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Safari for Windows Downloaded Over 1 Million Times
ClaraBow writes "Apple reports that it took Apple just two days to reach 1 million downloads of its newest Safari Web browser for Windows. If these downloads manifested into regular Safari users, then we just might have a third major browser on the Windows platform. If Safari can obtain a 10% market share on Windows, then it would further weaken IE's position and give standards-based browsers more leverage with developers."
These statistics make me wonder if Konqueror 4 will become another large competitor on Windows.
KDE 4 on Windoze would be a large competitor for every class of program. Konqueror, through kioslaves and kparts, is the amazing unified desktop environment that Bill Gates was dreaming about ten years ago but never delivered. All kinds of documents can be opened with ease in tabs and split panes. All kinds of connections, from file to sftp work seemlessly and fish figures it out for you. But all of that is also available in every other program from KDE and KDE has just about every kind of program. I'm not sure how they will port all of that onto something as ugly as Windoze, but that's one of their goals.
It all works better, of course, with free software. Xorg has network transparency, can run multiple instances, makes virtual desktops easier, and won't go thunk in the night when Bill Gates "upgrades" things to break your work. I'm not going to even think about the restriction laden world of Vista, except to note the evil direction and futility of porting to Windoze. As soon as you are there, those jerks have moved the gaolposts again.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A new browser - that will target a different userbase to FF & divide the market up a little more, will make the web a better place for everyone.
I agree, but the IE 7 story shows that you don't have to worry much anymore. Despite being a forced upgrade on most Windoze platforms, IE 7 still has less than 20% market share even for tech markets. Design to real standards and everyone wins.
The only stuff that still sucks is video, but the average windoze user can't see it either. Patented and restricted junk works that way and will be ignored by the vast majority of people for the duration.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Once again, open source is easily killed off as a sub-par technology with little more than hype backing it up. The only reason firefox ever did so well was because Apple hadn't decided to enter the market. With Apple here (and obviously kicking some serious open sores ass, 1 million users in NO TIME), Firefox will soon hopefully die the painful death it deserves, and lets hope it also takes Lin-sux and every other crappy piece of open sores software with it.
Unlike open sores developers, Apple developers are well paid american professional engineers, who know how to do usability and design and are obviously very successful at it.
Think different. Think better. Think Apple!
This number just proves that 1. There are only one million Mac fanboys who occasionally use windows 2. This number would not go up further, because all the McBoys have downloaded their share of the browser. But because its tied up with iTunes, a lot of dumb users (which, like, includes, like, all iTune users) would not even know if they have an option NOT to install safari on their windows box, I expect the number to keep increasing, but with no real market share. Now mod me down.
Counting the number of McBoys' comments here, around 43.
they want a sleek, graphically appealing and (for them) intuitive user experience.
If Safari is your idea of well designed or graphically appealing you either have a massive Jobs stalking issue, or you are not a graphic designer.
Sadly IE7 on Vista is far prettier than Safari or even Safari running on OS X. It is also more intuitive for non-tech people.
If a developer or graphic designer submitted Safari as an example of their work to me I would fire them.
(PS I am part of a UI research group, and Apple has a lot to learn still.)
1) Mac users threw a fit when MS tried to impose Windows UI ideals on them with Office back in the 90s, and MS scrapped Office and redesigned it from the ground up for the Mac UI guidelines. Apple needs to learn the same lesson that MS already 'gets'.
2) UI paradigm. Futhering the Windows UI, MS is pushing the UI paradigm with IE7 and Vista by getting away from old concepts like menus and wasted screen space, again Apple needs to catch up, especially if they are going to keep forcing iCrap on Windows users.
3) Performance, Stability. Apple software on Windows is horrible. From bad video performance, glitching sound, to crashes, Apple software is by far the most poorly written software from a major Software vendor. (Maybe Apple does this on purpose to make Windows look bad, or maybe their developers are just really stupid.)
4) IE7, IE8... People seem to forget IE7 has come 200x from IE6 in implementing standards. To the point where it pretty much supports everything out there, the only thing it does bad is that it will still try to render 'old' or 'incorrect' pages, and for end users, this is a 'feature' to them, rather than getting a blank page or goofy looking page as you get on Safari.
Safari has nothing on IE7 for standards other than it DOES NOT render improperly coded pages. People forget that the ACID2 test is to see if the browser will ignore 'bad' code, not whether it supports 'features' of standards.
Also IE8 gets another massive standards surge and is coming this year.
