OSNews

And probably you have a looot to learn about marketing

Bundling Safari with iTunes and installing it automatically, akin to MSN Messenger installing Toolbars, desktop search and all tons of sh!t is marketing, how?

Apple don't have to market Safari/Win, they only have to bundle it.

Apple don't have to market Safari/Win, they only have to bundle it.

Bundle it, how? They don't distribute Windows, they don't do PC's (in the Intel-with-BIOS-and-Windows-or-Linux sense), and if they did their PC business would probably go the way of Commode's, possibly taking their Amiga^WMac business with it.

There's 100 million downloads of iTunes a day.
iTunes comes bundled on some manufacturers machines in Europe.

Firefox gets 50m a day. Just by including Safari with iTunes, 100m people a day will be unwillingly downloading Safari. This is inherently wrong, because those 50m downloads of Firefox are willing participants who know what they're getting.

The Mozilla blogger's comments about Steve Jobs bleak view of the Internet refelects very much on Microsoft's view of the net when It was just them vs. Netscape, with Netscape with the larger share. They killed netscape by bundling IE, and Steve Jobs showed on stage that Firefox, Opera and all other browsers did not exist in their desired view of the Internet.

Bundle it, how? They don't distribute Windows, they don't do PC's (in the Intel-with-BIOS-and-Windows-or-Linux sense), and if they did their PC business would probably go the way of Commode's, possibly taking their Amiga^WMac business with it.

Ever hear of the iPod =)? Works on Windows too. It requires iTunes to work, of which people download.

All Apple has to do is bundle it with iTunes, and leave the checkmark checked by default, and maybe even have it ask the user "would you like to use Apple Safari as your default browser?"

User: "Hmmm....iPod good. iTunes good. Sure, I'll use it".

If anything, Apple has a potential edge in getting Safari out there fast, due to the continuing popularity of the iPod, and its reliance on iTunes.

Assuming they do want a (big) share of the Windows bowser market, which is not true by now, IMHO.

'marketing' was in response of claiming how good safari is and how many times it has been downloaded (but i think the world will become 'chosen'

I'm *tired* of the word "arrogant" used to describe a company you are trying to knock. You could replace it every time with the word "confident", and companies should be about their products. I'd describe Apple as innovative, in this instance I think its a *necessary* that they have a Web browser for windows.

Everyone knows that control of the web is what all main companies want.

Apple are trying to get control of the web through its lifestyle type applications.
Microsoft is using its OS to get control of the web.
Google is trying to control the web through its web applications and Firefox.
...Even Red Hat are trying to get control through their web Desktop.

I can't see how you could measure their failure, simply having a product available is a success in itself.

Personally I fail to understand what is so bad about competition. I would actually prefer if they started putting real pressure on those that count so IE is not the default browser on Windows. IE6 is still the default browser on computers and that is shocking.

There's a big difference between "confident" and "arrogant", and I'm afraid Apple is rather guilty of the latter: Apple has a complete disregard of its competition on Windows, even going so far as to say it won't exist soon enough, and it's touting the superiority of its browser--when it has little to no edge on what other Windows browsers already have.

Safari's compliance with CSS standards alone make it a much better choice than IE.

safari on Mac's compliance... I haven't tried myself, but from everything I've read the Windows version is having trouble rendering the ACID2 test.

With Apple arrogant is the correct word to use. They think that just because a product is made by Apple it will become a success. Isn't that that the definition of arrogant?

I mean look at the Apple TV, it sucks as a set-top box. You can only use iTunes to stream stuff and they didn't add support for MPEG4 ASP, let alone a plugin framework to let you run whatever codec/container you want.

Even the iPhone, it's all fluff. No 3G support, no real SDK, just shitty mini-apps (like people on this site mentioned: when you code Skype in AJAX then you get to call this these scriplets applications). For anyone but an Apple fanboy or someone clueless about technology, the iPhone is simply an over priced feature phone.

This is called arrogance...

You'd describe them as innovative, but most people tend to be more sceptical than your average Apple fan. So what kind of innovation are we seeing from Apple?

