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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."
Bloggers think they matter again!
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.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
"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.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Apple didn't release Safari for Windows to compete - it was released so that people can develop their Web 2.0 apps for iPhone...
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.
My mom says I'm cool.
- To make it easy for web developers to test their sites with Safari.
- To make it easy for web developers to write iPhone web-apps.
- 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.
- To let potential switchers see that the Internet will work on a Mac, even though it doesn't have the big blue E.
- 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?I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
They must be right no one could make a browser thats better then IE.....except for maybe Apple, Mozzilla, Opera, Konqueror.
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.
There may be another reason besides iPhone development that Safari has been brought to Windows. If you are a Mac user, you should know that Safari still doesn't work on a lot of websites, forcing you to use an alternative browser. Perhaps if Safari even got only 5% market share on Windows, the combined amount of safari installations out there would be enough for most commercial sites to make sure their pages are safari compatible. This would benefit Mac users as well, and drive more people to stick with Safari instead of installing Firefox, Camino, or Opera.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Apple has the advantage Microsoft does. They have the ability to bundle. Just bundle it with iTunes or any of their other windows software that's more popular. Make it the default browser at the time of install and I bet you a lot of people will leave it as their default browser. It's underhanded, but no less than anything Microsoft has ever done.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
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.
--
make install -not war
People use IE because its there. but look what Apples doing...bundling Quicktime/iTunes/Safari in one download. a whole lot of people are going to have Safari..there already...because they downloaded it with iTunes. hmmmm Using your dominace in one market to enter another....thanks for the tip Bill.
With the Intel Platform now standard for Mac, the transfer of Safari to Windows was far less work than it would have been in the beginning.
Not really. If you put CPU specific code in a browser, you should just shoot yourself and admit failure as a developer and/or software engineer. In addition, Safari's rendering comes from WebCore, which is a combination of KHTML (from the KDE folks) and KWQ (which Apple wrote as an adapter). KHTML was running on multiple platforms way before Apple decided to use it.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
The most amusing aspect of romanticizing the cold cruelty of the windows world is how none of it seems to be directed it Microsoft itself. Or, at least effectively directed at microsoft.
That aside, I think it's premature to pretend that we know the strategy of the Safari/Windows release at this point. True, Bill gates is afraid that Apple is trying to "fix the web" and neutralize IE as his lock-in tool, but couldn't there be more to Apple's strategy than that? Might this be a shakedown cycle for the core libraries on Windows for some other purpose? After all, Vista finally has the plumbing. A revival of the YellowBox? Or the introduction of some CoreAnimation-based web technology that would simultaneously allow for 1) a more dynamic iPhone SDK (look at the pins drop in the google maps demo) and 2) something to compete with flash. I guess these thoughts are inspired by the All Things Digital interview with Jobs and Gates. Steve seemed to be very interested in conquering rich clients that leveraged services from the cloud.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
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.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Unforgiving the smallest error? Let's check the market share of IE again ...
That statement does have some merit if you are a third-party Windows development house. Windows is MS' own personal playground so they have more latitude to make a hash of things. This isn't true of anything that directly competes with either an MS product or one of the biggies like Adobe and Intuit. The people behind Opera seem to understand this.I'm not going to bother reading the F article, because based on the summary alone I can tell the author misses the mark. This is primarily an iPhone SDK for Windows. Apple would probably be happy with a 1 or 2% marketshare boost due to Safari on Windows. I highly doubt they expect to be the dominant browser in a year or 2.
http://watching-eyes.blogspot.com/
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.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
No, the iTunes Store does *not* use WebKit. http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004 _06.html#005666
;)
The bundling is awful. The only technically required bundling is QuickTime with iTunes, since iTunes depends on QuickTime. At least now it's fairly public what you get - I remember when you had to hunt around for the "QuickTime only" link. Those kinds of tricks aren't just Microsoft-bad, they're Real-bad.
