Apple Picking a Fight it Can't Win With Safari 589
Ian Lamont writes "Mike Elgan has an analysis of Apple's successes and concludes that the release of the Safari browser for Windows not only goes against the Apple success formula, but is doomed to a vicious failure: 'The insular Apple universe is a relatively gentle place, an Athenian utopia where Apple's occasional missteps are forgiven, all partake of the many blessings of citizenship, and everyone feels like they're part of an Apple-created golden age of lofty ideas and superior design. But the Windows world isn't like that. It's a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken. Especially the Windows browser market. ... While security nerds were ripping Apple for a buggy beta, the UI enthusiasts started going after Apple for the look and feel. Here's a small sample. Apple can expect much more of this in the future. The problem? Safari for Windows just isn't Windows enough.' Elgan also expects that the Firefox faithful will fight the Safari influx — a theory that has been supported by comments from Mozilla executive John Lilly, who criticized Steve Jobs' 'blurry view of real world' just after Jobs announced Safari for Windows."
Oh look! (Score:5, Insightful)
They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet they still use IE... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that the author is holding Apple to a standard that not even the mighty giver of life to all, Microsoft, (praise be upon it), is held to.
Why can't people take it for what it is? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I understand it, the release of Safari to the Windows platform allows people to develop and test applets that should work on the iPhone.
Was there really a plan for Safari doing well against Firefox and IE?
It just seemed to me the best way to release a product that helps increase use of another product. Safari isn't going to make anybody any money. iPhone will make Apple a boatload of money if the product and attached cellular service are decent.
Umm, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
- To make it easy for web developers to test their sites with Safari.
- To make it easy for web developers to write iPhone web-apps.
- To remove the cap on Safari's market share, so that 'it must be even smaller than the Mac market share' is no longer an argument for not supporting Safari.
- To let potential switchers see that the Internet will work on a Mac, even though it doesn't have the big blue E.
- To ensure that Apple is the one bringing the first mainstream WebKit-based browser to Windows, now all the porting work has been done (by Adobe).
Which of these is the fight that Apple can't win?And why does IE still hold about 80% of the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Unforgiving the smallest error? Let's check the market share of IE again ...
Seriously, I wouldn't expect Safari to become a major force on Windows, I don't think that even Apple expects a lot. But to claim that the Windows world is driven by quality while the Apple world is cozy is just stupid. IE was crap for years and Firefox is still at 10% market share. Most people stick with what they know (usually Windows), so the amount of "switchers" we see is a sign that quality actually can work for people who look somewhat further, but most people never do.
Buggy Beta? (Score:1, Insightful)
Windows users accept crap software as a matter of course. Why else would IE be so popular?
no competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Fear Uncerntainty Doubt (Score:5, Insightful)
I will use Safari frequently for development. And when I can (in an upcoming release) specify a proxy server (to get rid of advertisements) I will use it more often.
I am not an Apple fanboy, and I even had font issues with Safari on Windows. The problem is now fixed.
Mike Elgan can go back into his hole - I don't give a crap what FUD he wants to spread. It sounds like there is not enough fresh air circulating in his mothers basement... either that or he is endorsing company blog "clog" spam.
Bundle it (Score:3, Insightful)
Pussy Critics (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple isn't a pussocracy, either - smart people there survive up against Microsoft's monopoly by their wits, in the market, periodically revolutionizing it. Getting Athens and Apple so wrong discredits the rest of Mike Elgan's analysis. If you're going to argue from caricature analogy, only cartoons will be persuaded. If you're making such a discreditable attack on an absent target too busy to spend time debating your niche, you're a pussy.
From my perspective... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you can throw that under the heading of Reality Distortion Field [wikipedia.org]. I think it's a ploy to take attention away from the sucky fact that the only "apps" they're allowing on the iPhone are web pages. Oooh, innovative.
What do YOU think Apple is up to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, there are 5 good excuses to release Safari, but I think that is what they are, just excuses.
