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Safari on Windows, Leopard Debut at WWDC
comm2k writes to mention that Apple has announced a Windows version of Safari along with Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X at this years World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. "He said Safari was 'the fastest browser on Windows', saying it was twice as fast as Internet Explorer. A test version of Safari for Windows XP and for Vista is available for download from the Apple website. Apple is hoping to replicate the success of iTunes, which has proved enormously popular on both Macs and Windows machines."
* Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) - ...of course. This was the main focus of the keynote. A "feature complete" version of Leopard was demonstrated, and all WWDC attendees receive the current, feature complete beta of Leopard and Leopard Server. Demos, movies, and more information about all of the many new features are available here. No one outside of the conference will receive these builds (but can be expected to receive later seeds). Leopard is still on track to ship in October. Leopard is $129, or $69 edu/govt (as usual). Free/cheap upgrades to Leopard will likely only for hardware purchased within month prior to its release (also as usual). (See also Leopard Server).
Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server press releases with more info.
* iPhone third party development - iPhone, previously thought to be completely closed, will have development possible via rich "Web 2.0" applications. Details on this are a little sketchy, and it's not what some hoping for a full iPhone SDK wanted, but it appears that all external app development will happen via web apps. However, it also appears such apps will appear as and have the look and feel of other iPhone apps. While this is news, it appears analysts are interpreting this as "new bad news", even though there was no expectation previously that iPhone would be an open platform, since it appeared that it would be closed, and this announcement is actually a positive development over the previous situation. iPhone is also still in schedule to ship on June 29 at 6pm via Apple retail stores and AT&T corporate stores. Still no news on specifics for online sales, preordering, etc.
Press release with more info.
* Safari Mac OS X and Windows - Safari is now available, in its 3.0 beta form, on Mac OS X 10.4.9 and Windows XP/Vista. At first glance, Safari is much, much faster than it was previously on Mac OS X, and includes a range of new features. This is the same version of Safari that will ship on Leopard and (essentially) iPhone. Safari is now also available on Windows; this is obviously going to be used as a channel of development for iPhone, since all external iPhone apps will essentially be Safari web apps.
Press release with more info.
* No new hardware, but the Apple Store and the rest of the Apple web site has a new look (which was why the Apple Store was down, which some see as an indication of new hardware announcements).
* Keynote summary
* Keynote archive will be available later today here.
Safari has always been based on KDE's KHTML, and they do contribute back to the community via the WebKit project.
See also:
KDE adds Safari feel to desktop Linux - The KDE Project has released a significant update to its K Desktop Environment software that includes refinements to the Konqueror Web browser derived from collaboration with Apple's Safari browser team.
KDE's Konqueror Browser Reaps Safari Benefits - In a perfect example of how open source and proprietary software can benefit each other, Apple got a significant headstart by basing Safari on established technologies like KHTML & Konqueror. And in return, Apple's contributions back to the open source community have benefitted Konqueror.
in a Terminal window. Obviously that command does not work on Windows.
Instead, open %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\Safari\Preferences.plist in your favorite text editor. Add:
and save it. Restart Safari. You now have a nifty "Debug" menu in the top menu bar, complete with the Javascript Console.
I wouldn't necessarily call it "hacking" for Safari, considering that Safari's KHTML-based rendering engine is more standards compliant than either Firefox or IE.
It's been based on KHTML/Konq since conception. If you want to use Safari (or its equivalence in Linux), just use Konq.
The only reason it runs on Windows now is because Adobe put a shit-ton of work into WebKit/WebCore to make their Apollo product, and now Apple's using the benefit of their partial-Carbon port to port Safari over and use the Win32-ized WebKit to power it.
The real good thing that's happening in WebKit/WebCore right now is the work going on to make it work with GTK+/GDK. Once that happens we'll have a web browser that looks and feels native to every major UI toolkit out there.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
This is WWDC. It is a developer conference, not a consumer conference. Its focus has always been software (although WWDC has occasionally been the forum for hardware announcements). Apple is doing more and more product introductions as they're ready (e.g., like last week's new MacBook Pro introduction), and less and less product introductions at conferences and "special events".
Everyone expecting brushed aluminum iMacs and new Cinema Displays shouldn't have expected that in the first place. And an Apple-branded virtualization solution? It's been known since last WWDC that Leopard wouldn't have integrated virtualization. With three different solutions already existing, plus Boot Camp, why would you even expect that, no matter how nice it would be?
And who would care about this announcement? This isn't just "Safari for Windows". Jeez. It's the channel for development for iPhone, since all of iPhone's third-party development will be as Safari web apps.
You have to "hack" to get IE to work. If you code to standards, generally Safari, Firefox, Opera, Konquerer, etc. all just work. We've found a few Safari specific bugs here, but all of them turned out to be bugs in our HTML, which were just handled a little better by Firefox.
Safari renders just fine –it's certainly more in line with the official specs than any other browser out there, with the possible exception of Opera. The problem is simply that Safari doesn't have Firefox's market share yet, so web developers who code all their sites with Firefox and IE in mind don't necessarily check to make sure they work well in Safari too.
It's the same problem that we used to have with the old Mozilla Suite. Gecko has, for the most part, always been great; but it wasn't until more developers got on board that using Mozilla or Firefox as a daily web browser became a pleasant experience. If anything, the problem that Safari currently faces in this regard is much less significant than the hurdle Mozilla originally had to jump.
No, Apple is not trying to replicate iTunes' success.
Agreed - the browser marketshare thing is just a front for getting millions of people to beta test their application development framework - YellowBox for Windows is back. Next year you can have real applications on the iPhone (and Mac, and Windows).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think you're more right than you know. I think Apple is trying to replicate the iPod's success. They used iTunes to help sell the iPod to Windows users. I think they're porting Safari to try to help sell the iPhone to Windows users. The iPhone is running OS X and a version of Safari. It runs Web 2.0 applications in Safari. This release means Windows developers don't need OS X in order to develop and test for the iPhone. It also makes testing for Safari easier for Windows only Web developers.
Personally, I bounce back and forth between Firefox and Safari. Safari is faster and has some really nice features (support for services). Safari 3 has some things to offer too. I'm using it right now and the ability to just resize this text field kicks ass. I hope every other browser steals the idea. The Web inspector is nice too.