Safari for Windows is a blessing for web developers. Up until early June, three of the four most used browsers were available on Windows (IE, Firefox and Opera), but the third most used (Safari) wasn't. The more browsers are available and popular on Windows, the more people will finally understand that "standards-compatible" doesn't mean "works like IE". Building for standards, checking in each browser and then doing horrible hacks you wish you didn't have to do to make it work in IE is a better way than the old and broken way: building for IE, checking in the other browsers and sighing about the other browsers not being standards compliant. (I wish I had a nickel for every time someone gave me that crap.)
I'm a Mac OS X user. Firefox is great on Windows, but on Mac OS X it's sticking out like a sore thumb, and it's much slower than the other alternatives. My primary browser is OmniWeb, which uses a variant of WebKit and offers and pioneered some interesting functionality like site-specific settings, a vertical list of tabs with thumbnails, workspaces where sets of windows and tabs are persisted. Even if OmniWeb is an odd choice - it costs money! my god! I must be a complete moron! - almost no one I know use Safari because of the wide ecosystem of good browsers, like Firefox, Camino (a Cocoa app embedding Gecko), Shiira (an alternative WebKit browser) and OmniWeb. Safari has never been considered really good against this background, but it's starting to turn competent in 3.0. Inline Find, draggable (and de/re-attachable) tabs and something as simple as asking when you quit and have tabs open and finally, only took them four damn years, AppleScript tab support means Apple has done a lot of basic tackling and is really listening to people beyond gluing on RSS support and working on WebKit alone. I had almost given up hope.
"Madness? THIS. IS. AAAAAAPPLE!"
(Cut to shot of Mike Elgan getting kicked down a well)
LILLY: "The thousand domains of the Windows Empire decend upon you! Their popups will blot out the sun!"
JOBS: "Who the fuck are and why you in my parking spot?"
POGUE: "History will remember that one browser stood against a the pile of shit that was Internet Explorer"
I'll bet there are... dozens of people like you, who use OSX only to test web apps in Safari. This is a market Apple can't afford to lose!
Who says that? Really??
> The problem? Safari for Windows just isn't Windows enough
That is not the problem, that is its greatest feature. Same as iTunes.
I expect most actually-Beta (as opposed to "Beta") software doesn't have a shiny link on the front of the company's website to an equally shiny page boasting about how great it is (and with a notable lack of warning that it may crash your computer or help script kiddies hack you - in fact, it boasts about great its security is). Sure, the warnings are in the EULA, but how may people actually read that? Most Beta software also doesn't get the sort of publiclity that this did...
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.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Pfff, just what we need, loads of hysteria over a browser that is only a week out in the wild.
Why do we need all those fortune tellers? "Why Microsoft's Zune scares Apple to the core" is of the same author (a former editor of Windows Magazine). The other guy, a man who wrote "Has Apple tripped up with Safari?" had his previous blog entry explaining how to run XP Solitaire under Vista!
Should it really mean that Safari has a chance then? hmmmm. Being standards compliant is one of the virtues of the little beast.
Hey folks, it's just one amongst the browsers. Mac OS X runs more than a handfull of browsers. Do we hear mac addicts scream in agony over so much choice? No. So why go berserk over Safari for Windows?
Move on, use your browser and be happy.
