Apple Picking a Fight it Can't Win With Safari

Ian Lamont writes "Mike Elgan has an analysis of Apple's successes and concludes that the release of the Safari browser for Windows not only goes against the Apple success formula, but is doomed to a vicious failure: 'The insular Apple universe is a relatively gentle place, an Athenian utopia where Apple's occasional missteps are forgiven, all partake of the many blessings of citizenship, and everyone feels like they're part of an Apple-created golden age of lofty ideas and superior design. But the Windows world isn't like that. It's a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken. Especially the Windows browser market. ... While security nerds were ripping Apple for a buggy beta, the UI enthusiasts started going after Apple for the look and feel. Here's a small sample. Apple can expect much more of this in the future. The problem? Safari for Windows just isn't Windows enough.' Elgan also expects that the Firefox faithful will fight the Safari influx — a theory that has been supported by comments from Mozilla executive John Lilly, who criticized Steve Jobs' 'blurry view of real world' just after Jobs announced Safari for Windows."

Comments

Oh look!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloggers think they matter again!

They're Not There to Win

[pyite]

It's not about winning. Giving how Apple has decided to let apps be developed for the iPhone, Safari on Windows effectively serves as a development environment for non-OS X developers who want to deploy iPhone apps. And in the end, even 5% total marketshare for Safari is good because it pushes web standards just a little bit more.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[pyite]

I don't know why this meme of "Safari, the iPhone SDK" has suddenly become so popular, but Jobs himself has said in his keynote that they really want Safari to get a much bigger market share.

I think you can throw that under the heading of Reality Distortion Field. I think it's a ploy to take attention away from the sucky fact that the only "apps" they're allowing on the iPhone are web pages. Oooh, innovative.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[Admiral Ag]

I don't understand the problem.

A lot of Windows users downloaded iTunes, even though they didn't have an iPod. A lot of people just like it (and of course many people hate it). The same will probably be true of Safari.

There are of course many things to fix, but it is a beta. I'm guessing there will be a few people who want a simple, easy to use browser without endless sets of extensions and widgets. I was that person years ago when a simple browser called "Phoenix" was released, and that's why I used it. Now Firefox is not the simple browser it used to be.

Of course /. posters and other tech people who love complicated software with millions of customization options aren't going to like it. But for many people less is more.

FTR I now use Omniweb, which was well worth the small registration fee.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[topham]

The company I work for recently (less than 2 yrs) had to purchase a mac so they could test a website they were developing against Mac browsers.
Due to the nature of the site a significant user base use Macs. The user base? People with money; and lots of it.

So tell me; who do you aim for as a market?

Re:They're Not There to Win

[jZnat]

I think it would have been a more interesting slide if he swapped Safari and IE's positions in the first chart to make the second chart, therefore putting Safari at 74%, Firefox at 20%, IE at 12%, and other at 2% or something like that. Now that would have been looking ahead! However, I'd rather we don't have any web browser taking that sort of market share ever again in order to promote open standards with an open process (which means the W3C has to open themselves up a bit to the public when developing new web standards).

Re:They're Not There to Win

[Grave]

If it renders properly in Firefox or Opera, 99.99% of the time it'll render properly in Safari. It's IE that causes problems, because it fails to follow proper standards. I've had to spend a silly amount of time trying to work around IE bugs, when my sites have been 100% correct in Firefox and Opera (and, now that I'm able to check, Safari).

If a web developer doesn't care when their site does break or look odd in Safari, maybe they don't really care that much about the enduser experience. Personally, I think if the browser has more than 1% of the market, it needs to work with my sites. 1% is still a couple million people. I'm not going to abandon that many potential visitors/customers by being an arrogant snob like you seem to suggest.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[Admiral Ag]

I think I understand Jobs' reasoning. It's all about Web 2.0 and compatibility between desktop and mobile browsing.

Let's say the iPhone is a huge hit in the way that the iPod is a huge hit. Let's say it revolutionizes mobile web browsing (I think people spend too much time looking at the interface, the phone apps and the iPod app - the "real" internet "in your pocket" is the big deal). The iPod being a hit meant that iTunes became a standard on desktop PCs.

