows. For instance, the URL handling exploit was simply a design flaw,”
It was a design flaw they wouldn’t have been able to correct it so fast. Gee, it took them all of a day to totally redesign Safari for Windows and fix the flaw? Wow!!!
Give them a few days and they can fix all of Windows design flaw then too.
Safari was not properly parsing URLS which was allowing free access to URL handlers on Windows. Basically allows command injection into a URL if the miscreant knows what they’re doing. It’s a nice, old-school exploit that far predates Safari and has absolutely no business existing in an internet-connected application in this day and age, particularly one proclaiming security.
We’re not talking about a coding error allowing buffer overflows or anything sophisticated, those can be difficult to track down and anticipate. Those, frankly, exist in virtually every complex software project. No, here we’re talking about bad design. Of course it only took them a day to fix it. It was probably no more than a few lines of code, but that doesn’t excuse them from not having it there in the first place. Had it been a coding error, it likely would have taken longer to track down, verify, fix and test.
Secure application design is a mindset. Part of it means anticipating the unexpected (hence parsing input fields for validity) and another part of it means learning from previously documented flaws, vulnerabilities and exploits. Apple did neither here, and this was but a single element of the entire application. In fairness, they probably made assumptions about how Windows handles things like protocol handlers versus OSX, but even if that’s the case, it raises even greater concerns. How well do they understand the platform they’re now developing for? Much of Safari’s inherent security on OSX likely relies on OSX’s inherent security, but they’re playing in a different, and much rougher neighborhood now. Assumptions and preconceptions must be tossed out.
At any rate, my point was that if vulnerabilities, particularly design flaws, were identified this early after a claim of secure design, it does beg the valid question of what they consider “secure design” and what else is waiting to be found. Some of those buffer overflows were found using standard fuzzing tools that researchers use all the time when sniffing out exploits, are Apple’s engineers aware that these tools exist? Even so, coding errors can be minimized but never eliminated altogether, yet design flaws are just bad design and can not be so easily dismissed, no matter how sweet the Kool Aid tastes.
When a company markets a product, they do so with the belief that it will be a success. That isn’t arrogance.
Arrogance would be something like “our browser is the only one our customers need so we won’t support anything else.” I don’t see that happening here.
You notice the link “The Psychology of Mac Zealots.” To me that gives me a good idea of how that site views Macs and Apple. So no surprise they post a letter trashing Safari for Windows and its place in the browser market.
The point that bothered me the most was that OSX users all loathe Safari. Most OSX users I know of either use Safari 99% of the time or at least like it. I use Safari for my default browser when using OSX except for the few sites that have issues with it. Then I fire up either Camino, Firefox or Opera.
I also agree with Thorin that the main reason for the Windows version of Safari is development for the iPhone. I installed it on one of my XP systems and like it, but there is a lot of work yet to do before I would use it as a main browser in Windows.
When I read that sort of drivel, I keep thinking of the way teen girls talk on TV sitcoms. No real coherent arguments, just anti Apple rants.
Have to agree with the iPhone thesis. If the figures in the press about iPhone envy are true, Safari could make a noticeable dent in Explorer if the iPhone needs it.
If I still surfed in Windows, I’d certainly give Safari a try too, FF still has issues for me.
“My take: Safari on Windows isn’t here to take over the Windows browsing market. It’s here for the iPhone.”
Maybe Win Safari’s raison d’être is for iPhone webapp development, but Steve Jobs did predict that Safari would wipe out Firefox and the rest of the non-IE browsers (on the combined Windows/Mac marketplace).
See his “before” and “after” pie-charts:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/web-browser-market-share-p…
The “before” chart shows IE at 78%, Firefox at 15%, Safari at 5%, Other at 2%.
The “after” chart shows IE at ~78%, Safari at ~22%, and all the rest at 0%.
So, I guess that’s the target by which he’s asking Win Safari to be judged. :p
“The “before” chart shows IE at 78%, Firefox at 15%, Safari at 5%, Other at 2%.
The “after” chart shows IE at ~78%, Safari at ~22%, and all the rest at 0%.
So, I guess that’s the target by which he’s asking Win Safari to be judged. :p”
Absolutely those prepared and able to download and install an alternative browser, are actually a small part of the market. Seems obvious. To be fair it would be nice if we could get rid of that bundled browser forever. IE6 is still has the largest market share. I’m hoping that Apple can use its own political abuse to solve that problem :p
Edited 2007-06-20 18:47
Well, if we’re looking at the people who will simply click ‘yes’ and ‘next’ when installing iTunes, either there will be a lot of people shifting from IE (and some from Firefox, probably) or a lot of frantic calls to kids down the street claiming the internet is broken ’cause it looks all funny.
Unless Safari does turn out to be an awesome browser worthy of displacing Firefox, I’m betting most browser-aware tech types will stick with what they have. I doubt the exodus will be entirely from Firefox.
And besides, unless there’s a Safari for Linux (other than Konqueror) in the works, I’ll HAVE to stick to what’s available now.
