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Apple Terminates Safari Seed Program
coolmacdude writes "This morning Safari beta v67 was leaked to the Internet. Because this is the third time it has happened (v62 and v64 were leaked), Apple has apparantly had enough and decided to terminate the seed program that provided unreleased beta verisons to selected developers. In a email sent to all developers and posted on Mike Wendland's blog, Apple says:
'Due to Safari 67 postings to the internet, we have closed the Safari Seed project. We know that the majority of you are not responsible for the leaks to the internet, and we sincerely appreciate your feedback, time and effort with this project.'"
More testers = more bugs found = better product.
Thats too bad that a few had to ruin it for everyone else. Giving out software like that is a privage, not your God given right. People should respect Apple's wishes and wait until the full release, but no. Now its too late.
given apple's history of siccing lawyers on sites that dare to post pics of the latest & greatest before they're officially unveiled, the only surprising thing is that it lasted this long...
If they're not distributing it they don't have to release the code.
Doesn't it make more sense for them to have as many testers as possible on pre-release builds? This way they find potential issues missed through the undoubtedly small QA team on the project.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
I know that Apple probably has good reason not to make the various beta releases of Safari available to the public, but I think they are missing out on a good marketing opportunity here. These Safari releases are keeping everyone interested, or they're keeping me interested anyway. Plus, people can see the new features as they are implemented and maybe once a favorite feature is added, emails about getting that feature will reduce.
Smeghead every day of the week.
I consider this to be a small ethical violation on the part of the individual who leaked the beta, at least compared to many other things. Nevertheless, Apple had placed their trust in a group of developers, and some jerk decided to violate that trust. However small of a violation that this may be, as compared to, say, murder, I would still like to see that individual publically flogged.
Part of the core rendering is based on Konqueror and is open source (and they do release the enhancements they make to that part back to the community). Everything else that is wrapped around it is not open source. So they have no requirement to let everybody see every little change they make there...and won't.
Surprisingly, not everyone follows the open source mantra. There are legitimate reasons for not wanting to provide constant releases. One is confusion among a less educated (some might also say intelligent) user base - people getting what is effectively a beta and don't know it end up bitching at Apple. This makes them look incompetent, and can cause problems for their image.
Apple has good reasons for wanting to keep their stuff under wraps until they ship. This doesn't make them wrong, unenlightened, or the enemy.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Safari's back-end (parser, script engine, etc) is based on KHTML, and that code is available here. Safari's front-end (lickability, bookmarking, etc) remains proprietary, and that is allowed by LGPL.
How hard would it be for them to put in the developer builds a little code to pop up a splash screen everytime that safari loads that reminds the user that it is a developer, not end-user build unless they disable that in the preferences?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
With the KHTML engine still undergoing internal tweaking for better DOM/CSS/etc support, I think Apple should look to the Mozilla project for their approach to browser development. Why not publicly release nightly betas, so users can post feedback on development as with BugZilla? Users don't expect the nightlies to be perfect, but it would keep the tweakers (and web designers like me) happy, and the developers would get a lot more feedback on their progress, whereas most casual users can happily download milestone releases.
Otherwise, the standards compliance of the browser will possibly be delayed (all the esoteric little implementation issues, especially with CSS and DHTML). After all, many eyeballs results in better code, especially with something as complex as a web browser.
<!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
They're pulling to the 1.3 mozilla trunk for the version of geko they embed in camino right now, and they introduced a whole slew of bugs when they did so. You might want to stick to the .7 release for a month or so unless you're a real masochist.
.7 release or safari, and just check the nightlies when something I'm interested in gets mentioned on bugzilla.
I used to use the Chimera nightly builds almost exclusively, but these days I stick to the
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
So one could literally say that a few bad seeds ruined it for everyone else...