So if the iPhone is a success, people will spend a lot of time browsing sites on it, and people will write Web 2.0 sites for it. Simply put, if the iPhone is a mega hit, Safari becomes the standard for mobile internet browsing, and IE mobile is finished (I have it. It sucks anyway). I think this will happen. Safari marketshare is going to shoot up as more people use their iPhones to access the web (this is why I think that devs whining about the lack of an iPhone SDK is dumb. Web 2.0 is the way to go).

But no-one is going to spend all their time browsing on their phone. People will want to use the same 2.0 sites on their desktop machines. Do you really think that Apple can trust Microsoft or the Firefox devs to make sure that IE and Firefox will be compatible with all the sites that are aimed at iPhone users?

Wouldn't it suck if you were using a great Web 2.0 interactive site on your iPhone and you got to your desk and discovered it didn't work properly with your desktop browser?

Wouldn't it suck if it was hard to sync your bookmarks between your phone and your desktop browsers?

By allowing Safari for Windows, Apple is basically saying: "All you other guys better support Safari, because it will rule mobile browsing. If you think that you can create trouble for the iPhone by making it hard for sites to be compatible with both the iPhone and Windows desktop browsing, then we're going to stop that by telling everyone that if their favourite sites work on their phone, but not their desktop, that they can download a browser that will make it work on the desktop. And added to that, we are going to make it super easy to sync bookmarks between Safari on the desktop and Safari on the phone. People will want a seamless experience between their mobile browsing and their browsing on traditional computers. Ignore this at your peril."

If Apple comes to rule mobile browsing, then it will be in a powerful position to determine web standards. Safari is insurance against others who might rock the boat.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[seaturnip]

Underlying draw calls change the HTML rendering path how? I don't see why Safari would have a different compatibility profile on Windows than OS X, plugin-dependent features aside. Firefox renders the same between operating systems to my knowledge.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[DrEldarion]

Apple killed WMA as a standard. Wait, I thought nobody gave a shit about WMA and everybody listened, and still listens, to MP3?

Re:They're Not There to Win

[davmoo]

I love tech, but I'm going to surprise you and agree with you. I want a browser that browses web pages...and nothing more. I don't want it to handle my email, I don't want it to handle RSS feeds, I don't want seven hundred and eleventy million plugins. I just want a fucking browser.

Simplicity is why I switched to Firefox and Opera from MSIE in the first place. And now both Firefox and Opera have expanded to become the same bloated fatware as MSIE. And Firefox has become just as buggy also.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[Admiral Ag]

Yes, but what would have happened if online sales of music were dominated by WMA. Microsoft would effectively control the paid online distribution of music. Ask yourself how much that would suck. People disliked that Apple had to use a proprietary format to sell music online, but we now know that they didn't want to. I don't think I would say the same about Microsoft. If the format is not proprietary to them, then its not in the interest of Microsoft to promote.

Everyone knows that mp3 is OK, but the quality is not as good as AAC or WMA at similar bitrates. Would you rather have improved codecs in an open format like AAC or a format controlled by Microsoft? I'll take the open format thanks.

I'm starting to wonder if Jobs believes he can dethrone Microsoft. I don't mean that he thinks that Apple will replace Microsoft, but that Apple will force third party developers to open standards and free us from the tentacles of the Redmond beast. He's already done it with music. Now he seems to be trying internet browsers. What next?

Re:They're Not There to Win

[Watts Martin]

But the iPhone does "real" internet WORSE than existing phones. The iPhone doesn't support the modern standard for mobile internet, 3G...

Well, let's say "HSDPA" instead of "3G", since 3G is more a marketing term than a technical spec. My (admittedly unconfirmed) suspicion is that Apple developed the iPhone with EDGE because they didn't know which carrier they'd actually sign up with in the States, let alone Europe. They wanted as wide a playing field as possible initially, because they knew it'd be a hard sell to get a carrier to meet all their demands as it was. Would I prefer HSDPA? Yes, even acknowledging the caveats that it's not available in nearly as many markets here, and also acknowledging that the markets HSDPA is already deployed in are big metro areas where you're more likely to find spots you can switch over to wifi.

