Safari on Windows, Leopard Debut at WWDC

comm2k writes to mention that Apple has announced a Windows version of Safari along with Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X at this years World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. "He said Safari was 'the fastest browser on Windows', saying it was twice as fast as Internet Explorer. A test version of Safari for Windows XP and for Vista is available for download from the Apple website. Apple is hoping to replicate the success of iTunes, which has proved enormously popular on both Macs and Windows machines."

All of the major news

* Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) [apple.com] - ...of course. This was the main focus of the keynote. A "feature complete" version of Leopard was demonstrated, and all WWDC attendees receive the current, feature complete beta of Leopard and Leopard Server. Demos, movies, and more information about all of the many new features are available here [apple.com]. No one outside of the conference will receive these builds (but can be expected to receive later seeds). Leopard is still on track to ship in October. Leopard is $129, or $69 edu/govt (as usual). Free/cheap upgrades to Leopard will likely only for hardware purchased within month prior to its release (also as usual). (See also Leopard Server [apple.com]).

Mac OS X [apple.com] and Mac OS X Server [apple.com] press releases with more info.

* iPhone third party development - iPhone [apple.com], previously thought to be completely closed, will have development possible via rich "Web 2.0" applications. Details on this are a little sketchy, and it's not what some hoping for a full iPhone SDK wanted, but it appears that all external app development will happen via web apps. However, it also appears such apps will appear as and have the look and feel of other iPhone apps. While this is news, it appears analysts are interpreting this as "new bad news", even though there was no expectation previously that iPhone would be an open platform, since it appeared that it would be closed, and this announcement is actually a positive development over the previous situation. iPhone is also still in schedule to ship on June 29 at 6pm via Apple retail stores and AT&T corporate stores. Still no news on specifics for online sales, preordering, etc.

Press release with more info [apple.com].

* Safari Mac OS X and Windows [apple.com] - Safari is now available, in its 3.0 beta form, on Mac OS X 10.4.9 and Windows XP/Vista. At first glance, Safari is much, much faster than it was previously on Mac OS X, and includes a range of new features. This is the same version of Safari that will ship on Leopard and (essentially) iPhone. Safari is now also available on Windows; this is obviously going to be used as a channel of development for iPhone, since all external iPhone apps will essentially be Safari web apps.

Press release with more info [apple.com].

* No new hardware, but the Apple Store and the rest of the Apple web site has a new look (which was why the Apple Store was down, which some see as an indication of new hardware announcements).

* Keynote summary [macrumorslive.com]

* Keynote archive will be available later today here [apple.com].

Re:All of the major news

he means being able to type things like 'wp slashdot' to go to the wikipedia slashdot page. It's incredibly useful and is one of the reasons I can't even consider using safari in real life.

If that's all that's holding you back, just install Saft [dnsalias.com]. Works like a charm, and has a ton of other useful features.

Re:All of the major news

EA announced at the WWDC that they will be porting games over to the Mac, and having simultaneous releases from here on.

Re:All of the major news

What I mean is, the World Of Warcraft is a true multiplatform, OpenGL game. The EA stuff will probably be Windows .exe files tailored to run under OS X.

Mac OS X cannot run .exe files. If you want your program to run on OS X, without requiring the end user buying Parallels or Wine, you will be packaging your executable in a .app directory like the rest of us.

They can't be TOO windows-ish, as very few video cards on Macs support DirectX 9 or whatever games are now, and Macs don't ship with any Windows libraries. But since EA has written for so many different platforms as it is (Windows, Xbox 1 and 2, PS1,2,3, all manner of Nintendos) their games are probably written meta enough that they can be adapted without too much difficulty.

Re:All of the major news

I hope that EA takes the same policy as Blizzard does, and bundles both PC and Mac versions of the game in the same box.