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
Without getting into the neverending "tabbed browsing" argument, I'll go out on a limb and say that these leaked builds will probably help Safari's marketshare in the long run. In browsing various Mac messageboards before and after v60 was leaked, I can tell you that many people dumped Camino the moment that tabs were discovered in Safari's debug menu. Had Safari's tabs been kept under wraps until the next public beta, Camino would have only matured and captured more users, which in the long run could've decreased the number of users using Safari. Of course this is all speculation. And I won't even get into the benefit that Apple realized by having a larger user base testing these builds.
Using the Camino nightly build is hardly a good way of testing Safari.
In the interest of full or false disclosure (you decide), I should let you all know that I'm not using v64, which I did not find at macrumors, and it does not have tabbed browsing, which I donot find to be the final feature which makes Safari not kick ass on the mac.
Had I known that these were seeds that Apple didn't want released, I would of course have downloaded them and used them. I would, after all, want to spoil a good thing
Move the nots around to make the above true.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
They should have done that trick where each developer gets a slightly different copy, possibly each having a different easter egg embedded inside. All they then have to do is download the version from the internet and trigger the easter egg to find out which copy was leaked and cut that developer off.
--
Dreamweaver Templates
Sure. Dave Hyatt has been known to possibly fix hypothetical bugs that may or may not occur in Safari versions that may or may not exist.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
What's up with these developers? It's like they're desparately trying to be one of the "cool kids," leaking the code to the Internet. "Yippee!"
So, in an attempt at trying to upgrade their status to being picked only second to last in gym class, all the legitimate developers who respect agreements they've made have to suffer.
Nice going!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
If you don't like Apple, that's all well and good, but why then do you feel the need to post or even click on an Apple story? I suppose you just couldn't let an Apple story go by without adding your insults. It's called trolling, and we don't need any more of it. Your opinion is valid, but posting this in an Apple story is just childish and counter-productive. Grow up, please.
- j
Actually, what Apple is not telling you is that they have simply outsourced all their seed programs to Burpee.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
There is a big trade-off between getting a decent sized community to test a product and allowing a not-yet-debugged product out into the wild.
As a developer is it very valuable to have a willing group of people willing to test and feedback on not-yet-ready-for-market products. Unfortunately if these releases then get a wider distribution to people who don't understand that the app us a work in progress (as has happened with safari), any problems (which would be solved before an official release) reflect badly on both the product and the developer.
Given that the betas are being leaked, and Apple's reputation for quality of its products, I don't think they had any option but to cancel to program. I also welcome their move for other reasons:
As a web developer, one of the major issues I face is not just making a site compatible with the major browser releases (which in itself is a problem), but also with all the betas that are still being used. Many beta releases (or should have been betas) have quite significant bugs which are *very* difficult to work around. For example, I still see hits from people using betas of Netscape 4.
Once a pre-release product makes it into the wild, many of the initial users will continue it use it since 'it works for me'. Of course, if this browser doesn't work with a site due to bugs or incompatibilities in the browser, its the sites fault - from the users perspective - and my clients if the user complains. These almost-right products seem to persist almost forever.
Actually, they already do. By default, Safari has a toolbar button that sends a bug report, along with an optional screenshot/code snapshot, to Apple. In fact, this is one of the reasons why they choose to release the beta, so they could iron out all the bugs without having to the test all of the pages out there.
However, there is no need to get bug reports for a product that they know is unstable or incomplete (the post-v60 builds). If they posted one of those publicly, not only would they get a backlash for releasing an extreemly unstable build of their product, such as the first beta, which had a nice "feature" that would automatically delete ~/ for you, but all of their bug reports would be for a build which is still incomplete. Instead, they could just post their more complete, milestone builds, and get feedback which is much more beneficial to the developers.
1) They should have known that it would be available for download on the net as soon as they handed it out. If they didn't take that into account before starting the program they're idiots.
2) A lot of people justify Apple here by posting the standard shit about it being terrible for the public to see an unfinished product. This is wrong and silly. Most people who come across this type of thing and are willing to install a beta are a) warez people who aren't gonna buy it anyway, or b) early adopters who are itching to try it out and are going to buy it no matter what.