“4. Nobody Likes Safari: Need I say more? Apple’s Mac community loathes Safari like the plague. If it’s loyal community doesn’t prefer their native browser, oh, is it going to be difficult to convert new users? Let’s work on improving Safari for the Mac, shall we, Apple? Apple needs to get a clue and start taking a more realistic approach towards browsers. It just can’t be the best at everything it does.”
talk about a generalization!!!!! “apple’s mac community loathes Safari like the plague” WTF? how did he come up with that conclusion? apple has around 6% market share currently, and safari has over 5% market share… thats like 80% of mac users use safari!!!
this article is just more anti mac fud. which is fine with me… its good for a laugh!
Safari for Windows is still a little rough, but give it a bit, and it will be a fine browser…. and IT WILL eat away at IE market-share…even if it only grabs another 5%! APPLE will use it to market their products…like they should! And that will be another blow to MS! like it or not… they no longer rule the computer world… that THAT is good for every one… even Mac haters!
You’re making the same statement that you accuse the person whom you replied to for making. Just because 80% (according to Apple’s statistics) use Safari, doesn’t actually mean that they enjoy using it – ever heard the term ‘all browsers suck, [product] just seems to suck less than the rest’.
Safari is only used because the alternatives are so terrible – when I had a Mac, Firefox was terrible, and is still terrible. Designed for Windows, and everything else is an after thought – Firefox on *NIX is hardly stella either.
That’s a load of crap. Opera, OmniWeb, Camino, Firefox and more are all available for OS X.
You have a major comprehension problem – I NEVER said they didn’t exist. How about doing some bloody reading.
Safari is only used because the alternatives are so terrible – when I had a Mac, Firefox was terrible, and is still terrible.
I did read it and your description lacks any merit/meat behind it.
The alternatives are the same browsers on every platform.
Be constructive on how they differ from platform to platform or you’re just talking out you ass due to having an aversion to OS X.
DUH!!!!!!!!! its crap performance, memory hogging, buggy and bugs not being fixed – but hey, why let FACTS like that get in the way of being a fan boy.
Of course they bloody are, but it doens’t mean they’re of the same level of quality on all platforms supported – again, use, your bloody brains.
Based on what bloody evidence? I ran the bloody operating system for 5 bloody years! run Firefox on Linux, Solaris, and MacOS X, then run it on Windows. Sorry *MATE* but anything outside Windows is a second class citizen to the Mozilla foundation. If you’re ignoring those facts, you’ve got greater issues at play than just being arrogant and ignorant.
I find the whole “Safari will/won’t succeed/fail on Windows” to be uninteresting. I am an Epiphany user. But if Safari on Windows coaxes even a few people from IE to… anything but IE… then I am happy.
It’s a win all around. The new Safari users are happy. Web sites have more incentive to write to standards. That benefits me, so I’m happy. And I’m sure that Konqueror users would be happy. Users of khtml/webkit based browsers are neglected step children the way things stand. (Bring up Konqueror and check your gmail, sometime.)
Opera benefits from the web’s increased respect for standards, too.
The only loser is Microsoft. I’ll try to remember to shed a tear for them at the appropriate time.
Success or failure… iPhone or not… I like the idea, even though, as a Linux user, I will likely never have occasion to use it.
Apple should just open his OSX to regular user.
Or at least just remove restrictions, and say, “hey, run it on a non-Apple computer, but don’t expect help from us” – that would still block off most customers, but still allowing those who *really* want to run it, be able to run it.
Its not happening either. Apple also has a reputation to keep, and it doesn’t need people start complaining about OSX because it doesn’t work correctly on their unsupported hardware. A big part of Apple’s value is its ‘just works’ aura, and you can bet they are gonna do their best to protect it. Reality is that when problems arise, the fault is often put on the wrong thing.
I’m amazed at all the whining Safari’s release on the Windows platform has caused. No matter what secret reasons Apple have to port it (I’m sure there are quite a few), the fact is that we get a new browser.
Safari is a truly excellent browser quite simply because of it’s simplicity! I’ve seen many people install FireFox, and they use only the most basic features. People on this forum won’t, as we’re power-users who enjoy flexibility to install new plug-ins, and enjoy the philosophy behind it.
Now, ordinary users don’t care about this at large. Safrai has some truly great and intuitive features. When I use it, I don’t miss any of the extra buttons and levers I find in FireFox. Safari does not clutter the interface with all these features, it simply focuses on the features almost everybody needs, and can relate to! Apple is very good at avoiding bloat.
When you see where FireFox is going, you whine that it’s getting too bloated. When Safari is launched, you whine because it is too simple…
Also, it really us snappy. It’s fast to launch, fast to switch between tabs (Explorer is horrible at that), uses little memory, and generally just feels very quick, smart and responsive.
Safari is simply an excellent browser for most people, and a great alternative to Explorer, just like FireFox. Give apple constructive feedback instead of all this “why it will fail” stuff… 😐
PS: I do however agree that a more extensive plug-in structure for Safari could be made, so that it could benefit the power-users more.
With iPhone, making a call is as simple as touching a name or number. In addition, you can easily construct a favorites list for your most frequently made calls
http://www.mp4-converter.net/iphone-converter/
4- Digital Photography: Color-managed web browsing on Windows for first time, as far as I know
http://www.iphoneconverter.com/cucusoft-dvd-video-to-iphone-convert…