Slashdot Mirror
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. Konqueror and Safari both share a very common core (KHTML/WebKit), so the renderring and page handling should be relatively the same. Web designers can get another speedy and a more native web browsers that tests their sites for the same purpose, and general users can get a lightweight, standards-compliant, open source web browser (without the OSS requirements, you can already get this with Opera, of course) that won't try to enforce another platform's "look'n'feel" like Apple's apps all do.
For the interested, you can grab an alpha copy of KDE 4 (download qt-copy, kdelibs, and kdebase at the very least; you can use either GCC/Cygwin or MS Visual Studio to compile it). On OS X, there are precompiled universal binaries for everything, and Kubuntu and openSUSE users can get packages for it from their respective websites.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
That's almost as many downloads as firefox got in its first 24 hrs.
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.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Congratulations to Slashdot and its 1 millionth Safari 3.0 story!
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
nobody gives a shit about you, your opinion, or your blog. please die in a fire.
I downloaded Safari when it was announced, and it's a really slick browser in windows. It's got a little quirks that are reminiscent of mac os x features that might be confusing to PC users, but honestly it's great being able to test safari, firefox, opera and IE all in windows now. It makes my job much easier as a web dev.
I'm really glad that apple released this, and I hope it does well at establishing a good sized customer base. Competition is _always_ good, even if it draws market share from firefox.
Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE. It's main competitor is Firefox, but I can't imagine many FF users switching to Safari as it confirms every prejudice I as a Windows user have about Mac software: it looks grey and it works against me (e.g. no ctrl-enter, can't resize it easily).
It's safe to assume that a certain percentage of windows users will never download a different browser b/c a) they don't know about alternative browsers b) IE is good enough c) don't care. How many of those users that don't fall into the above catagories downloaded firefox and then in the past couple of days downloaded Safari? Could sarfari be canabalizing FF users? Are we just seeing 'churn' here whereby people go from FF to safari and back again?
I highly doubt these 1million were users that have never used a third party browser.
Unfortunately, the type of computer user that would download and evaluate different web browsers are the type of users that have likely already switched to Firefox. So if these people stick with Safari then it will be mostly at the expense of Firefox.
The majority of people I know that use Firefox do so because I either told them to download it, or I downloaded and installed it for them. They will use whatever program gives them internet access that has a convenient shortcut on their desktop or quick launch menu, and as long as webpages and stuff appear when they click on things then that's what they will use until they replace their computer.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
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.
That is, supposing it gets the 10% market share from IE, and not from Firefox, for example.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The interest seem to have been pretty high, but I wonder if anyone there could use it for more than a straight full hour.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Good take on the font differences here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.htm l
Actually, the KDE guys (in particular, the ever awesome Zack Rusin) are working with the WebKit people in order to make WebKit work on the same rendering canvas that KDE uses (namely Qt's QPainterDevice). So Konqueror 4 will most likely use WebKit itself, rather than KHTML, on all three platforms, Linux, Windows and Mac.
... Just so long as WebKit doesn't end up deviating from the standards for whichever reason, anyway. Y'know. (Yeah, I've been in this industry too long to remain optimistic, I know.)
The reason why this is such great news is that this could possibly make WebKit, one of the most standard compliant engines out there, the number one option after IE (alongside with Gecko), which will hopefully prompt Web developers to, at last, respect the standards as the basics for any Web development.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I have just downloaded it when I saw this story, but safari doesn't seems to work very well with slashdot or other more simples web page on my XP 64 box :(
See by yourself: Screen shot
I hate to admit it, but john Dvorak had an interesting theory[1]. Google pays the mozilla foundation $50 million/year or so for redirecting searches their way. I believe Google also had a deal with Opera (the latest version of Opera seems to default to yahoo, though). Is google paying Apple for Safari searches? If so, a windows port could bring in $10 million/year easily, enough to pay for the port and subsidize continued development.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Nobody can know for sure, but many suspect that this isn't one million accountants and ebayers downloading Safari. It's more likely a combination of curious iPhone developers, eager Apple fanboys, and a bunch of your average browser-tier developers.