Time machine? WOw, now I can buy an external HD. iPhone? Damn $500 for a feature phone! Apple TV/ love the Xvid support and in built torrent support! Spaces? Shit I've never seen anything like that on any platform!

Why is this 500.00 such a big thing is it me that only remembers that some carriers offered the blackberry for 500.00 dollars. Seems to me that everyone is overly critical of Apple. there are no current phones on the market that currently do what the iphone does and that is including crappy AJAX features you are referring too. The storage again not a phone on the market that offers 4GB-8GB. Google Maps, with the ease of use of the apple iphone. Email yes other phones have this but we are talking complete package. and currently the iphone has it.

BUNK! That's YOUR bias. Apple FANS support Apple and believe their products will become successful. Apple has never said that they think that since it's an Apple product, it will be a success. You do NOT know what they think.

Every company ought to ONLY release a product if they think it's going to be a success, don't you agree? It would be ridiculous if companies released something they thought was going to be a failure.

Your post shows a distinct dislike for Apple (and arguably, Apple fans).

As far as Apple is concerned in this overly-semantic discussion, this is "confidence", plain and simple. I really hope you get modded down - your post is not insightful, it's just biased.

For anyone but an Apple fanboy or someone clueless about technology, the iPhone is simply an over priced feature phone.

You seem to be forgetting that Apple's success is not due to simple fanboyism, but rather the fact that they make intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces to their hardware and software, which make life easier for the common man. No amount of features or specifications on a competing product can make up for that factor. The simplicity factor.

Their Applications for Windows are just plain horrible.

They ignore the Windows Visual Style, that's a big no-no when it comes to User Interface design. It looks awkward and performs often slower than an Application which doesn't draw the Non client Area.

When they announced Safari for Windows, I was excited. It seemed like a good standards compliant browser and any competition is welcome.

What I have a problem with, is Apple touting this as the "Fastest bested omgyougottahavethisthing web browser" and then delivering this steaming pile of shit to users.

On it's website, they say it's the most secure browser yet HOURS after it's beta release bugs were found. I realize that all Beta applications have bugs, but the mistakes they made were so elementary that they simply cannot be excused.

The pages render faster imho, but at what cost? Usability? It's cool that Safari is lightweight, but it would be better if it had a few more things that more modern browsers like Firefox have.

With the security update, they seemed to have fixed a few of the bugs and made some of the crashes go away but it's still pitiful in comparison to even IE7.

Apple is a great company, and over time they'll give this some elbow grease and make it work.

Until then however, they simply cannot say this is even near the best browser.

So I disagree with the point of the article that "Safari will fail on Windows", that's untrue it's a good browser once you see past it's initial pitfalls due to it being a Beta release.

I think that after a few months maybe a year or so, we'll begin to see the browser Apple wanted us to see when they showed it off at their Apple convention.

>They ignore the Windows Visual Style, that's a big no-no when it comes to User Interface design. It looks awkward and performs often slower than an Application which doesn't draw the Non client Area.

Even Microsoft ignore Windows' visual style. Office, Media Player, IE7, Visual Studio, they all use custom UIs.
In Windows Vista, you can almost pick any two bundled applications and find two different UIs.

>On it's website, they say it's the most secure browser yet HOURS after it's beta release bugs were found. I realize that all Beta applications have bugs, but the mistakes they made were so elementary that they simply cannot be excused.

Elementary? I trust that you make a living writing web browsers then?
Seeing as Safari is secure on the Mac, the Windows bugs were obviously introduced during porting. Not knowing exactly how that process goes, I can't really comment on how "elementary" these mistakes are.

My guess (and it is just a guess) would be that the port is based on the old OpenStep for Windows (OPENSTEP Enterprise) APIs. To get a modern Cocoa app to run on that would require the writing of Windows versions of several Mac OS X frameworks.
It is likely that these frameworks are currently in a very early state of development and therefore include many "elementary" bugs, such as buffer overflows and the like. (When porting software, it is common to write "minimally-functional" libraries in order to get the application running, then go back and improve the stability/security/performance of these libraries at a later date, often when preparing a final release).

The flaws were not all simple coding errors or buffer overflows. For instance, the URL handling exploit was simply a design flaw, and one that has no legitimate reason for existing today. Not for a company that claims to be committed to security.