Having said that: speed isn't everything. Maybe you think the iPhone will be "worse internet" than existing phones, but that depends on what phone you're comparing it to. I have a T-Mobile Sidekick and generally like it, and it's an EDGE-speed device. The iPhone will kick its butt in terms of user experience, because the interface matters a lot. If the Sidekick was HSDPA, would the EDGE-only iPhone still kick its butt? For many web sites: yes. If your mobile browser can't handle Google Maps, it doesn't matter much that it's failing to browse that site at five or six times the speed of the iPhone that's displaying it successfully.

I think (some) people keep failing to recognize what Apple's gambit with the iPhone is: they're betting that its "killer app" is the UI. There's nothing that the iPhone does that other mobile devices don't already do, but there's nothing that does those things the way the iPhone does. It could well end up being a high-profile collapse. But I think it's a fascinating gamble, and it's a variant of one that Apple has pulled off successfully more than once.

Yet they still use IE...

[nattt]

"But the Windows world isn't like that. It's a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken. Especially the Windows browser market." a statement totally disproved by the fact that IE is still the #1 PC browser and it's a pile of crap with holes so big you could drive not just a Safari, but the whole of the African plains through it.

It seems that the author is holding Apple to a standard that not even the mighty giver of life to all, Microsoft, (praise be upon it), is held to.

Why can't people take it for what it is?

[attemptedgoalie]

As I understand it, the release of Safari to the Windows platform allows people to develop and test applets that should work on the iPhone.

Was there really a plan for Safari doing well against Firefox and IE?

It just seemed to me the best way to release a product that helps increase use of another product. Safari isn't going to make anybody any money. iPhone will make Apple a boatload of money if the product and attached cellular service are decent.

Umm, what?

[TheRaven64]

Safari on Windows has five purposes:

1. To make it easy for web developers to test their sites with Safari.
2. To make it easy for web developers to write iPhone web-apps.
3. To remove the cap on Safari's market share, so that 'it must be even smaller than the Mac market share' is no longer an argument for not supporting Safari.
4. To let potential switchers see that the Internet will work on a Mac, even though it doesn't have the big blue E.
5. To ensure that Apple is the one bringing the first mainstream WebKit-based browser to Windows, now all the porting work has been done (by Adobe).

Which of these is the fight that Apple can't win?

And why does IE still hold about 80% of the market

[chriss]

It's a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken. Especially the Windows browser market. ...

Unforgiving the smallest error? Let's check the market share of IE again ...

Seriously, I wouldn't expect Safari to become a major force on Windows, I don't think that even Apple expects a lot. But to claim that the Windows world is driven by quality while the Apple world is cozy is just stupid. IE was crap for years and Firefox is still at 10% market share. Most people stick with what they know (usually Windows), so the amount of "switchers" we see is a sign that quality actually can work for people who look somewhat further, but most people never do.

no competition

[TRRosen]

They must be right no one could make a browser thats better then IE.....except for maybe Apple, Mozzilla, Opera, Konqueror.

Fear Uncerntainty Doubt

[BladeMelbourne]

FUD.

I will use Safari frequently for development. And when I can (in an upcoming release) specify a proxy server (to get rid of advertisements) I will use it more often.

I am not an Apple fanboy, and I even had font issues with Safari on Windows. The problem is now fixed.

Mike Elgan can go back into his hole - I don't give a crap what FUD he wants to spread. It sounds like there is not enough fresh air circulating in his mothers basement... either that or he is endorsing company blog "clog" spam.

Pussy Critics

[Doc Ruby]

Athens wasn't some pussocracy where "missteps [were] forgiven". It ruled a Greek empire by serial mass murder, like anyone else, even though it was eventually defeated by its infamously singleminded military rival Sparta. It invented the democracy on which ours is loosely based, featuring corrosive public (and private) debate that defined our arts of rhetoric and logic.