It makes it easy to upgrade/transition between platforms, not to mention, gives both versions equal retail penetration. It's good for them AND the consumer (although EA hasn't been one to traditionally think along logical lines)

Open Letter

Dear PC users,

It's no secret iTunes turned to shit as soon as Apple had to start catering to PC users. It was version 4.1, if memory serves, around the time they let you cavedwellers into our music store. The demand for PC compatibility is the major reason iTunes is still a Carbon app, according to insiders, when every other iApp has since been rewritten in Cocoa to behave like a decent Mac application.

Now there's Safari 3's bastard child, Safari 3 for PC. Although the Mac flavor sits gracefully on the desktop with its Cocoa brethren, the Windows version sticks out like a cold glass of Metamucil in the men's room at Penn Station. Technical limitations of Windows ensure Safari looks shittier even than most other PC applications. It won't be long before the fecal tide comes sloshing to Safari on Mac, as happened with iTunes before. You PC users, crashing the party again with your filth.

Frankly, we think Apple should revoke PC compatibility from across its entire product line. Only when the last PC user is forced from our platform shall we enjoy freedom, again and at last, from your tasteless, backwards demands.

Love,
Mac users

Re:Open Letter

I am a web developer. Every time I have seen a problem with my pages on Konqueror or Safari, it has turned out that I was not following the specs properly. It is more a reference implementation than another browser to hack for.

Re:Open Letter

Seems Apple ported the font-smoothing technology over to Windows as part of Safari. I'm finding it looks a bit too blurry in comparison to Windows' native font-smoothing when viewed on my screen, sitting almost a metre away (I've a 20" widescreen LCD).

If you're trying to test against Safari without an actual Mac though, I think it's definitely an accurate picture of the resulting webpage.

Re:Open Letter

I concur. I've written a few (small) sites to the spec, then tested in Safari and had them work fine. Then I've tested them in IE and Mozilla and discovered that the specs aren't as well-supported as I'd hoped...

Re:Open Letter

I wouldn't necessarily call it "hacking" for Safari, considering that Safari's KHTML-based rendering engine is more standards compliant than either Firefox or IE.

Re:Open Letter

Screw Safari, I never hacked for it and I don't want to start. Hacking for IE is bad enough.

You have to "hack" to get IE to work. If you code to standards, generally Safari, Firefox, Opera, Konquerer, etc. all just work. We've found a few Safari specific bugs here, but all of them turned out to be bugs in our HTML, which were just handled a little better by Firefox.

Re:Open Letter

Hmm... in my experience, coding to IE was much easier because it was much better at interpreting how you wanted something to look like without worrying about being 100% 'standards compliant'. If a site didn't work in FF and worked fine in IE, that was more due to FF not knowing what to do with your code unless you put it together perfectly.

In other words, as a web "developer" you prefer IE because you can be lazy and sloppy and it lets you get away with it.

I don't think it's fair to bash IE for not complying.

Of course it is. Standards are supposed to make your life easier, because everyone agrees up front on how it all works and there is no need to worry about your customers using a browser you havn't tested with: it's all standards, right? Except that IE breaks that, because it doesn't understand a lot of very useful standards and a lot of web "developers" (Like yourself) are sloppy and lazy and write bad code (You again, by the way).

Stop being sloppy and lazy, is what I'm saying here.

Re:Open Letter

Hmm... in my experience, coding to IE was much easier because it was much better at interpreting how you wanted something to look like without worrying about being 100% 'standards compliant'.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You don't have to worry about being standards compliant? How do you write pages? Do you just make up your own version of the standard and write to that and IE happens to read it magically, somehow?

When I generate code, I look at the spec and implement it, then I test it. I'm not always perfect at it, but I basically make things work the way the documented standard claims it should look. Then I test it. Generally it works in every browser (Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Konquerer, OmniWeb, etc.) except IE. Then I try to add hacks to get it to look "okay" in various versions of IE all of which break the standard and all or which break it differently. I certainly can and do blame IE for being the only browser that can't work as the spec designates.