For non-technical users, here is how it plays out...
Apple can't keep putting out Quicktime, iTunes, and now Safari with Mac UIs and poor performance and expect Windows users to 'see the light' and run to Apple. Instead it makes users think Apple is retarded and run the other way, vowing to never buy a Mac and avoid their software at all costs. Most PC users wouldn't buy iPods if they were forced to use iTunes before deciding on an MP3 player.
Only in a Mac Land, the trolls are funny. Way to go Mac Moderators.
/.) or the guy pointing out, correctly, that we don't care about his blog?
Which one was the troll? The guy pimping his blog (if he honestly wanted to debate he'd post it to
You do realize that the unified nature of Konqueror, for which you give it such high praise, would be present with IE had Microsoft not been accused of monopolistic practices for doing that sort of thing?
No, M$ was convicted of monopolistic practices for systematically undermining competition, not for adding features. Changing defaults against user preferences, handing other developers SDKs and APIs that are second rate, outright sabotage and vendor manipulation are the things that got them in trouble along with dumping. It's not that they made a browser and integrated it, it's that they forbid retailers from installing alternatives, and sabotaged those alternatives.
Anti-trust concerns are a lame excuse for not having features, but they clearly don't care about monopoly practices. They are currently screwing anti-virus and security software makers like they did Netscape. The Plays for Sure digital restrictions fiasco has been called one of the largest vendor betrayals in history. The reason M$ does not have a nicely integrated desktop is because they are wasting their time and money on sabotage and digital restrictions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The fact that they manage to work around the problem in a large number of cases doesn't mean there isn't an underlying problem being worked around.
Yes, but the problem can be fixed because the underlying software is free. This is not something that can be done in the non free world. What little can be done is a matter of configuration tweaks that must be duplicated by each and every user. As a free software user, the issue does not exist.
As a developer, the issue is trivial. Improvements to gcc, fftw, libgd and other packages have not been a problem for me. I can compare this to changes on M$'s platform. While some APIs did not change much, the toolkits changed a lot. By the time you get to the abstraction layer of VB not.net, your code is broken with every release.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You misspelled "bugs".
What you miss, though, is that Microsoft is already setting the standard. You just don't call it the standard. You call it the hack. But in my book, if "the hack" is what allows 85% of the world to use my web application, it starts looking a lot more standard.
... See, it's not the developers you care about. It's not the users--they don't really care much about rendering differences as long as they can do what they want to. It's just a stick that can be used by "OSS Snobs"* to bash people with.
In reality, standards compliance is just adversarial. A way to skewer Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, as a developer I have a lot of reason to want to skewer them, and I understand you probably do too, but the whole standards thing is still just bullshit.
I mean, look at when you scoffed at the idea of adopting IE settings as the new standard. You said something like "You want to screw over the people that followed the standard?!" Well... why is it better to screw over the MUCH MUCH LARGER GROUP OF PEOPLE that chose to develop against IE?
*Note: I consider myself among this group. Call me flamebait if you want, but you know as well as I do that OSS Snobs exist.
You're so far entrenched into this thinking that it's almost comical to me.
... To me, a "broken website" is one where only 15% of my users can use it. I think the people that sign my checks would agree. Which is, as I said, the whole point. If I'm developing for 85% of the world, it seems awfully standard to me.. ... And you miss my point. You label me some microsoft fanboy because you've bought into the notion that any thinking man must HATE MSFT SO FAR that you can't fathom it not being true. I don't like MSFT products. if I had my choice, Firefox would be the dominate browser. But what I do love is developing software for a living, eating surf & turf, comfortable apartments and new cars. And for that stuff, I have to DEVELOP WHERE THE USERS ARE. And that, my friend, is IE. ... You and the W3C are playing house. You're making imaginary plans that people in the real world just don't care about. Your "standard" is a sheet of paper. In the real world, the "standard" is where ever 300 Million people are...
"help cement MSFT dominance by building broken web sites" you say....
Now that Apple has followed through on bringing their buggy and insecure browser to Windows, hackers everywhere can rejoice! No longer do they have to be content to only exploit Firefox and Opera!
He may have a bad reputation ...
That's news to me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No.
1. W3C makes a standard
2. Microsoft implements it in the most sensible way
3. Gecko implements in a stupid way,
4. W3C changes the standard to make the Gecko implementation law
This happened with the box-model, with the DOM model, and many other W3C details.
For a few other you can exchange step 1 and 2, where W3C decides to make a new standard that is different from the only existing implementation.