Regardless of whether the vulnerabilities are being found as the cobwebs are blown out of an old framework, it's inexcusable for a *beta* product to have flaws this easily found. It means that the product was not properly tested during the alpha stage, or more likely, it never really had an alpha stage and was rushed to market in order to cash in on the iPhone hype and dev conf. It also implies that the entire framework the product is built on needs to be broken down and examined, which means that this is in fact not a beta product nor anywhere near production ready, at least one hopes.

It's also worth pointing out that due to the code sharing, some of the flaws discovered in the Windows version were then found to apply to the OSX version as well. That should be an alarm bell for both Apple and their OSX user base; if Apple wants to expand Safari's footprint by dumping shared code on a Windows platform, they'd better be ready to batten down the hatches on their own platform as well.

Does the world need another browser? Who knows, I'm just happy that Konq/KDE has benefited from Apple's involvement with KHTML. People can have pissing contests all they want over which browser is best, it's a moot point.

But if Apple is going to start claiming the vaunted "Most Secure Title", they had damned well better be ready to walk that walk, and not just talk the talk. Windows users don't fall for that any more, not after years of being abused by Microsoft who once made similar claims before actually investing in the resources needed. Safari being broken, several times over, on it's first day of release isn't a coincidence or something to be dismissed because "it's a beta.". On the contrary, I suspect it's a sign of things to come. Apple better be ready.

"Seeing as Safari is secure on the Mac, the Windows bugs were obviously introduced during porting. Not knowing exactly how that process goes, I can't really comment on how "elementary" these mistakes are. "

There is no real evidence that Safari is secure on the mac, it is OS X that is providing the security for Safari, because of it's Next/BSD/Unix heritage and the fact that there is no real incentive for malware writers to bother with OS X. To state that the errors were introduced during porting is just nonsense

Sorry, that's just untrue. On Vista Media Player, IE7, AND Visual Studio use the Common Windows UI.

And yes, the bugs were elementary. Why don't you LOOK at the nature of the bugs? I'd understand if it was some obscure exploitation in a certain component of the Browser but something as obvious as this is simply unacceptable.

Now, do you agree they're elementary or not? I really don't know your stance.

I'm sure millions of Opera users (including myself) would disagree with that reference

Whilst Opera is a great browser, it's market share is the fact. It's still below Safari, and Opera runs on three platforms.

As a web developer, I think Opera is a great browser, but when I was a Windows user it was only something I used to test with, and have always preferred Firefox over it, even IE before that.

Opera still defaults to identifying itself as IE6 running on WinXp regardless of whether you run it on *nix or Windows, so Browser ID generated statistics don't tell the whole Opera story. As long as Opera continues to masquerade there browser ID**, the only way that we can get any accurate idea of Opera's use is from pageviews on the Opera default search page and from download numbers from Opera servers.

**which they first started doing back in 2001 due to MS messing with stylesheets on pages when the site detected an Opera browser http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/18/2222204

Opera still defaults to identifying itself as IE6 running on WinXp regardless of whether you run it on *nix or Windows, so Browser ID generated statistics don't tell the whole Opera story.

I think Opera began identifying as Opera by default in version 8.0. It even identifies itself without the usual mess of compatibility crud. For instance, my user agent is:

Opera/9.21 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

It wouldn't be much different if I was on my SuSE partition, something along the lines of:

Opera/9.21 (X11; Linux i686; U; en)

I commend Opera Software on this. It's about time we did away with the "like Gecko", "Mozilla compatible" user agent thing. If Opera can function just fine without it, I think all browsers could; if not, they could change user agents on a case-by-case basis until virtually no sites require user-agent compatibility strings. Hell, I don't think there are that many left nowadays, anyway, so it wouldn't hurt to speed up the process a bit.

That being said, you very well could be right--Opera may be spoofing user agents on a case-by-case basis. I'm not certain of the inner-workings of Opera's browser.js file. All I know is it's an automatically updated collection of rendering exceptions and fixes for non-compliant sites that don't play nice with Opera. Opera could be using it to spoof user agents.

