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Safari on Windows, Leopard Debut at WWDC

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jun 11, 2007 03:28 PM
from the another-contender-in-the-ring dept.
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."
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Related Stories

[+] Apple Safari On Windows Broken On First Day 595 comments
An anonymous reader writes "David Maynor, infamous for the Apple Wi-Fi hack, has discovered bugs in the Windows version of Safari mere hours after it was released. He notes in the blog that his company does not report vulnerabilities to Apple. His claimed catch for 'an afternoon of idle futzing': 4 DoS bugs and 2 remote execution vulnerabilities." Separately, within 2 hours Thor Larholm found a URL protocol handler command injection vulnerability that allows remote command execution.
[+] Safari for Windows Downloaded Over 1 Million Times 439 comments
ClaraBow writes "Apple reports that it took Apple just two days to reach 1 million downloads of its newest Safari Web browser for Windows. If these downloads manifested into regular Safari users, then we just might have a third major browser on the Windows platform. If Safari can obtain a 10% market share on Windows, then it would further weaken IE's position and give standards-based browsers more leverage with developers."
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  • by daveschroeder (516195) * <(das) (at) (doit.wisc.edu)> on Monday June 11 2007, @03:29PM (#19468779) Homepage
    * 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].
  • Open Letter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2007, @03:29PM (#19468787)
    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
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2007, @03:39PM (#19468953)
      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.
    • by elrous0 (869638) * on Monday June 11 2007, @04:04PM (#19469355)
      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 (Score:5, Insightful)

        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 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Niten (201835) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:39PM (#19468957) Homepage

        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 (Score:5, Informative)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:43PM (#19469047)

        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.

  • fastest? (Score:5, Funny)

    by brunascle (994197) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:30PM (#19468793)
    i'm pretty sure i can get lynx running through cygwin.
  • No, they aren't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by k_187 (61692) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:31PM (#19468813) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • by bill_mcgonigle (4333) * on Monday June 11 2007, @03:48PM (#19469111) Homepage Journal
      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 (Score:5, Informative)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:51PM (#19469155)

      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.

  • Cool (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jaavaaguru (261551) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:34PM (#19468871) Homepage
    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].
  • by Caspian (99221) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:36PM (#19468895)
    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!
    • 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].
  • by null-und-eins (162254) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:36PM (#19468911) Homepage
    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.
  • To Site Devs... (Score:5, Informative)

    by daeg (828071) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:38PM (#19468947)
    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.
  • by tji (74570) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:42PM (#19469023)
    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!!!
  • by Onan (25162) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:42PM (#19469035)
    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."

  • by WombatControl (74685) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:46PM (#19469087)

    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.

    • Already done (Score:5, Informative)

      by daveschroeder (516195) * <(das) (at) (doit.wisc.edu)> on Monday June 11 2007, @03:33PM (#19468865) Homepage
      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:KDE / Konqueror (Score:5, Informative)

      by ciroknight (601098) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:42PM (#19469017)
      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.
    • by Denis Troller (1002792) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:36PM (#19468913)
      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.
    • Re:Safari...? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Niten (201835) on Monday June 11 2007, @03:47PM (#19469107) Homepage

      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.