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Mozilla Exec Claims Apple is Hunting OSS Browsers
Rob writes with a link to a Computer Business Review article on the negative impact Mozilla COO John Lilly sees Apple is having on Open Source. Lilly claims that Jobs' recent discussion of Safari on Windows is an attempt to create a duopoly of browsers (IE and Safari), with Firefox and the rest on the outside looking in. "The graph 'betrays the way that Apple, so often looks at the world,' Lilly said. 'But make no mistake: this wasn't a careless presentation, or an accidental omission of all the other browsers out there, or even a crummy marketing trick,' he said. 'Lots of words describe Steve and his Stevenotes, but 'careless' and 'accidental' do not. This is, essentially, the way they're thinking about the problem, and shows the users they want to pick up.'" We discussed an analyst's opinion on this subject this past Friday.
Gee, I hope its as user friendly as iTunes. I simply live to see the message "You cannot use iTunes because another user is running a copy". That's user friendliness right there.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
In computing, you can be successful as #2, but the #3 player usually loses out and disappears. (Remember Amiga? Commodore? DEC? Ask Jeeves?) If Apple wants their browser to have any commercial significance, they have to pass Firefox.
Safari is even less enticing on Windows than it is in its native environment.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
RTFA. They don't want the market share. They want to keep the web open, as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto.
Anyway, they do have the market share. Apple releasing Safari for Windows will increase consumer choice and the competition will help all browsers improve. It will also help web developers realize they can't develop for only one or two browsers, but instead should develop according to standards unless they want to turn away significant fractions of visitors. I see only good coming out of the release, regardless of what Jobs' intentions are.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If Safari turns out to be better than Firefox, they deserve to take their marketshare. If not, well, Apple deserves to see this fall flat on its face. But I guess "OMG teh evils corporashuns!!11!" is likely to attract more readers...
This is all a tempest in a teapot. Safari on Windows is not going to harm OSS browsers any more than Opera does. There is no reason to think that Safari is going to displace Firefox (or Konqueror or whatever). The users of those apps use them because they had a choice and found a product they liked.
Remember: more competition is always a good thing.
By the way, Safari isn't even the best browser on OS X (that honour goes to Camino) so I really can't see how it will have much impact on Windows.
Apple (Read Jobs and handlers) left out lynx, Opera, FF, tinybrowser, etc out of the presentation because the end result would have looked much more visually confusing that they wanted, IMO.
TFS/TFA make a critical logical error. They state that nothing Jobs does in these presentations is accidental, because we all know how meticulously planned they are. Therefore, if nothing is accidental, then the omission must be a sign of Apple's malevolence toward open source. QED!
Bullshit. The graph doesn't necessarily 'betray the way Apple looks at the world', it betrays they way apple wants the shareholders, newspapermen and fans to look at the world. Their ongoing conceit (diff than deceit) has always (From the late 90's on) been, we are competing against this giant monopoly, here we are, the valiant underdogs. True or not, this is the image (RDF) that has been provided. Apple's recent success may cause people to forget this, to assume that the marketing message is different now. An assumtpion like that would have to come butressed with facts, not shoddy logic.
Does this mean that Apples wants to make nie with open source, or acknowledge the contributions of open source, etc? Of course not. But that doesn't mean that a graph is really a coded browser battle plan to get rid of FF. Apple would be perfectly happy competing for a plurality in browser market share, especially if it meant that users would/could be intimately familiar w/ the iphone interface out of the gate.
Using BSD as the basis for OSX basically gave FOSS credibility in the consumer market.
It's like a decade of free positive publicity.
Mozilla can take the competition. If it can't it shouldn't be in the game.
Are they honestly crying in public because a competitor wants to... compete with them?
Firefox has managed to get a 25% marketshare against Microsoft, on their own OS. Hell, I'm typing this from Firefox on a Mac right now, because I like the addons. If Safari is trying to "edge out" Firefox, they just need to make sure Firefox is a significantly better browser. If it's not, well, you can hardly blame Apple for making a better product.
Apple is gunning for open source software...and he bases this on a pie chart?
Apple's main target by releasing Safari on Windows is Internet Explorer; they want to basically get newbies who have tried iTunes or have iPods and liked it, and might be willing to try other Apple stuff. They aren't going after Firefox users, so a comparison of Safari v IE v Firefox makes no sense. Hell, why not include Opera as well, and OmniWeb, and Lynx! It'll be one confusing motherfucker of a pie chart, but by god Norwegians, both the people using OmniWeb and text-mode fetishists need representation too!
To me, this smacks of "Yoo hoo! Over here! Firefox still exists! Yes! Wooooo! Give us publicity too!". And he's somehow extrapolated a simple omission from a pie chart into a hatred of open source software in general. Very nice.