No story here.
The reason Safari for Windows might actually be a serious competitor on the browser market, is because Apple has something many others have not: Talented GUI oriented developers who can add that extra "spice" that will make ordinary people actually switch IE7 with something else.
...
Think about it. People with technical insight choose FF/Opera over IE because it offers them features that IE doesn't have. People without technical insight just don't care about these features - they don't use plug-ins, skins, or strange shortcut keys.
If I were to convince "regular non-technical users" like my mother, aunt, neighbour, etc. to switch to a non-IE browser, I would need something that appealed to them. Fancy plug-ins ad strange/smart hotkeys is not what they are looking for - they want a sleek, graphically appealing and (for them) intuitive user experience.
Apple is in the business of delivering that EXACT experience! Not too many fancy settings and details, just the sleek and appealing interface that common people understand.
If Apple play their cards right, they could be a serious challenge.
Personally I'll stick with FF (on all 3 platforms I use) but I can certainly understand why the less technical "common users" would fall for the "Apple experience". They are really good at adding that extra GUI spice
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
I downloaded Safari right away just because it was there. I ran it, thought, oh that's nice. Maybe good for testing browser compatibility some day. Then went back to Firefox. Same thing with everyone I know who downloaded it. Certainly Safari on windows will never be anyone's primary browser. But it will certainly find uses. Testing web pages, iphone development, and of course embedding the engine in iTunes (did it use IE up til now?). Jobs claimed Safari was the best web browser on all platforms. I call BS. Even almost all mac users I know use firefox or camino because they need features and capabilities that safari just doesn't have. As far as features go, Safari is at the very back of the pack (worst). Even IE 7 is much better in terms of extensions, core feature set. Safari for Windows is the Steve Jobs reality distortion field at its finest.
I do love how Safari for windows uses the nicer Cocoa font rendering. Really makes Windows' native font rendering look blocky and horrible. Does anyone know how to tweak freetype on linux to render the fonts closer to OS X? I already have hinting turned off and that helps, but the contrast of the fonts still isn't right (OS X fonts render a bit heavier, which I like on the screen).
I also personally don't mind the cocoa widgets either. Cocoa looks nice and is highly functional. That's all I care about. Although it definitely would look very out of place on Vista. But on XP, I think it's fine.
It seems more likley to me, that a casual user who is just roaming along using IE today and blissfully unaware of Firefox would be more likley to stuble upon or otherwise install Safari - especially if it's installed as part of the iPhone setup, but even just normal Apple marketing may reach them. Firefx users might rty it but are less likley to switch since it offers less over what they already have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There! I said it.
My uncle is a transvestite you insensitive clod!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Over a million downloads of Safari for Windows probably means a whole lot of disappointed people at this point. I personally have had nothing but trouble with Safari, textless menus and lockups. I finally gave up and uninstalled the thing. I know that betas are test versions, but honestly, Safari for Windows feels more like alpha class software right now. The general public should not be using this right now. I think they rushed this out in this bad condition because Steve Jobs wanted to talk about it and Safari as the host for 3rd party apps on the iPhone. It's always a bad thing when software is released to the public too soon in order to satisfy some marketing goal.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
All your other blue-eyed optimism aside, this is particularly funny:
and won't go thunk in the night when Bill Gates "upgrades" things to break your work
You know, it's really open source software that's known for making arbitrary upgrades that break backwards compatibility (and keeping version numbers below 1 so they have an excuse - hey, it's just beta!), while Windows goes to great pains to preserve backwards compatibility at all costs, even at the detriment of the system as a whole.
Then the same half a million downloaded it again the next day for the bug fixes.
There's nothing wrong with anything - Phillip J. Fry
Why are you going on about printers?
Only in a Mac Land, the trolls are funny. Way to go Mac Moderators.