I think the main reason, the real reason, is advertising. Everybody who reads "Why you don't need Safari" or "Safari vs IE" or anything like that at all is reading the equivilant to "Apple competes with Microsoft." Even people who never read anything more than a headline will think of Apple as a competitor next time they get ready to buy a computer. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of other good effects for Apple, but the core is that their main products, iPods, iPhones and Macs make more sales.
Go Apple.
Disclaimer: I do not own and have never owned a Mac (though I have used and supported them.) I secretly hope that Apple will release an i386 open source release some day.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of Windows users downloaded iTunes, even though they didn't have an iPod. A lot of people just like it (and of course many people hate it). The same will probably be true of Safari.
There are of course many things to fix, but it is a beta. I'm guessing there will be a few people who want a simple, easy to use browser without endless sets of extensions and widgets. I was that person years ago when a simple browser called "Phoenix" was released, and that's why I used it. Now Firefox is not the simple browser it used to be.
Of course
FTR I now use Omniweb, which was well worth the small registration fee.
Re:Pussy Critics (Score:3, Insightful)
He probably meant to say, "Olympian" rather than "Athenian", although even the Gods had their problems.
Re:Umm, what? (Score:1, Insightful)
Making money from Google and Yahoo searches. You don't think those search bars are FREE do you?
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
The company I work for recently (less than 2 yrs) had to purchase a mac so they could test a website they were developing against Mac browsers.
Due to the nature of the site a significant user base use Macs. The user base? People with money; and lots of it.
So tell me; who do you aim for as a market?
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
If a web developer doesn't care when their site does break or look odd in Safari, maybe they don't really care that much about the enduser experience. Personally, I think if the browser has more than 1% of the market, it needs to work with my sites. 1% is still a couple million people. I'm not going to abandon that many potential visitors/customers by being an arrogant snob like you seem to suggest.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:3, Insightful)
Elgan used to be the editor of Windows Mag (Score:4, Insightful)
One more browser on Windows doesn't hurt anything. Because Safari is based on K, it's tougher to smack down with silly code crunches, although they shouldn't have released it until they tested it JUST A BIT MORE. How embarrassing to release a browser that has to have six patches on its first freaking release day.
But Elgan is wrong about Apple. His background at Windows Magazine and HP's in-house organ haven't given him much insight into the seige mentality at Apple. It's plainly been a survivor mentality with a few stellar successes and a few big craters. I wouldn't leave it to Elgan, however, to comment on Apple's mentality when he's clearly been a bit of a stooge of the Windows mindset.
Look at iTunes, QuickTime, and other cross-platform Apple successes, just like Microsoft has theirs (Office and Entourage for the Mac). More competition is good.
Re:And why does IE still hold about 80% of the mar (Score:3, Insightful)
Unforgiving the smallest error? Let's check the market share of IE again ...
That statement does have some merit if you are a third-party Windows development house. Windows is MS' own personal playground so they have more latitude to make a hash of things. This isn't true of anything that directly competes with either an MS product or one of the biggies like Adobe and Intuit. The people behind Opera seem to understand this.Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say the iPhone is a huge hit in the way that the iPod is a huge hit. Let's say it revolutionizes mobile web browsing (I think people spend too much time looking at the interface, the phone apps and the iPod app - the "real" internet "in your pocket" is the big deal). The iPod being a hit meant that iTunes became a standard on desktop PCs.
So if the iPhone is a success, people will spend a lot of time browsing sites on it, and people will write Web 2.0 sites for it. Simply put, if the iPhone is a mega hit, Safari becomes the standard for mobile internet browsing, and IE mobile is finished (I have it. It sucks anyway). I think this will happen. Safari marketshare is going to shoot up as more people use their iPhones to access the web (this is why I think that devs whining about the lack of an iPhone SDK is dumb. Web 2.0 is the way to go).
But no-one is going to spend all their time browsing on their phone. People will want to use the same 2.0 sites on their desktop machines. Do you really think that Apple can trust Microsoft or the Firefox devs to make sure that IE and Firefox will be compatible with all the sites that are aimed at iPhone users?
Wouldn't it suck if you were using a great Web 2.0 interactive site on your iPhone and you got to your desk and discovered it didn't work properly with your desktop browser?
