A few days ago, Adam explained on his blog why it would make sense for Apple to port Safari to Windows: “Maybe it’s making a leap of faith, and yes, the browser market is one where making a noticeable entrance will be challenging, but the less of a jump into the deep end buying a Mac is, the easier it is to make your Apple brand accessble, available, and not scary. The best way to start? Safari on Windows.” Yesterday, Mary Jo Foley dug up from deep within Mozilla’s Wiki the following prediction by the Mozilla Foundation: “Apple may have Safari on Windows with likely ties to iTunes and .Mac.” This line has now been changed into a more general statement (“WebKit may be ported to Windows” – which already happened) but point remains: does it make sense for Apple to port Safari to Windows?
First of all, it doesn’t make any sense to port Safari to Windows…it doesn’t make Apple any money so why bother?
Second, if Apple starts porting all its “cool” apps to Windows, what is the incentive for people to switch to the Mac? Some people buy Macs only because of the cool apps it has.
“””First of all, it doesn’t make any sense to port Safari to Windows…it doesn’t make Apple any money so why bother?”””
You are counseling the tried and true American business strategy of short-sightedness. (Hey, I live in Oklahoma; I should know!)
You sound like the folks who think that OSS developers should restrict use of their apps from Windows users in a mean-spirited attempt to force them to use Open-Source OSes. In my opinion that is most distasteful.
Actually, there are good reasons for a port. Safari, like all non-IE browsers suffer from a lack of net-presence.
Web developers cannot be bothered to support it because not enough people run it.
Yes, yes, I know. We’re all supposed to be able to simply write to standards and have everything work. That is the holy grail. But it’s not yet in our reach, is it?
A (quality) Windows port of Safari would be of benefit not only to Apple, but to us all.
Edited 2007-01-12 20:03
Safari is usually on the list of things to support right after firefox. I think it actually has a higher percentage than Opera… It gets supported as it is by most quality web software.
But I agree, a Windows version of Safari might bring apple some extra media and could make users more comfortable with switching later.
However, I’d argue that for Apple their application suites are enough to get people to switch and they shouldn’t be ported (iTunes was ported to sell iPods). If they port iLife it might adversely affect them, besides a lot of Windows machines probably lack the balls to run the graphics.
I don’t think Safari is a real attraction to OS X at this point.
Plain marketing. Safari isn’t one of the best browsers around, yet being better than IE at standard compliance.
I’ll stick to FF on every OS that runs it…
My guess: doesen’t make technologically sense, but this is advertising, a whole different business where Apple excels
…if Apple starts porting all its “cool” apps to Windows, what is the incentive for people to switch to the Mac?
This is indeed how they think in Cupertino. They are always looking for some ‘must buy’ item. When they have found it, the idea is they will then bundle it with a bunch of other stuff you don’t want, and make you buy that too, as a condition of getting it.
As a business strategy its a brilliant way of limiting market share and allowing deficiencies in any one product line to infect all. From an ethical point of view it leads inevitably to lockins and DRM/Trusted Computing restrictions, to stop people doing what they want to do with your products.
From an intellectual point of view its bankrupt. Think about it in its clearest form: the argument that we need to lock OSX to Apple hardware, so as to sell Apple hardware. The argument, unpacked, is that the no-one, or very few people, would buy our hardware on its merits. Well, if that is true, right there is your problem, and it needs fixing. Bundling and restricting your customers choice is not fixing it.
Its bankrupt in another way. You are imposing costs on your customers which you’d do better to levy directly in the price. That way you’d get cash for the extra costs incurred by customers directly on your bottom line, and you’d have some way of knowing what exactly your must have item is worth.
The answer is probably divisionalize, and let each of the divisions reach their potential by selling unbundled. This is what happened with Filemaker, and its a great success. But as long as Jobs is there the business model will be frozen in about 1987, so we’ll hear the ‘incentive’ argument over and over again from Apple fans.
It would make it easier for web developers to test their websites against it. That alone would make a HUGE difference in its supportedness.
iTunes and QuickTime for Windows just plain don’t work as well as they do on the Mac. Their interfaces feel slightly sluggish and QuickTime is prone to crashes.