Apple isn't a pussocracy, either - smart people there survive up against Microsoft's monopoly by their wits, in the market, periodically revolutionizing it. Getting Athens and Apple so wrong discredits the rest of Mike Elgan's analysis. If you're going to argue from caricature analogy, only cartoons will be persuaded. If you're making such a discreditable attack on an absent target too busy to spend time debating your niche, you're a pussy.

What do YOU think Apple is up to?

[ancientt]

Okay, there are 5 good excuses to release Safari, but I think that is what they are, just excuses.

I think the main reason, the real reason, is advertising. Everybody who reads "Why you don't need Safari" or "Safari vs IE" or anything like that at all is reading the equivilant to "Apple competes with Microsoft." Even people who never read anything more than a headline will think of Apple as a competitor next time they get ready to buy a computer. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of other good effects for Apple, but the core is that their main products, iPods, iPhones and Macs make more sales.

Go Apple.

Disclaimer: I do not own and have never owned a Mac (though I have used and supported them.) I secretly hope that Apple will release an i386 open source release some day.

Elgan used to be the editor of Windows Mag

[postbigbang]

So of course he might have a few of his own prejudices.....

One more browser on Windows doesn't hurt anything. Because Safari is based on K, it's tougher to smack down with silly code crunches, although they shouldn't have released it until they tested it JUST A BIT MORE. How embarrassing to release a browser that has to have six patches on its first freaking release day.

But Elgan is wrong about Apple. His background at Windows Magazine and HP's in-house organ haven't given him much insight into the seige mentality at Apple. It's plainly been a survivor mentality with a few stellar successes and a few big craters. I wouldn't leave it to Elgan, however, to comment on Apple's mentality when he's clearly been a bit of a stooge of the Windows mindset.

Look at iTunes, QuickTime, and other cross-platform Apple successes, just like Microsoft has theirs (Office and Entourage for the Mac). More competition is good.

A zero cost advertisement 'war'...

[flyingfsck]

So how much is this 'war' costing Apple? They simply recompiled Safari and released it for free on a web server, at a total cost of what - $10,000? It is probably the cheapest Apple advertisement campaign ever.

Not Windows Enough

[gig]

> The problem? Safari for Windows just isn't Windows enough

That is not the problem, that is its greatest feature. Same as iTunes.

Excuse me?

[toetagger1]

(Windows is) a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken

If the people are willing to live with Microsoft's products, I'm sure they will be more than happy with those of Apple as well, and quality doesn't seem to be the most important factor today.

The blogger has no idea.

[catwh0re]

"The insular Apple universe is a relatively gentle place, an Athenian utopia where Apple's occasional missteps are forgiven, all partake of the many blessings of citizenship, and everyone feels like they're part of an Apple-created golden age of lofty ideas and superior design."
that phrase in particular is utter crap and an invention necessary to justify the argument

It's funny that the author clearly has no idea on Apple at all. In fact the Apple audience are known to be excessively vicious to the Apple company, suing it for the slightest of issues. E.g. Right now apple is getting sued because some users believe the pixels on their displays "sparkle" a little bit.

Apple have -never- been in some kind of tech utopia where it's audience has willingly blind sided all their mistakes. Geeze, people still wave newtons around at Jobs during keynotes in silent protest.

Also, while the blogger believes that no one is interested in safari.. it seems to be downloading it's pants off. (So it seems that people are even interested in just having a look, which is contrary to this impenetrable wall of windows browsers that they author conveys.)
I think the author needs to get used to seeing safari around, especially once iPhones start browsing the web.

Why Apple really released Safari on Windows

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Most people that buy iPhone will be Windows users. iPhone does not have IE. It has Safari, so it is important to get more people used to the idea that Safari is a real web browser. Without that, many people will have a mental block that iPhone does not have IE.

I repeat

[Overly Critical Guy]

IT'S AN IPHONE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM.
IT'S AN IPHONE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM.
IT'S AN IPHONE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM.

Goddamn tech journalists and their ratings-driven "story templates." People are reading way to much into this. Safari for Windows is an iPhone development platform, not picking a fight.