--------
* Sigh *
I will bet against both for the forseeable future. Mobile "browsing" is now and always will be a novelty. Access to mobile information services is another thing altogether. With the possible exception of messaging (blackberry, sms, etc) that is an idea ahead of it's time. (immature application base)
The iPhone will fail because it too is a luxury novelty product. In an age of $50 feature rich cell phones, why would consumers choose a $500 option? Sure there will be those that like "cool" stuff, but business users are about the only demographic that can (en masse) justify a $500 phone, but they won't if it won't sync to Outlook. Even the novelty market may not accept it if the keyboard isn't accurate and responsive enough for rapid SMSing. (Touch screens never are) Plus there's a deluge of cheaper, (better?) competitive products from more established or more fashionable companies. (like the Samsung or Prada)
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
It looks to me like a bunch of folks are afraid of Apple's Safari achieving success on Windows. Especially the Mozilla folks.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The term Beta software used to be a synonym for 'Unstable, bug ridden and insecure'. Unfortunately Google has devalued the meaning of the term to the point where you and others seem to think it is normal for 'Beta software' to be stable, bug-less and secure. Not everybody has followed Google's lead in never taking products out of Beta state even after they are long since mature so you will have to get used to what that means.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
A quick review of the MP3 players currenty for sale at Amazon and Best Buy shows that every MP3 player except for the iPods plays WMA. Maybe "nobody cares," but WMA was pushed very hard as a candidate for the leading digital music standard. It would not be unreasonable to claim that the main reason it failed to become the de facto standard is because of Apple's iPod and iTunes Music Store. (Which use AAC, a codec definition which is a standard.)
Also, although the market share of the segment is small, WMA-based stores do sell a lot of digital music tracks. See http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/30/Technology/Digit al_music_users_f.shtml for some music store market shares in 2006, giving WMA around 15%, MP3 around 10%, and iTunes (AAC) around 70%. (Yes, I know that a lot of digital music collections were converted from CD's in whatever format the user chose, but it is hard to measure those collections.)
Considering that total digital music sales were about 581 million digital tracks, that still means a lot of WMA tracks out there, about 87 million. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956655.html?c ategoryid=16&cs=1 Note that this gives AAC downloads about 406 million tracks downloaded, so it would also not be unreasonable to claim that many iPod owners listen to AAC. (Links do not specify region, but data appears to be U.S. only.)
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.
Can you automatically pull up maps or dial phone numbers from pages you browse on your cell phone?
Perhaps there is a little more there than you think in the way of innovation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"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.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
people lament that Apple didn't release an iPhone SDK. however, they did - it's Safari. that's the only reason they ported it to Windows. this isn't a bid for browser market share; it's a bid for mobile developers.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
You don't need it. Just hit Enter. BTW, although I consider myself an experienced PC user (no Mac experience at all), I do not know this shortcut key. I dare say a very small percentage of people know about it.
I can't imagine how difficult it is. On the contrary, I often found myself mis-resize the windows. I did waste some time to resize it back, since generally I like to have fixed-size windows (esp. true for browsers, in order to test standard resolutions).
It turns out the author confused plug-ins with add-ons. Plug-in support is there, but add-ons are few. I do not think add-ons are a blocking issue, since people are using Internet Explorer without add-ons most of the time.
This is even not worth rebutting. This is the reason why Web developers need Safari on Windows and why it is beta.
I can't understand why it is an issue. If only you click on Bookmarks - Show All Bookmarks, you will see all the imported bookmarks immediately.
This varies between people. I like the look of Safari, and I believe Safari on Mac will have fewer bugs and less memory footprint. So it will not affect when I am to buy a Mac (I don't have one yet, but am considering buying one).
you think safari, which is basically mozilla with a mask, is going to whomp The Original Zilla and MSIE all by itself? I'll bet apple doesn't. safari is probably the devkit for the iPhone. you know, as in "let everybody interconnect and make my little toy another billion seller?"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Buggy beta" is redundant. Excuse me, waiter... my soup is wet.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Well, there have been well over a million downloads of Safari for Windows at this point, which leads me to believe that Windows users are curious. I think most of them also realize it's a Beta, not a general Ready for Prime Time release, so they don't expect perfection.
And in any case, Apple isn't out to win a browser war. There isn't a war, or even any battles. Apple's tilling the ground for the release of the iPhone with its Safari-like browser and web apps, and it wants to make sure that Windows developers start checking their web sites for compatibility issues. If a lot of people decide the like Safari, that's great, but it's not the priority at the moment.
As for all of that other claptrap about starry-eyed Apple Mac users drifiting in a dreamy utopia, the man knows nothing beyond the sleek, stylish ads that apple runs if he thinks that's the world that Mac users inhabit. They are anything but bucolic.
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."