On the Mac, their interfaces are responsive, light, and never freeze or crash.
I don’t think this is just a “windows” thing. iTunes and QuickTime are ports, and were orig. designed to take advantage of Mac APIs. Ports of those APIs to Windows (e.g. WebKit) don’t seem to measure up. Maybe this is because of a lack of effort on Apple’s part, or maybe iTunes expects a more graphically advanced & stable GUI for it to operate correctly.
The bottom line is, I doubt a Safari port would work as well on Windows as on the Mac for which it was designed. A port might just denigrate Apple’s reputation as a software company.
iTunes and QuickTime are ports, and were orig. designed to take advantage of Mac APIs.
Nonsense. Much of the design of the Apple Carbon API FOR Mac came from the original Quicktime on Windows.
“Carbon […] is also closer in style to the Win32 APIs of Windows, and therefore may be a better choice for cross-platform development. In fact, the Carbon project at Apple was developed from the Quicktime for Windows codebase which has included a substantial subset of the classic Mac OS APIs since the early 1990s.”
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)
Ports of those APIs to Windows (e.g. WebKit) don’t seem to measure up.
Webkit is not an API, it’s an application unto itself. The API is Cocoa, and it hasn’t been ported to Windows (at least pubically). Most existing Apple Windows apps are Carbon. Carbon is actually faster than Cocoa.
Either way, Safari is a Cocoa app and Quicktime and iTunes are Carbon apps. So it could be more stable (or less, I guess we wouldn’t know unless we had a chance to use it).
1. The orig. QuickTime for windows was what? 15 years past. Modern QuickTime and ancient QuickTime are essentially two different beasts.
2. WebKit is an API (its an application framework). It includes WebCore, an HTML engine, and JavaScriptCore, a JavaScript engine. WebKit is definitely not an application.
3. Not making much sence of the carbon vs. cocoa stuff in this context…yes I know the difference.
Research before you burn somebody.
Edited 2007-01-12 23:09
just port khtml to windows and implement it in firefox as an extension.
KHTML does not include everything in Webkit.
So what. Why do you need a platform when all you really need is the rendering and standards?
I want be able to test safari specific CSS like the -webkit-* properties. It’s easy to test the -moz* ones, but not the -webkit* ones. They aren’t present in KHTML.
iTunes and QuickTime for Windows just plain don’t work as well as they do on the Mac. Their interfaces feel slightly sluggish and QuickTime is prone to crashes.
I guess that would explain why Mac users love these apps so much, because they just plain suck on Windows. For example, when I was test driving iTunes v7 on WinXP, just playing an mp3 file (on a P4-2.8ghz w/512MB RAM) resulted in frequent CPU spikes of over 40% (up as high as 48%), while other players (such as Winamp) never used more than 2% CPU resources.
And I’m thinking “How can people actually use this thing?” Well, based on what you said, it’s because it works much better on Macs
As for Safari, not really interested, unless it does something special that Opera and Firefox don’t.
Those CPU spikes probably have a reason. In my experience iTunes never skips a beat in music playing while doing other things on the computer, whereas WMP and Winamp might. Now, I’m not saying that this holding hostage of the CPU is the best thing in all circumstances, but for the vast majority of general-purpose users, having their music play without missing a beat is probably more important than the occasional CPU spike.
Apple also has the graphical equalizer function on by default, which makes the music sound much better. For a true test of its performace, though, you should try it with the equalizer turned off.
The only issue I’ve had with iTunes is that on certain PCs (it seems to depend on the graphics chipset/driver), the search function is dog-slow, pausing after every keypress. On the PCs where this problem isn’t present, however, it works smooth as butter, just like on a Mac.
Edited 2007-01-13 17:12
“iTunes and QuickTime for Windows just plain don’t work as well as they do on the Mac”
Sorry. It is a Windows thing.
No it is not. If it was a Windows thing, then MediaPlayer, MPlayer, VCL, WinAmp and all the other Windows Media Apps would suffer from the same problems, but those work very well and use very little resources (1-2% on a modern System at maximum).