If a site didn't work in FF and worked fine in IE, that was more due to FF not knowing what to do with your code unless you put it together perfectly.

Generally, I find that when a site does not work in FF it is because I screwed up and did not get it to spec. Generally when it does not work in IE, it is because I did things right, but IE either implements the spec incorrectly and differently than all the other browsers, or because IE is 6-8 years behind the times and is still using a partial implementation of an ancient spec.

Either way, the only reason the 'standards' got put together was because the minorities needed some way to differentiate themselves from IE.

Are you trolling? The spec predates any implementation and MS participated in writing most of them.

More power to them, we need the competition, but I don't think it's fair to bash IE for not complying.

I think it is more than fair to bash the single largest, wealthiest company for failing to match the quality of a half dozen smaller companies and another half dozen projects funded by hobbyists. MS does not comply with the specs because it is in their best interests to derail the standards and hold back Web development to help maintain their OS monopoly. They are breaking the standards for personal profit and if you don't see that I have a lovely, historic bridge you might be interested in purchasing.

Re:Open Letter

Dear Mac User,

Whenever Apple ports and application to Windows, they always make it slow and buggy. First they tormented us with Quicktime - a slow player by all standards, which had the audacity to attach itself to every media file on the system, even files it could not play. As if that wasn't bad enough, it crashed more than Windows Media Player.

Apple then comes out and adds iTunes. This "wonderful" piece of software runs several services in the background, some of which are normally not even needed/used, yet each sonsistantly sucks up several percent of a modern 2+Ghz CPU, and dozens of MB of memory. Added to the lackluster performance in comparison to other music players, like Winamp, this is not a desireable app.

Now Apple wants to "grace" us with Safari? Please, tell your computer company to be honest when it tries to get users to switch, and not provide us with software that slows down and gums up our Windows machines, so that we are deluded into thinking that Apple is better.

Re:Open Letter

Dear Mac Users,

We feel the same way about our game software. Why on earth companies like Blizzard would waste their time catering a bunch of Kool-aid drinking hippies, when they could be spending their time developing better content for us real gamers, is beyond me. Gaming communities have only went downhill since these companies abandoned their traditional user base and let a bunch of Prius-driving, artsy, self-righteous, cocky assholes into our ranks.

Therefore, I propose a truce. We knuckle-dragging rednecks will agree to forgo Mac software on our PC's if you hemp-sweater-wearing cult members will agree to give up our game software on your Macs.

Deal?

-Eric

Re:Open Letter

And in the meantime, we console gamers wonder when you shooter-playing high schoolers will run out of money for your yearly $3500 neon-lit Dell upgrades whose sole purpose for existence is to run content-lacking tech demos that win "Game of the Year" awards from paid press outlets. It's you guys who have let gaming communities run themselves into the ground by turning gaming into an ever-shrinking, expensive tech niche with no mainstream appeal.

When you're waiting in line for your $400 video card to draw frilly plants on screen so you can feel all hardcore for running DirectX 10, I'll be blasting away in Metroid Prime 3 or perhaps grinding in World of Warcraft on my MacBook.

Re:Open Letter

I'll tell you the same thing I told my wife. Baby formula only lasts a few weeks at most. But that new video card will be good for at least a year.

Re:Open Letter

Dear PC Users,

We have received your request that we cease and desist using all computer technology popularized by PCs. You have little idea how long we have waited for a complete segregation of the PC and Apple world, and the chance to free ourselves from the yoke of relating to the hoi polloi!

Your request is feasible, on the grounds that the PC world conform to the same constraints and cease using all computer technology initially introduced by, or initially popularized by, Apple.

To that end, please stop using the following: 3.5 inch floppy disks; USB; Firewire; WYSIWYG software of any type; computer cases that are not puke-colored (technical term); computers for the purposes of design, desktop publishing and the like; graphical user interfaces; spreadsheets; any home or small business computer that is not A) assembled from a kit, or B) interfaced with through punch cards, audio cassette tape, blinking LEDs, and/or toggle switches.