3) And finally some people are going to whine about the humanity of programmers having to see their beautiful program that they love like a child being stolen by the masses. Tell them to stop whining. The programmers are wage slaves. If the company earns more money because of massive warezing (that should be 'When the company inevitably earn more...') the programmers should shut up about the hurt to their souls and get back to fulfilling their contracts.
Software companies act like this because they are run by idiots. You have no clue of the true magnitude of the crass stupidity they are capable of.
And Apple just likes to throw temper tantrums. They probably lost more customers by canceling this program and making a stink than they would have lost by having betas escape into the wild.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This made me laugh.
Dude, you preface your statement with a literal 'I'm about to talk out of my ass', and then of course you do so.
Apple is a failed monopoly
Every company but Microsoft is a failed monopoly. What is your point? Or, are monopolies good on Saturdays? I forget.
Your mightily aged Mac trolls are telling, too. Listen, you don't like it, that's fine. But you don't even know what the hell you're talking about by your own admission. So, seriously, why are you posting? You're nothing but noise in here. Karma-to-burn norwithstanding.
Blah blah blah, you love your PCs. Wonderful. Run along now.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Microsoft did exactly this during the Windows 2000 betas. When you'd download an ISO, the special download app would inject your obfuscated IP address and beta ID into the header. Some beta tester discovered this and was able to decode the obfuscation. MS wasn't too happy when this tester reported it to the beta newsgroup. Once people found out about it, it was trivial to remove or alter the injected information.
Maybe instead of discontinuing this program, Apple should have quietly started watermarking the private builds of Safari. A different watermark for each developer they give a sneak peak too. Then when it's leaked, they'll know who did it.
Of course, they may do this already, and just decide not to divulge that information... Just a thought anyway.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
I tested v67 out and I think there was a reason Apple didn't want it out: Bugs. This thing has so many bugs... it freezes, you can't click/select anything sometimes (but you can still load pages), among other things...
So perhaps they simply didn't want to give a bad impression out, and don't want to be berraged by a million emails all pointing bugs out that they are most definitely aware of.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Why not publicly release nightly betas, so users can post feedback on development as with BugZilla?
Quality expectations are different for Apple than from many other developers. I suspect this is at least part of the reason. Not to mention all the journalists that would descend upon such a thing to pick apart every release.
Users don't expect the nightlies to be perfect
Normal users don't, Mac users do. They take it personally if there's a bug in a piece of software -- like Apple is after them specifically.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
many game developers take when using a seed program.
All seeds are digitally signed in one or more ways, so that when the seed is found on the internet, the guilty party can be identified and removed from the program.
Another case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Not only the v62, 64 and 67 leaked out.
I saw v65 too.
There are many Safari users who use those v62-v67. Why? Because they believe the new versions will resolve some issues.
Just give out the nightly builds like Chimera / Camino does. Those Safari users using the unreleased versions will enjoy the nightly builds and help fixing and finding the things that need still adjusting in Safari.
It may or may not conform to GNU's idea of 'free'... and we can argue back and forth about whether that's basically because GNU has always been determined to hate Apple, from day one, and will always be, no matter what Apple does.
But it doesn't matter, because he didn't say 'free'. Not as in beer, not as in speech, not as in political prisoners.
No, he said 'open source'. And, why lookie here... Apple's license is on the official list of 'open source licenses'.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
So stop with the trashing already. He said it was open source, it is open source.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
A little knowledge of human nature and a smattering of statistics should tell you that this was almost guaranteed to happen, no matter what precautions (statutory or technological) were set against it.
Is Apple stupid for thinking this wouldn't happen, or did they plan on it?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
If they buy a new computer whenever the next "must have" windows comes out they do.
Most of the ones I've installed for friends and family tends to live quite a lot longer, most ordinary home users aren't on the bleeding edge. You can usually run the next two "releases" (e.g. win95-98-me) until it gets impossible even for the unsavy home user.