Step 0: Use Firefox. Step 1: Read on Slashdot, "Safari on Windows" Step 2: Google, "Safari download" Step 3: Safari downloaded. Step 4: Safari installed. Step 5: Wow! Safari is so coool. Step 6: Import bookmarks from Firefox. Step 7: Open 5-6 heavy websites, like Calendar, Gmail on both Firefox and Safari. Step 8: Safari is able to render the pages better, wow!! Step 9: Close Firefox. Step 9: After 5 minutes, safari crashed. Step 10: Open Firefox, forget Safari. Step 11: Happy!!
Spam: Any activity on internet to gain popularity without paying to advertising companies like Google.
Safari offers two things that no other browser offers: Apple's font rendering and color space recognition of images. Lots of Windows people seem to hate Apple's font rendering, but as a Mac user I prefer it. Windows font rendering seems ugly.
The color space stuff is a big deal to photographers, and it's very annoying that no other browser seems to respect the ICC color profile in images. I've seen a lot of discussion about Firefox versus Safari on the Mac and why Firefox seems to "wash out" images. It's really a shame Firefox doesn't respect ICC color profiles, it's such an obvious thing for a browser to do.
So maybe yeah, Safari isn't as "powerful" as Firefox or MSIE. But it offers an easy-to-use, standards-compliant browsing experience with a level of display rendering not found in other browsers. Many people may not be impressed, but just as many may find it more to their liking. Time will tell.
Or at least that is what I was told by several people numerous times in the last Safari thread. Why are end users downloading and running this "SDK" as if it is an actual browser?
Either its a browser or its an SDK. It doesn't change its role based on whether the news is good or bad.
Sorry to reply twice, but I got curious because I didn't notice the right mouse not working. I went and tried it. The right mouse button works just like it does for Firefox.
What the hell are you tlkaing about?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... from a Mac user's perspective, looks about as appealing as old 80x25 terminal text. Text on a PC looks anaemic and blocky compared to properly-rendered text on a Mac.
Now this is just my opinion, and let's face it - it's all totally subjective anyway - but there's no way I'd be happy with that sort of text output.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I'm always amazed at what people will download. I used to have a plug-in for Softimage|3D, the high-end animation system, on my web site. To download it, you even had to fill out a form. Yet thousands of people downloaded it, more than could possibly use it for anything. Even after I added large type warnings that you must have Softimage|3D to use this thing, there were still people downloading it. Even after Softimage|3D was discontinued.
Basically the Safari fires the onload event before the document is ready. This gives the mistaken impression in some test suites that it is faster than it really is.
l
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/safaribenchmarks.htm
In six years of Debian desktop use, this has hardly been an issue for me. I've done dist-upgrades for three different releases and they all worked.
Because you are using mainstream software supported by your distro provider. Which they have to do because if they didn't, stuff would keep breaking. Distros exists largely to deal with this very problem! 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.
Someone please tell me what I'm missing here. From what *I* see, there is absolutely NO comparison as to which is more readable. Safari is more readable on MY Windows XP Pro than either IE or FF, by a mile. I have a vanilla install of XP. Haven't done a thing to it. It's about as stock as you can get. I installed FF and Safari, then went to cnn.com. I have a screen shot of all 3 browsers side by side, and at the risk of eating up all my download allotment, here is the URL: http://idisk.mac.com/Wingsy-Public/ScreenShot001.b mp
Is there anyone out there who can honestly say that FF or IE is more readable? They both look like they came right out of a dot matrix printer. Can someone post a screenshot where they think Safari is the least readable (if it's different from mine)?
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
What kind of nonsense is this?
If you build a standards-compliant website, it will work in IE. It won't be broken. It may have some layout differences, but it will work. So, what's all this crap about people not being able to use your website if you code to standards? It's more likely to break for everybody else if you ignore standards and build in IE-specific stuff.
Also, non-IE users make up a lot more than 15% of the market. you must have a pretty skewed audience there if you have 85% of users on IE.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You clearly don't understand authoring for the web. It's not about how it looks, it's about conveying information. What does "how it looks" mean for someone who is blind, and uses a screen reader? Even in Internet Explorer, users can change the text size, or base CSS, which will change how your site looks.
If you want everything to look the same, you should be a graphic designer, not a web designer. Wepages are supposed to look different for different viewers, based on their preferences.
... and then they built the supercollider.