So obviously the Windows Ports of iTunes and Quicktime simply suck. Part of the problem is their stupid themed Userinterface which unfortunately show an deep lack of Windows Programming knowledge on Apples side, because even themed Apps on Windows don’t have to be sluggish and slow if you know what you are doing. What is the point in making Windowsversions look like Mac Apps anyway?
What is the point in making Windowsversions look like Mac Apps anyway?
Selling the UI philosophy to the heathens, I suppose. Catch one look at that ‘refreshingly different’ chrome and you realise you actually want your whole user eXPerience to look like that.
And if you’re such a person, then the performance suckage on Windows will only help things along: but I think you need to be a real interface-fetishist to stump up for a new machine that runs your favourite-looking app faster, and in more commodious visual surroundings
It’s not a really a windows thing. iTunes is a resource hog, I downloaded the iphone keynote with itunes, in itunes the audio is out of sync and when I play it with zplayer everthing is just right…
“Maybe this is because of a lack of effort on Apple’s part, or maybe iTunes expects a more graphically advanced & stable GUI for it to operate correctly.”
Apple uses a very badly implemented theming for their Windows ports. It has nothing to do with “advanced & stable GUI”, it has something to do with not playing the retarded Programmer when implementing this on Windows.
I realy hate themed Apps, but there are many themed Apps on Windows that don’t have a performance hit.
A few actually are as badly implemented as the Win-iTunes, like the “Connect Player” for Sonys MP3-Players. I guess the problem is, that those Programmers working in these Companys on client Apps aren’t the kind of Programmers who usually would spend time on thinking about implementing theming.
Why the f**k do mediaplayers always have to be themed anyway?
http://foobar2000.org/
Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back.
I like themed apps, when the themes are sensible and don’t hog resources too much. Take for instance the Winamp theme I’ve got going, that makes Winamp fit right into my Vista-esqe themed Windows setup (it’s not a perfect match, but I find it far preferable to a solution like FooBar2000).
http://twoday.tuwien.ac.at/static/personal/files/ClipBoard-21.jpg
Of course, if the software designers only give you ONE really bad theme, with no alternative options to download (which is the case with software from Sony, Creative, Real and yes Windows Media Player since its skins are a joke), that’s a different story.
(However I think the Apple skinned apps are generally quite practical in a design sense, if not in a resource sense.)
Edited 2007-01-13 17:08
I mean, come on. Why should someone _want_ to use Safari on a Windows box? There are really nuff browsers that you can use on Windows – there’s absolutely no “market” for Safari. Besides, people who would like to use Safari should rather take the original: Konqueror.
Except Apple is the one that has moved KHTML to the top spot in rendering capabilities and standards compliance.
I remember clearly David Hyatt spending about two weeks single handidly killing every last bug towards Acid 2 compliance (and finding a bug in Acid 2 whilst at it)
Then the KDE folks kicked up a stink because the patches were not being submitted back to kHTML (despite some being incompatible due to the differences of WebKit and kHTML) – yet being unwilling to fix the bugs themselves though having many contributors who could have collectively fixed the lot in a day.
First of all, they were being called lazy for not incorporating patches whenever they came out, and the Webkit patches often linked to proprietary Apple parts as this indicates (understandable, but they didn’t have read access to source repositories at the time either): http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1006
I don’t understand why a lot of people are so rude to the people who CREATED kthml/webkit’s goodness in the first place. Apple chose it over Gecko for a good reason, despite Hyatt famously working on Firefox/Phoenix before.
Edited 2007-01-12 21:17
Then the KDE folks kicked up a stink because the patches were not being submitted back to kHTML
No, you remember it wrong. KDE wasn’t moaning that Apple should contribute. Aseigo’s post (I think it was his) was directed against KDE supporters who assumed that Apple did in fact do that. Those people were wondering why Konqueror wasn’t acid2 ready, when they were supposedly getting all those patches from Apple.
His post was simply to say that they weren’t, so stop pestering the konqi devs. People then made up in their minds the idea that he was bitching at Apple.
Edited 2007-01-13 02:04
> > Then the KDE folks kicked up a stink because the
> > patches were not being submitted back to kHTML
> No, you remember it wrong. KDE wasn’t moaning that
> Apple should contribute. Aseigo’s post (I think it
> was his) was directed against KDE supporters who
> assumed that Apple did in fact do that. Those
> people were wondering why Konqueror wasn’t acid2
> ready, when they were supposedly getting all those
> patches from Apple.