Please enjoy computing with your Altairs! As an extra bonus, your operating system will be the cheapest and most stable Microsoft software yet developed!

Sincerely,

Mac Users

You are stupid

Yes AC, you are an arrogant, stupid idiot. Now moderators, go ahead and select "-1 Flamebait" for this post.

Okay, now that we've got that out of the way I can continue. Apple knows exactly what it is doing. And it will work. More and more people are finding out that many browsers are better than IE. If Apple can convince PC users to use Safari that will be one less barrier to switching over from PC to a Mac. The list is getting longer of basic applications that run on both the Mac and PC. The longer this list gets the easier and more appealing it will be for PC people to make the switch. After Apple gains a significant market share they will be in a position to take advantage of critical mass. Customers will start switching in droves. Then they can focus on making the best Mac apps (based only on Cocoa). Not just the best carbon apps so they can run on the PC too.

The more PC users use Mac apps the more people will feel comfortable switching. Ditto for Linux.

Re:Open Letter

I don't know if someone already has mentioned, but I think Safari is a smokescreen. Real intention might be to bring back OPENSTEP [wikipedia.org] to Windows, or the Yellow Box on Windows. Just like Intel version of OS X was secretly maintained at Apple, it would appear that OPENSTEP was alive and well at Apple. That Safari runs on Windows implies that other Cocoa apps can run on Windows as well. I don't know what this means in grand scheme of things, but one benefit Apple could have is to attract third party developers.

There were rumors [macrumors.com] and discussions [daringfireball.net] on this since 2005.

Re:I agree 100%

I'd definitely have to disagree with the assessment that Microsoft apps for the Mac are "the best;" that may well have been true in the past, but the current incarnation of Office for Mac is, without a doubt, the most bloated and ridiculously clunky 'productivity suite' I've ever had the misfortune of trying to use.

You clearly have never used Office 98 for Mac. This was the only Office version for Mac that truly failed in the martketplace, and fairly so. This was when Microsoft tried to shove a Windows interface and a horrendeous back-end (extensions, extensions, extensions) down the throat of Macheads. Did not work. Even included some incursion of Clippy as a happy bouncing Mac. The horror, the horror, the horror.

KDE / Konqueror

Glad they based it on Konqueror - Now how about contributing to KDE and or making a version for Linux? -bms20

Already done

Safari has always been based on KDE's KHTML, and they do contribute back to the community via the WebKit project [webkit.org].

See also:

KDE adds Safari feel to desktop Linux [zdnet.com] - The KDE Project has released a significant update to its K Desktop Environment software that includes refinements to the Konqueror Web browser derived from collaboration with Apple's Safari browser team.

KDE's Konqueror Browser Reaps Safari Benefits [macslash.org] - In a perfect example of how open source and proprietary software can benefit each other, Apple got a significant headstart by basing Safari on established technologies like KHTML & Konqueror. And in return, Apple's contributions back to the open source community have benefitted Konqueror.

Re:Already done

There was a lot of back and forth and Apple has improved their interaction with the KHTML devs. Apple has since made the Giant Patch of Doom available in a CVS repository and have been a bit more helpful and where and what they changed and why. It's probably not perfect according most FOSS project standards but it is better than the picture you paint.

Re:KDE / Konqueror

It's been based on KHTML/Konq since conception. If you want to use Safari (or its equivalence in Linux), just use Konq.

The only reason it runs on Windows now is because Adobe put a shit-ton of work into WebKit/WebCore to make their Apollo product, and now Apple's using the benefit of their partial-Carbon port to port Safari over and use the Win32-ized WebKit to power it.

The real good thing that's happening in WebKit/WebCore right now is the work going on to make it work with GTK+/GDK. Once that happens we'll have a web browser that looks and feels native to every major UI toolkit out there.