Wouldn't it suck if it was hard to sync your bookmarks between your phone and your desktop browsers?
By allowing Safari for Windows, Apple is basically saying: "All you other guys better support Safari, because it will rule mobile browsing. If you think that you can create trouble for the iPhone by making it hard for sites to be compatible with both the iPhone and Windows desktop browsing, then we're going to stop that by telling everyone that if their favourite sites work on their phone, but not their desktop, that they can download a browser that will make it work on the desktop. And added to that, we are going to make it super easy to sync bookmarks between Safari on the desktop and Safari on the phone. People will want a seamless experience between their mobile browsing and their browsing on traditional computers. Ignore this at your peril."
If Apple comes to rule mobile browsing, then it will be in a powerful position to determine web standards. Safari is insurance against others who might rock the boat.
Misses the mark (Score:2, Insightful)
A zero cost advertisement 'war'... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not really news, not really unique to Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
The bundling is awful. The only technically required bundling is QuickTime with iTunes, since iTunes depends on QuickTime. At least now it's fairly public what you get - I remember when you had to hunt around for the "QuickTime only" link. Those kinds of tricks aren't just Microsoft-bad, they're Real-bad.
Safari for Windows is a blessing for web developers. Up until early June, three of the four most used browsers were available on Windows (IE, Firefox and Opera), but the third most used (Safari) wasn't. The more browsers are available and popular on Windows, the more people will finally understand that "standards-compatible" doesn't mean "works like IE". Building for standards, checking in each browser and then doing horrible hacks you wish you didn't have to do to make it work in IE is a better way than the old and broken way: building for IE, checking in the other browsers and sighing about the other browsers not being standards compliant. (I wish I had a nickel for every time someone gave me that crap.)
I'm a Mac OS X user. Firefox is great on Windows, but on Mac OS X it's sticking out like a sore thumb, and it's much slower than the other alternatives. My primary browser is OmniWeb, which uses a variant of WebKit and offers and pioneered some interesting functionality like site-specific settings, a vertical list of tabs with thumbnails, workspaces where sets of windows and tabs are persisted. Even if OmniWeb is an odd choice - it costs money! my god! I must be a complete moron! - almost no one I know use Safari because of the wide ecosystem of good browsers, like Firefox, Camino (a Cocoa app embedding Gecko), Shiira (an alternative WebKit browser) and OmniWeb. Safari has never been considered really good against this background, but it's starting to turn competent in 3.0. Inline Find, draggable (and de/re-attachable) tabs and something as simple as asking when you quit and have tabs open and finally, only took them four damn years, AppleScript tab support means Apple has done a lot of basic tackling and is really listening to people beyond gluing on RSS support and working on WebKit alone. I had almost given up hope.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Umm, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me go out on a limb here and say that anyone that has Safari already knows about Apple.com. How else would they get the fucking browser?
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:3, Insightful)
Safari on Windows effectively serves as a development environment for non-OS X developers who want to deploy iPhone apps. And in the end, even 5% total marketshare for Safari is good because it pushes web standards just a little bit more.
If Safari is so standards compliant, why does would developers need Safari on Windows to develop for iPhone? Couldn't they just use another standards based browser like FireFox and Opera? Or do they all use seperate sets of "standards"?
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac developers: the butlers, the chauffeurs, the concierges, the maids of computerdom.
The real money is in selling to those who control install-bases of thousands of computers and devices. You can't even manage a device you can't put your own applications on. The iPhone will have zero presence in the enterprise market, and without third-party support, it never will.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
Simplicity is why I switched to Firefox and Opera from MSIE in the first place. And now both Firefox and Opera have expanded to become the same bloated fatware as MSIE. And Firefox has become just as buggy also.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone knows that mp3 is OK, but the quality is not as good as AAC or WMA at similar bitrates. Would you rather have improved codecs in an open format like AAC or a format controlled by Microsoft? I'll take the open format thanks.