I'd say the lock in at home is a major factor in the continued lock in at work. Not unlike how Nokia played their cards right by marketing to teen-agers, when Ericsson stayed with the corporate demographic. The sons and daugheters of the captains of industry ran around with cooler mobiles than their dads, a situation that ultimately couldn't (and didn't) last long.
Stefan Axelsson
If KHTML would be distributed exclusively under the GPL license, Apple would have to provide any code for released software that links against KHTML.
KHTML must be using LGPL (or at least something similar).
I think it is quite interesting that people recommend that Apple should have embedded watmermarks, unique identifcation, steganography and other stuff in the beta download to identify who leaked the copy.
Isn't this the same posters that normally oppose DRM? :-)
Safari's front-end (lickability, bookmarking, etc)
You enjoy licking brushed metal? Oh, man...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
You're either trolling, or you're simply ignorant. The restrictions you describe apply to GPL code, not LGPL. This is precisely why the LGPL exists. From the text of the LGPL:
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Okay, I think some of you need a little education on how Apple operates. /Applications/Safari.app/Content/MacOS/ and typing in the command 'strings Safari | grep June'. You will see two line in the binary that read "Safari Beta will expire on June 30, 2003.
First off, the whole beta program fro Safari is/was managed by a small team. Second, that team has a goal to release either the next public beta or the full 1.0 release by June 30th, 2003. You can verify this by opening up the terminal and navigating to
Safari Beta expired on June 30, 2003."
This means that they are on a deadline and have a lot of work to do. A lot of people who have posted here are suggesting that they should do MORE work and add easter eggs/stenographics/blah-blah/security tracking to the seeded releases. Now you tell me, does that sound like a good way to reach a deadline? Especially one that is hard coded into the binary of the public beta? Now you could argue that putting in an arbitrary deadline is a "bad idea" or whatever, but I think it's a great way to keep a project both on track and managable. Pressure to perform and all that rot.
The other thing a lot of people are apparently misguided in thinking is that Apple was naive about releasing these developer seeds. For this you have to understand a little bit about Apple's corporate culture and social philosophy. While you may not agree with it, I and a lot of others, think it's a great experiment and helps move our culture along. To understand thier philosophy, just look at Apple's public stance on music piracy. They have put in place some very basic and easily defeatable mechanisms with the iPod that prevents users from sharing music freely with thier iPod. They have not completely crippled your ability to share music, however they do put s little sticker on the iPod's that says "Don't steal music." They have also publicly stated in many debates about music piracy that it is a social problem, not a technological one, and that technology will not solve the issue. So in that statement, they have made reasonably clear that they don't really want to spend a lot of time working on something that they see as inevitable.
They also want to trust those that they sign up for the seed programs. If you can't trust your testers to give you good reliable feedback, you are wasting your time and effort and you won't get your project completed or your bug fixed.
Now the thing with the Safari seeds is that they gave the seed users 3 chances, basically 3 strikes, your out. After the 3rd strike, they pulled the program because they saw it as more detrimental that useful. I'm sure they started getting an unmanagable amount of negative feedback or duplicate bug reports, or even worse, useless ones because all these people that downloaded the seeds that were not part of the seed program probably started sending in incomplete bug reports or even worse, stupid things like "the thingy with the buttons, doesn't work on my puter, fix it now assholes", or something to that effect. This means that those managing the bug database and trying to glean useful information or even just track any real bugs now have to sift through thousands of shit reports. Needle in haystack time.
Any of this sound reasonable.
And finally, the most telling thing would be the reports on rumor sites. Apple hates rumor sites. They are counter productive to thier business (believe it or now, they are). If someone reads on a rumor site that such and such feature is missing/broken/doesn't work or whatever on a rumor site, and bases thier judgement on that rumor sites word (I know, stupid people, but it does happen, I have plenty of ad hom proof), they end up loosing a potential customer, or thier market image gets tarnished.
I don't know about most of you, but these are the reasons that I see Apple's decision to pull the plug as both necessary and smart on Apple's part. Argue all you want about "the way it should be" or whatever, but these are the realities of this business. If you
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.