O...

...RLY? [webkit.org]

Re:O...

Not to mention that aside from WebKit, which the parent poster points to, or the zeroconf standard (which Apple helped to write), they've also contributed a lot of code to another open source project in particular. It's called the GNU Compiler Collection [gnu.org], or GCC for short. You might have seen it around on a Linux box or two, even. ;)

fastest?

i'm pretty sure i can get lynx running through cygwin.

It's in beta

I've already crashed Safari on Windows three times, but I was being pretty hard on it. You have to remember that this is still beta before you start bashing it, though.

No, they aren't

No, Apple is not trying to replicate iTunes' success. Nobody on windows would give a crap if iTunes wasn't the main way to get things onto an iPod. From what info was given about apps for the iPhone, Safari is the SDK. Any greater market share for WebKit is just gravy.

YellowBox for Windows is Back

No, Apple is not trying to replicate iTunes' success.

Agreed - the browser marketshare thing is just a front for getting millions of people to beta test their application development framework - YellowBox for Windows is back [bfccomputing.com]. Next year you can have real applications on the iPhone (and Mac, and Windows).

Re:No, they aren't

No, Apple is not trying to replicate iTunes' success.

I think you're more right than you know. I think Apple is trying to replicate the iPod's success. They used iTunes to help sell the iPod to Windows users. I think they're porting Safari to try to help sell the iPhone to Windows users. The iPhone is running OS X and a version of Safari. It runs Web 2.0 applications in Safari. This release means Windows developers don't need OS X in order to develop and test for the iPhone. It also makes testing for Safari easier for Windows only Web developers.

Personally, I bounce back and forth between Firefox and Safari. Safari is faster and has some really nice features (support for services). Safari 3 has some things to offer too. I'm using it right now and the ability to just resize this text field kicks ass. I hope every other browser steals the idea. The Web inspector is nice too.

Re:Well, it's definitely fast...

Yes, it's what they call smoothing. You cannot turn it off. The choices are "light", "medium", and "atrocious?" (can't remember the last option). Anyway, the choices are blurred fonts or even more blurred fonts.

Re:I can't get it working

Wow, they have replicated the experience of iTunes on Windows!

Cool

I've just played [sorn.net] with Safari on Windows and it's cool. I'm unsure about the menu bar at the top though, and the extra 20 vertical pixels or so that it takes up - that just doesn't look as clean as it does on OS X. Windows needed another browser to give IE a run for its money, and this is it.

And it supports rich text editing in GMail :-)

I hope it will be supporting the plugin framework that Safari on OS X does, I like things like the Inquisitor search plugin [inquisitorx.com].

Safari...?

First thing I downloaded onto my newly bought Mac Mini was Firefox. Safari was just plain unbearable. Speed doesn't count for much, when proper rendering is not there.

Re:Safari...?

Safari renders just fine –it's certainly more in line with the official specs than any other browser out there, with the possible exception of Opera. The problem is simply that Safari doesn't have Firefox's market share yet, so web developers who code all their sites with Firefox and IE in mind don't necessarily check to make sure they work well in Safari too.

It's the same problem that we used to have with the old Mozilla Suite. Gecko has, for the most part, always been great; but it wasn't until more developers got on board that using Mozilla or Firefox as a daily web browser became a pleasant experience. If anything, the problem that Safari currently faces in this regard is much less significant than the hurdle Mozilla originally had to jump.

THAT is Steve Jobs's "one more thing"?

Safari for Windows?

Not a radical new 16-core desktop? Not a 19" Macbook Pro? Not a 30" iMac? Not an Apple-branded virtualisation solution?

Nooooo, SAFARI FOR WINDOWS>

I must ask here.... what the fuck!? Who would care about this announcement? And I say that as a Mac fan!

Re:THAT is Steve Jobs's "one more thing"?