(Not that I think Safari for Windows is there yet, it's nice but not wonderful. I still use Firefox if I'm use Windows, but prefer Safari under OSX.)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I don't think Apple's interested in the browser market as it exists, I think they are interested in having cross-platform "client" to run a new generation of web-based content that they will release over the next few years- things like a Safari-based Word Processor, or perhaps photo editor- a remote connection client so you can always get to your Mac. I think Apple wants / need certain features to make this work, and it's easier all around if they use their browser rather than IE or FF. Watch Safari turn into a client for Safari apps, not a new entrant into the browser war. They want it cross-platform so PC users will also be able to take advantage of it, possibly selling more Macs in the process.
IMHO, this is ridiculous! Safari gets released for Windows, and the Mozilla team immediately has an outcry against it?
... but that won't directly add to Apple's bottom line. They aren't likely to make anything SELLING Safari for Windows either - so it's more or less going to remain a freebie you can opt to use or not use, as you see fit.
The more competition, the better, I say! May the best man win, and all that. I didn't realize Firefox was being strictly worked on as a project with a goal of defeating IE, and no other players were ever supposed to "interfere" with that mission!?
This isn't even a scenario that's real comparable to iTunes - despite that getting thrown around as a comparison. With iTunes, Apple was releasing it as a vehicle to sell music on their store. In that regard, the whole thing was a commercial venture - and it simply made sense to allow the vast number of Windows users a "front end" to be able to purchase Apple's music, instead of keeping it just for the 5-7% of the marketplace that uses Macs.
With Safari, on the other hand, it may become useful or required as a development tool aiding in building apps for the iPhone
That's not at all how Apple operates. You're completely ignoring their real motives. They don't care if they own the dominant web browser. They know it's basically irrelevant to their business.
What Apple sells is a particular computing experience. To have people develop web apps for the iPhone they need the browser platform it runs on: Safari. So Safari on Windows lets non-Mac users develop iPhone applications (similar to OS X's Dashboard).
Apple does not care if only developers use Safari on Windows. As long as there's a lot of iPhone apps to download. Having people browse the web with Safari on Windows does nothing for Apple's bottom line. But as a development platform it's critical to their latest product.
Developers: We can use your help.
Can we please kill this meme? As I wrote the other day: "There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference."
That's it. There's no story. Safari on Windows doesn't hurt anyone except maybe Microsoft. Just because Jobs didn't take time out of his keynote to stroke the collective Firefox ego does not mean Apple is "hunting" Mozilla.
The exec also highlighted Mozilla's attitude about market share: "We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource," he said.
The subtext being that Apple somehow is contrary to this. As if releasing a browser (based on an open source rendering engine) which actually has better adherence to standards than Mozilla browsers is going to make the web less open and public. Sorry folks, but that is a dead end.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
They're already TRYING to do this (at least with iTunes anyway).
I specifically downloaded Quicktime *without* iTunes, because quite frankly, I don't want iTunes. When there's an update for Quicktime, the updater pre-checks iTunes for download and installation. The same thing happened when I updated Safari.
I suspect that in the future, any updates for iTunes or Quicktime for Windows users will also contain the pre-checked box for Safari as well.
It's just a checkbox, but the default action of most users is to just keep clicking next until the funny little window is gone.
To me, it's underhanded.
What do you mean by extreme? It's always seemed fairly sedate and understated to me, with the exception of the raucous iPod ads. Remember the Mac ads when Jobs came back? They were all elegant, and barely even dared to "sell" the products - they were mostly just sparse shots of the product on a white background, with little elaboration.
I think the marketing of Microsoft and Dell are much more extreme. The Windows Vista ad is ridiculous - as if people actually say "Wow!" at a new version of Windows. Or there's the Microsoft ads that talk about how they empower people to conquer the universe. Or the Dell ads, with their SUPER COOL!! CHEAP!! BUY NOW!!! AMAZING FEATURES!!!!
All of those examples seem much more extreme that the comparatively quiet and friendly Apple advertising.
it's sort of like a cult, it doesn't matter sometimes Jobs says ridiculous thingsWhy should it matter? I use Apple products because they work well. Should I use something different just because Jobs occassionally puts his foot in his mouth? I don't understand why anyone would choose a computer or software based on the personality of the CEO, rather than the usefulness of the hardware and software.
Apple always tries to create its own bubble where it competes with mythical collective enemies such as "The PC", "Microsoft",Geeee, that's all a fabrication. It's not like Dell or Microsoft have ever acted antagonistically towards Apple, or "declared war" on them. Oh wait, they have. The other players have just as much, or more, of a problem with this mentality than Apple. Just look at all the big-noting over companies trying to create an "iPod killer," for example. If anything, Apple is happy surviving alongside the other players, where the likes of Microsoft and Dell aren't happy until they crush all the competition. To them, being in second place means losing. Apple's definition of victory is totally different.
... and then they built the supercollider.