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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."
FTFA: John Lilly, Mozilla's chief operating officer, focused on the part of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote where Jobs spelled out existing browser shares of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari -- 78%, 15% and 2%, respectively -- before displaying another pie chart that showed Safari with about a quarter of the market, IE with the remainder.
I've posted that already. Here's the link (with screenshots), if you don't want to read my previous comment.
Steve Jobs wants to push Firefox out. Period. It doesn't have anything to do with opening a development platform for the iPhone. Stop making those excuses! Apple is going to bundle Safari with iTunes and QuickTime in hope of massive market penetration, and in their vision, there is no room for alternative browsers.
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.
A 100 posts over here say the same thing - i.e. Apple released Safari on Windows to help devs
who are developing for the iPhone.
But why then did Steve Jobs make his comment about how in the future the market will be
75% IE & 25% Safari.
I think this is posturing by the fanbois. If Safari on Win is a flop, it would be good
to pretend that Apple was never competing. Apple can't possibly compete & lose, can they?
Ahahhhaha! 25% market share! Not even firefox or Opera are dreaming to get that, yeah got karma to spare so I don't mind getting modded down, but seriously 25%! Somebody at apple is having issues with reality .
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
> Apple killed WMA as a standard. Safari is going to kill IE as a standard.
That is a great comparison. In both cases Apple wins because they unite the de facto standard with the real standard. The iPod made MPEG-4 H.264/AAC the de facto standard media, but it was also the real ISO standard, so when HD DVD and Blu-Ray came along they were using the same media as iPod. Now in music studios we talk about MPEG-4, it is broader than one company. Windows Media is Microsoft, but MPEG-4 is Apple, Sony, Panasonic, that is much more like music to the music industry's ears.
Now the main practical reason for removing DRM from iTunes (separate from philosophical reasons) is so that the listener can play their content on the universe of MPEG-4 players including PSP and RealPlayer and even Zune plays AAC. There is a universe of "iPod-compatible" players because the iPod was ISO compatible in the first place.
With iPhone, Apple is making Web 2.0 the de facto standard for mobile browsing, and it is the real standard also. When iPhone clones show up they will have Firefox in there because a) it renders the same content as Safari, b) it's free. Web 2.0 is hot in developer circles but everyone is sort of waiting for "the platform" to arrive. With iPhone you can make something just for iPhone users and it works elsewhere as an extra.
When you talk about IE, same as Windows Media, it's just Microsoft. WebKit is Apple, Nokia, Adobe and also Firefox-compatible, and that was before the iPhone and Safari for Windows.
>> Wait, I thought nobody gave a shit about WMA and everybody listened, and still listens, to MP3?
Not in this century. We are talking about what replaced MP3. It was going to be either MPEG-4 or Windows Media.
If you buy a Zune, it cannot even read "Podcasts", which in spite of their pod name are just RSS+MP3. So even in 2007, Microsoft is trying to get you off of the MP3 and into Windows Media.