This is WWDC. It is a developer conference, not a consumer conference. Its focus has always been software (although WWDC has occasionally been the forum for hardware announcements). Apple is doing more and more product introductions as they're ready (e.g., like last week's new MacBook Pro introduction), and less and less product introductions at conferences and "special events".

Everyone expecting brushed aluminum iMacs and new Cinema Displays shouldn't have expected that in the first place. And an Apple-branded virtualization solution? It's been known since last WWDC that Leopard wouldn't have integrated virtualization. With three [parallels.com] different [vmware.com] solutions [virtualbox.org] already existing, plus Boot Camp, why would you even expect that, no matter how nice it would be?

And who would care about this announcement? This isn't just "Safari for Windows". Jeez. It's the channel for development for iPhone, since all of iPhone's third-party development will be as Safari web apps [apple.com].

Re:Firefox is the most at risk

No.

Safari is the iPhone SDK

Safari for the PC is interesting for three reasons: (1) if widely adopted, it would force more web apps to become Safari friendly. Google apps, for example, often don't work with Safari. (2) Safari is the developemnt platform for iPhone apps. And by releasing Safari for the PC, the developer base just multiplied enormously. (3) Just the fact that iPhone apps are build from HTML and Javascript is going to shake up the mobile web scenario.

Re:Why Safari?

I don't see a similar market opportunity in a free browser.

iPhone apps. They've broadened the developer base for apps (which they won't make money on) for the iPhone (which, presumably, they will make money on).

Hopefully

this will be another kick in pants to all the web developers out there who don't/can't/won't test their sites in anything other than IE before deployment. Developing an intraweb app for a controllable and known set of apps, and something else altogether to build a customer-facing website that tells 20%+ of your audience that they're not welcome the minute they land on your homepage. Now, with the ability to test in all the major browsers right from one OS, there's no excuse not to have cross-browser functionality.

To Site Devs...

To those site developers that are having issues with Safari on Windows, you can enable the Safari Debug tools like you can on Mac. On OS X you would do:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

in a Terminal window. Obviously that command does not work on Windows.

Instead, open %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\Safari\Preferences.plist in your favorite text editor. Add:

<key>IncludeDebugMenu</key>
<true/>

and save it. Restart Safari. You now have a nifty "Debug" menu in the top menu bar, complete with the Javascript Console.

I am split

On one hand I would like to see some competition and many browsers would force developers to use something called the w3c standards which they no longer follow. Or I should say the browsers do not.

However if this steals marketshare away from firefox it will make many web developers give up on anything non IE.

- eg

89% IE
10% firefox

sounds better to make a business case to a phb to support a website site that is w3c compliant and supports firefox vs

89% IE
6% Firefox
4% Safari

Which tells the phb that only IE matters as the rest are niche players that do not make significant marketshare to be worth the investment.

Many website developers both love and hate Firefox as it is because they have more work but the hope is firefox3 will be acid2 compliant and will force IE 7.5 in the future to be as well.

Adblocking? Skinning

There are just so many darn features and plugins for Firefox I have fallen in love with; however I am giving Safari an open-minded try right now. Off the top of my head, the glaring absence of the equivalent of an 'adblock' plugin is a show-stopper for now.

I don't think it's nitpicking in this day and age to ask that a web-browser be skinnable as well. This theme reminds me of everything I hate about the Quicktime player. And what tab is open? Oh... the one that is just a *slightly* different shade of gray. And where are my UltraMon buttons?

Ajax as iPhone development environment? No Thanks.

I bet that went over like a turd in a punch bowl. Talking to a bunch of Cocoa developers at WWDC, who have been listening to Apple sing the praises of Cocoa for years, and then heard about how iPhone was running "real Mac OS X" "with Cocoa" in the iPhone announcement.

Now, Apple is telling us nice job learning Cocoa. But, for what we consider our biggest product ever, you should forget that and use Ajax. Welcome to web development.