> His post was simply to say that they weren’t, so
> stop pestering the konqi devs. People then made up
> in their minds the idea that he was bitching at
> Apple.
No, it was Zack Rusin: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1001
The rest hit the nail on the head though.
But that was then. Things are different (better) now.
“People then made up in their minds the idea that he was bitching at Apple.”
If he wasn’t, he should have been.
> Then the KDE folks kicked up a stink because the
> patches were not being submitted back to kHTML
Not true. That’s just how the Slashdot / Osnews crowd misinterpreted it. … after being the very reason for Zack Rusin’s rant in the first place.
See MamiyaOtaru’s comment.
> (despite some being incompatible due to the
> differences of WebKit and kHTML) –
Way before that episode there was a conscious decision by Apple to develop Webkit in a closed fashion without collaboration with the KDE devs which caused it to become incompatible in the first place.
Which was their right. It’s just a sign that they hadn’t understood Open Source at all.
Zack just wanted people to stop pretending that there was in fact collaboration when there wasn’t.
> yet being unwilling to fix the bugs themselves
Not true. What gave you that idea? They just don’t have unlimited resources. And Apple reaping the praise after the KDE devs having spent the effort (because Apple’s changes couldn’t be used) didn’t help their motivation.
> though having many contributors who could have
> collectively fixed the lot in a day.
Not true. There are not that many devs familiar with KHTML, and even less who are not busy with other tasks.
Anyway, that’s history. Things have improved.
Probably the kind of Windows Users that try to make their Windows look like OS X… although i don’t understand why those people don’t just buy an Mac.
After a discussion with Adam, I thought it relevant to cc my comments here for the discussion.
“As for Safari on Windows, it would not be able to utilise the capabilities of cocoa, and thus be an inferior product, reflecting poorly on Apple
The only bone is programmers providing safari compatibility; but it’s not that simple. Window’s font rendering engine is different from OS X.
I have a site that has to use CSS tweaks for mac, on a font that is the same style, size and family on both windows and mac, on the same browser, but the font rendering makes a 1 pixel difference
And in reality, the web coders at home don’t matter that much; when Apple know that the weight of their market will eventually get companies to buy macs solely for testing; because they can easily afford to do so.
Ergo, what’d Apple rather? To build and support a Windows browser, or get companies to buy Macs to test. Macs run Windows too; so buy a new machine and support all browsers!”
“iTunes is an understood piece of software (generally); however user’s take Browsers for granted much more; often not being aware that it exists. – The computer simply browses the web. Apple would have difficulty marketing a browser, for very little gain; for which people who used it would take it for granted, and would not in-cent them to buy a Mac.”
Apologies for length.
“prediction by the Mozilla Foundation:”
No, you mean any old Wiki user, on a publically editable Wiki wrote anything they wanted on the page.
How on Earth has this not been thrown out within a split second!? Should we now be getting our news from the scribblings we find written on the sides of newspapers and napkins?
With QT4 being able to create native apps for Windows, wouldn’t Konqueror from KDE4 be pretty much the same thing as Safari on Windows? I like Konqueror, but popular websites like Gmail don’t recognize the browser, and many of the useful features are not supported. I have had the same experience with an older version of Safari. I know that this is the fault of web designers, but I wonder how much this hinders browser adoption. For me, I just forward all my email to another account (IMAP) so I can avoid the incompatibility, others may not be able to do so.
I believe there’s already a Windows port in WebKit’s SVN. It probably doesn’t have full browser features like cookies managament, bookmarks management, etc. but it can go to URLs and following links etc.
It doesn’t make any sense to port Safari to Windows. What would Apple possibly gain by porting, maintaining, and supporting a Windows browser, even if it is Safari.
For the record, I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro using OmniWeb, but I’m a Windows programmer by trade. I’ve used IE7 and, sorry to bust anyone’s bubble, but I can’t see a compelling reason for your average Windows user to choose Safari over IE7. There are a number of Windows browsers that are more feature-rich than Safari: Opera, FireFox, and IE7. Perhaps others.