But I don't think it'd do spoofing on a majority of sites, though, and us regular ole Opera users are still unfortunately few and far between. I think Opera Mini has a higher "market share" than their desktop browser.

Opera did'nt make it on the desktop, but they've got a hold on the wearable devices market. Somewhere along the way, they made a smart move when they started porting it to the prominent wearable OS' like Windows mobile and Nokia's S60. Since then, it has been endorsed by moblie phone heavyweights.

It makes sense for Apple to make Safari available for testing purposes, however, being ported to Windows, it might never render pages or behave like it would on a Mac.

I tend to disagree; I would use Opera all the time, but I have a feeling that most end users suffer from the same issues I suffered from - constant annoying bugs and incompatibilities with websites.

I'm was running Opera on Solaris, but given such absolutely huge bugs experienced when trying to update my blog with Blogger, I just gave up and moved back to Firefox 2.0.0.4.

What will kill Safari won't be IE, or Firefox, or something else; what will kill it will be if end users can't browse the websites they want. Yes, it might be 'good' for the iPhone, but a the same time, if all they were wanting was just 'iPhone' compatibility - why offer it as a mainstream download - why not just off a 'compatibility tester' instead.

Unlike iTunes which has no real competitors, Safari will be up against IE and Firefox. If they don't fix the Safari experience on their desktop, it won't be pleasant on the iPhone - it would be arrogant to then assume that if end users are unhappy about websites, by virtue of Safari being on the iPhone, the website owners are going to suddenly change their whole website for the sake of compatibility.

I have installed Safari and I like the way that everything is smooth. But on a regular basis, I'm still a Firefox user, until Safari 3 is not anymore beta.

I use Safari more often in Mac because the interface is nice. But it's failed "successfully" in Parallels, and crashed often in Windows XP. I hope the release version will get better, so I can rid of Firefox completely.

Bad english + Unfounded claim
Safari for Windows (3.0.1) has 0 known flaws.
IE? Why does spybot s&d have thousands of immunizations? Hmm...

"The reason it won't catch on to start with is simple, no import of bookmarks from other browsers, this to me is an incredible omission"

When I installed Safari and I checked my bookmarks I saw a folder for Imported Internet Explorer bookmarks and one for Imported Firefox bookmarks. Maybe you mean manual importation, but I have all of my bookmarks imported on the first start up of the browser.

Yes, I totally agree with you. That is the dumbest article I have ever read. Safari's main target is iPhone, end of the story.

That sometimes happens on very old browsers; whatever darling-standard-of-the-week OSNews is using isn't implemented on old software. I'm on IE7, it shows up fine to me.

Oh, uh... I'm sorry, what I meant is this is happening to me on Safari 3 on Windows.

Than whatever standard-of-the-week OSNews is using isn't implemented in Safari 3

I have the same problem. Until solved, Safari is useless for me.

This is an issue related to bold text not rendering on Safari 3. This is an issue with Safari 3, and has NOTHING to do with OSNews. It is related to how Windows renders non-English unicode text or something. I'm having the same problem.

Yes, thank you. I know it's not related to OSNews. It happens in a lot of pages. I just explained the problem using OSNews as an example.

I just wanted confirmation that this is happening on all Safari 3 on Windows, not that my particular installation was corrupted or something.

Reading you, one would believe it's impossible to improve Safari, that it doesn't accept plugins. I use safariStand to save state, for searches from the adress bar (g for Google, i for IMDB, wp for Wikipedia, etc.). Inquisitor allows to search Google, Amazon, Flickr, images and more. There are plenty of plugins for Safari.

Safari 3 changes the plug-in options. The architecture has been completely rewritten invalidating many of them and eliminating some.

There are better applet type products out there for Windows than Dashboard. I wouldn't think anybody would use Dashboard on Windows, unless it was bundled without permission with iTunes. Konfabulator for example.

if I want to use a simple little app, why would i want to switch to an entire other desktop? I wonder why Mac users even put up with it. Please, don't wish that on Windows users.

I think Safari on Windows will be a good thing, even if I never use it (and probably won't). More choice is better. and it won't fail, as Mac users all over the world will install it on their Windows boxes (if they have them) and their bootcamp installs.