Also.. sorry about delaying Leopard, but look at why we had to delay it.. We've got Safari for Windows!!!

I'm totally getting the Ultimate version.

I enjoyed Jobs's sniping at recent Windows versioning:

"We've got a basic version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Premium version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Business version, $129. We've got an Enterprise version, $129. And we've got the Ultimate version, we're throwing everything into it, it's $129. We think most people will buy the Ultimate version."

Re:Ultimate server version? Family pack?

Actually, they will have at least 3 seperate versions not even including the educational discounts or other such promotions. This is based on the current 10.4 prices.

OS X Leopard 10.5 - $129
OS X Leopard 10.5 Family Pack - $199
OS X Server 10.5 - $499 and up

They could prove me wrong and implement all of the server niceities into the consumer version and grant a new license that allows you to install on any systems you own but I seriously doubt that will happen. I'm fairly certain that when I upgrade to the Ultimate version that it will cost more than $129.

Re:Ultimate server version? Family pack?

I'm fairly certain that when I upgrade to the Ultimate version that it will cost more than $129.

If you applied the same demented logic to Windows, the "Ultimate" version with "server niceities" would cost you...well, hell, I don't know. You try to figure it out. [microsoft.com]

Re:I'm totally getting the Ultimate version.

"We've got a basic version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Premium version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Business version, $129. We've got an Enterprise version, $129. And we've got the Ultimate version, we're throwing everything into it, it's $129. We think most people will buy the Ultimate version."

See, this happens because Apple, being primarily a hardware company, practice their pricing discrimination on the hardware side (which does a similar thing to Vista). Their software is incidental to that, and tied to the hardware, so they don't do much with its pricing.

Microsoft, OTOH, are primarily a software company, so they have to do their pricing discrimination on their software products.

Re:Safari For Windows Fails For Me

Report the problem. It is a public beta, after all.

A Kick In The Balls For Microsoft

Ballmer is going to be throwing a lot of chairs today...

Safari for Windows is the biggest threat to IE ever. The reason is simple: it's going to be bundled with iTunes. If Apple really wanted to kick Microsoft in the balls, they'd make the iTunes installer put Safari as the default browser -- or give it as an option during the install (with the default being yes, natch). That means suddenly, everyone who buys an iPod ends up using Safari as their default browser instead of IE. If Safari transparently migrates over their bookmarks and settings, a lot of those people, if not the majority, would be likely to stuck with Safari.

It's the same "bundling" that got IE as the majority browser used against Microsoft for a change. All of a sudden, WebKit is the platform for web development on Macs, PCs, and the iPhone. That would would definitely cause a lot of heartburn in Redmond.

Apple has a chance to give Microsoft a major kick in the balls... the question is whether they'll go that route or not. They're doing exactly what Microsoft has always wanted to do -- dominate an entire ecosystem from desktops to laptops to mobile to the television. This is what Bill Gates has been trying to do for the past 20 years, and Apple has done it in just about 5. It's an incredibly smart move on Apple's part, and a major blow to Microsoft's hegemonic ambitions.

Re:A Kick In The Balls For Microsoft

If there's one thing iTunes needs, it's a bigger, clunkier installer with more bundled software. That way, after installing (or even just upgrading) iTunes, not only will you have to spend time hunting for all the settings in QuickTime to get it out of your way, but also Safari. Yes, I think this is a great idea.

Re:A Kick In The Balls For Microsoft

Did you try Safari/Win? I just did, and in 5 secs flat I noticed the following: no resizing from all sides (although it popped up taller than the screen height), no Alt-D to get to the address bar, no Ctrl-Enter to fill-in www.*.com. Maybe Alt-D is not the end of the world, but no edge-resizing? is there a WinXP port of KHTML/WebKit written by actual windows devs?

Safari on Windows....What's in it for Apple?

I'm sure there will be many threads here comparing features and performance to existing browsers available for Windows. I'm not interested in that. What I'm trying to figure out is how porting Safari to Windows will improve Apple's bottom line.