I don’t think it would gain Apple anything.
Safari is a fairly good browser but I can’t se any need for it on windows. It does not offer anything special on the mac either. I prefer Firefox. Mostly because Safari is all too found of it’s cache content at the expense of fresh material. This can leads to all sorts of weird behavior.
On the other hand Firefox is quite heavy, so Safari has an advantage there.
While it might be a good idea to port Safari. I think Apple should revive the Yellow box – OpenStep running on windows – with that All their apps would run natively on windows. They killed the yellow box because of the deal with microsoft in 1998 when they badly needed money. I do believe that deal to be over so they should revive the Yellow box.
Ludovic
—
http://perso.hirlimann.net/~ludo/blog/
I think apple should bring back the old cyberdog for all platforms!
bwahahaha
Port Aqua to Solaris:
http://kloty.blogspot.com/2007/01/opinion-why-solaris-and-macos-x-s…
Regards,
Anton
while there is no port of safai, there is one windows browser that uses webkit, Swift http://try.swift.ws/index.php/Main_Page , I have no experience with swift but it is there.
The problem is that their 0.2 “release” isn’t actually online and their 0.1 release is barely usable; it crashes or fails every few pageloads for me.
http://www.happyandlost.co.uk/media/misc/swift/
Wroooooong.
The 0.2 release is very much online. I just downloaded a few hours ago and installed it. Rather rough, but it’s only 0.2 – a funny tabbed MDI-application (works great when childwindows are maximised, but apart from that the tabs are a tad redundant :p ).
http://try.swift.ws/swift_0.2.msi
At the time of posting my comment, it had been offline for at least two days.
Okay
Safari obviously has a great UI. I do like Firefox and the extensions (Google browser sync, google notebook), but I work on a machine with 384mb of RAM and a 700mhz P3, and it’s _VERY PAINFUL_ to say the least–OTOH I have a powerhouse PC (p4, gig of ram) at work which is fine with it. I also hear Safari has free browser sync capabilities which is the one thing that stops me from using Opera.
I’ve tried Swift which is a Windows port of KHTML, but it’s really just for testing stuff out and not usable as an actual browser..
Edited 2007-01-12 21:28
Why would anyone want to use Safari on Windows? Safari isn’t all that anymore. I’m almost pissed that Apple has let Safari slip so far behind Firefox and IE 7. The ONLY reason I continue to use it is for bookmark syncing with .Mac and keychain features.
Personally, I don’t need Safari Browser in my Windows nor my Linux box, cause its a crappy browser, and it won’t stand in the presence of Firefox, IE and Opera.
Safari is merely a front end to KHTML, which Apple doesn’t make.
Technically, you could make a copy of the interface and stick KHTML under it and you would have Safari.
Apple should not do anything… since we are not all employees of Apple and therefor do not explicitly have a say in Apple’s business strategy. Although, as consumers we do have an implicit power over what business decisions are made by Apple. Support other software projects and vote with your pocket book.
Whats the point i have a better idea apple dumps safari and uses firefox as their browser they can do whatever they like to it its tri licensed. safari often freezes and locks up and has to be forced to quit on my macs. The first thing i do on them now is install firefox.
Of all the web development I’ve been involved with over the years, we’ve had the most problems getting things working the same in Safari over everything else combined.
Please don’t bring this browser to Windows, where we’ll surely be forced to support it as more people will be using it.
Because it supports standards? Because ActiveX isn’t working for it? Really, why is it so bad?
IE and Firefox do a great job of working around sloppy web programming, whether it’s javascript, html or css.
Unfortunately most web developers don’t know about standards therefore they develop non-standard websites, and those sites have to be maintained.
Apple brand accessble, available, and not scary
Reading lines like this, I can’t really think about contributing reasonably though-out opinions. I could add similar junk. Not.
I can’t believe that I am even wasting my time commenting on this, but…
How would the presence of Safari change anything on the Window Desktop? How would the presence of another proprietary browser make the Windows experience better?
Firefox is a much better browser than Internet Explorer, with over 100 plugins, but it’s hard to get most non-IT people to even try it.