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

[Simon Donkers]

Maybe when Steve Jobs showed a pie chart of the browsermarket and his vision in his presentation it was an indication of Apple's motivation.

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.

From Computer World.

So Steve wants to claim 25% marketshare in the browsermarket and kill Firefox, Opera and the rest in the process. When they release a version that will work for me I'll be happy as that means I can test websites for compatibility without having to buy a Mac. However if they are trying to gain a 25% marketshare they have a very long way to go and I very much doubt they can squash Firefox out of the picture so easily.

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

[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

[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

[Oktober Sunset]

A lot of windows users downloaded iTunes because they bundled it with Quicktime, and you had to find a tiny link the size of an ant's toothpick to get Quicktime on it's own. So all the poor chumps who just wanted to watch some .mov file had to download iTunes even tho they didn't want it.

Re:They're Not There to Win

[Admiral Ag]

This is going to happen. Apple killed WMA as a standard. Safari is going to kill IE as a standard.

How?

The iPhone and mobile browsing.

Mobile browsing has been the red headed step child of the internet. It sucks. The iPhone seems like it will remedy that, and no other company seems to be in a position to compete with it, or will be in a position to do so for some time. That means that Safari will likely become a standard for mobile browsing, as long as the iPhone emulates the iPod and becomes a massive hit. What we will then have is a market in which Microsoft cannot compete because the iPhone will not run IE, just as the iPod did not use WMA. The iPhone will do for mobile internet what the iPod did for digital music... or at least that is Apple's bet. The iPod didn't establish a closed standard for digital music (and won't once Steve realizes his dream of DRM free music). What the iPod did was killed Microsoft's attempt to force Microsoft software as the standard.

I predict that mobile browsing will become indispensable to ordinary people in a way that it isn't now (I never use the web on my Winmobile phone because it sucks). If it is indispensable, then site designers will have to code for it, and that means abandoning an IE only policy. Imagine the hate calls banks will get along the lines of "Hey mofos!!! I can't check my bank balance on my phone!!" THAT will be the effective end of IE as a standard.

Safari for Windows, is, as I said below, just an insurance policy to make sure that whatever works on the iPhone will also work on your desktop (in case Microsoft tries to make things difficult by making iPhone sites display funny).

Microsoft better hope for one of two things. Either (a) the iPhone is a flop; or (b) the iPhone is a success, but mobile browsing never really takes off. Would you want to bet against either one?

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

[garoo]

I think this is unlikely.

Many years ago I worked for a major European telecommunications company who were convinced that, as they were as yet the only people offering a 'user-friendly web browser/phone', they were therefore in control of their market niche and ought to do rather well. Theirs was the definitive browsing experience.

It didn't fit well with the de facto state of the art at that time, and didn't display all those pages too well at all. The company was aware of this; therefore they 'reached out' to those web publishers who were seen as particularly relevant for the user group of said web browser/phone, and offered what was in effect SDK documentation: 'this is how to optimise user experience'. For some reason, almost nobody ever bothered to read said documentation. The general attitude was very much 'who cares about the id10ts who wasted their hard earned on this embedded crap?'

From this experience I took several lessons. Never assume you're a major enough player in the market to force anybody to do anything, unless you own 80% or more of it, and even then, you would be lucky. Very few people code for specific platforms, even where money is waved in front of them. Nobody except the users cares about user experience, except where it impacts on the bottom line (and in the case of a phone, you've already signed a contract before you start to learn about the little bugs). If you are going to offer any sort of guaranteed user experience, you would be best advised to ensure that you do not guarantee it on third party data.

At last year's WWW conf., there was a panel between various mobile web representatives discussing why the mobile web had not yet taken off. One (the Orange guy, I think?) pointed out that extremely high expectations had built up around mobile browsing. It wasn't so much that the current experience as of today's Nokia smartphone is particularly bad - it's more that there was a huge mismatch between expectation and experience. I get the impression that Apple really ought to talk to guys like this before they publicise the iPhone platform much further. They are making commitments that reality may not reflect -- which is pretty much a classic way of setting yourself up for 'limited success' in this arena.

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.

It's all about iPhone

[herman0221]

Apple didn't release Safari for Windows to compete - it was released so that people can develop their Web 2.0 apps for iPhone...

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.

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.

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.

This is Madness!

[Quiet_Desperation]

"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"