When Apple developed a Windows version of iTunes the justification was obvious. It was developed to sell more iPods.

I see no obvious reason for a Windows version of Safari. How is it going to generate additional revenue for Apple? Apple did not develop this just to have a greater market share for their browser. There is no money in that. The speculation one forum is that there must be a yet to be disclosed functional tie-in between the iPhone Safari and the PC/Mac Safari. But, besides being able to sync your PC bookmarks with your iPhone bookmarks, I can't think of any advantages.

Anyone have some insights on how this development will put money in the bank at Apple?

Re:Safari on Windows....What's in it for Apple?

Anyone have some insights on how this development will put money in the bank at Apple?

It is not to put money in the bank, it is a tool for Apple's survival (and they are in danger).

Microsoft is pushing WPE/XAML hard, and if PHB's start thinking that they can gain access to all these flashy new features while only alienating 10% of the users (those alternate platform wierdos), they'll go for it. If Firefox+Safari can push IE's share on windows down into the 60-75% range, then it distrupts Microsoft's intention to replace the web standards with their own proprietary technologies.

If Microsoft's plan succeeded, Apple would find itself with a consumer OS that couldn't view a lot of compelling content... (this same idea also neatly explains why Apple got into the media business, long before anybody had any idea that it would be so amazingly successful: otherwise, the world would have gone entirely to Windows Media, and apple's platform would have been left out in the cold).

Safari 3 on Windows: First Impressions

- Nice smooth interface, takes up less space than Firefox.
- Definitely beta software. I get occasional and sporadic crashes. These are not currently consistently repeatable.
- Font rendering is nice, including Unicode characters.
- Unicode characters that I have fonts for no longer display as boxes in the title bar (they still do in Firefox).
- Transitioning to pages sometimes takes significantly longer than it should. It will stall before loading the page.

Unoptimized CPU hog

OK, for a lark I'm trying out the Safari beta on an older 2.4 ghz XP box with 512mb ram. With two tabs open, it's consistently working the CPU at between 80 and 90%. Whatever the hell for? Who slapped together this wunderpile?

On the plus side, it's easy on the eyes. The Safari bookmarks implementation has always been smooth. And the adjustable Google search bar is better than most stabs at this on Firefox. It renders quickly, as claimed, though I can't say it renders perceptibly more quickly than Firefox.

Even on OS X, though, I don't run Safari. It's barely customizable in an age when Firefox extensions have completely rewritten the rules of browsing. Why would I want to see ads? Why browse the way some web site or computer corporation thinks I should?

This is like 1999, today.

Re:Meh

Obviously companies cook their own benchmarks, so it's very possible that they chose bits of javascript which Safari handles particularly well. But they at least have acknowledged Opera as another option, and there's at least some evidence that Safari may perform better than it.

It's not Apple's benchmark to cook. From the site you link to:

Performance measured in seconds. Testing conducted by Apple in June 2007 on a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based iMac system running Windows XP Professional SP2, configured with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB of VRAM. HTML and JavaScript benchmarks based on VeriTest's iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

Ugly

Am I the only one who sees the irony in how Macintosh/Mac OS X users whine and moan when an app doesn't match the UI of the Macintosh, to the point where many developers don't think it's worth the effort, but then when Apple ports something to Windows, they keep the ugly, brushed metal, doesn't-act-like-or-match-anything-on-Windows interface?

Re:OMG not another one

So before that you did not care about Safari users? OK, I can understand that, just looking at the market share :) Don't worry anyway. My guess is that Safari on Windows has more to do with iPhone SDK than with "we want our browser everywhere". iPhone apps being safari based AJAX apps, Apple wants Windows devs to be able to code/test it as well as Mac devs. They definitely have their eyes on the business market (just look at the "salesforce" remark), and they know they *have* to make iPhone dev possible from windows machine.