I'm starting to wonder if Jobs believes he can dethrone Microsoft. I don't mean that he thinks that Apple will replace Microsoft, but that Apple will force third party developers to open standards and free us from the tentacles of the Redmond beast. He's already done it with music. Now he seems to be trying internet browsers. What next?
Not Windows Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not the problem, that is its greatest feature. Same as iTunes.
Re:A rule of thumb.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the people are willing to live with Microsoft's products, I'm sure they will be more than happy with those of Apple as well, and quality doesn't seem to be the most important factor today.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:2, Insightful)
Hysteria all around us (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we need all those fortune tellers? "Why Microsoft's Zune scares Apple to the core" is of the same author (a former editor of Windows Magazine). The other guy, a man who wrote "Has Apple tripped up with Safari?" had his previous blog entry explaining how to run XP Solitaire under Vista!
Should it really mean that Safari has a chance then? hmmmm. Being standards compliant is one of the virtues of the little beast.
Hey folks, it's just one amongst the browsers. Mac OS X runs more than a handfull of browsers. Do we hear mac addicts scream in agony over so much choice? No. So why go berserk over Safari for Windows?
Move on, use your browser and be happy.
I'll take that action (Score:3, Insightful)
I will bet against both for the forseeable future. Mobile "browsing" is now and always will be a novelty. Access to mobile information services is another thing altogether. With the possible exception of messaging (blackberry, sms, etc) that is an idea ahead of it's time. (immature application base)
The iPhone will fail because it too is a luxury novelty product. In an age of $50 feature rich cell phones, why would consumers choose a $500 option? Sure there will be those that like "cool" stuff, but business users are about the only demographic that can (en masse) justify a $500 phone, but they won't if it won't sync to Outlook. Even the novelty market may not accept it if the keyboard isn't accurate and responsive enough for rapid SMSing. (Touch screens never are) Plus there's a deluge of cheaper, (better?) competitive products from more established or more fashionable companies. (like the Samsung or Prada)
Does anyone else smell fear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Another rule of thumb.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The term Beta software used to be a synonym for 'Unstable, bug ridden and insecure'. Unfortunately Google has devalued the meaning of the term to the point where you and others seem to think it is normal for 'Beta software' to be stable, bug-less and secure. Not everybody has followed Google's lead in never taking products out of Beta state even after they are long since mature so you will have to get used to what that means.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, let's say "HSDPA" instead of "3G", since 3G is more a marketing term than a technical spec. My (admittedly unconfirmed) suspicion is that Apple developed the iPhone with EDGE because they didn't know which carrier they'd actually sign up with in the States, let alone Europe. They wanted as wide a playing field as possible initially, because they knew it'd be a hard sell to get a carrier to meet all their demands as it was. Would I prefer HSDPA? Yes, even acknowledging the caveats that it's not available in nearly as many markets here, and also acknowledging that the markets HSDPA is already deployed in are big metro areas where you're more likely to find spots you can switch over to wifi.
Having said that: speed isn't everything. Maybe you think the iPhone will be "worse internet" than existing phones, but that depends on what phone you're comparing it to. I have a T-Mobile Sidekick and generally like it, and it's an EDGE-speed device. The iPhone will kick its butt in terms of user experience, because the interface matters a lot. If the Sidekick was HSDPA, would the EDGE-only iPhone still kick its butt? For many web sites: yes. If your mobile browser can't handle Google Maps, it doesn't matter much that it's failing to browse that site at five or six times the speed of the iPhone that's displaying it successfully.
I think (some) people keep failing to recognize what Apple's gambit with the iPhone is: they're betting that its "killer app" is the UI. There's nothing that the iPhone does that other mobile devices don't already do, but there's nothing that does those things the way the iPhone does. It could well end up being a high-profile collapse. But I think it's a fascinating gamble, and it's a variant of one that Apple has pulled off successfully more than once.
Re:Yet they still use IE... (Score:2, Insightful)
IE has realistic advertising, and Safari doesn't. When Microsoft released IE 7, and it wasn't perfect, people still forgave them because the claim that IE 7 improved security necessarily involved an admission that IE 6 security had been pretty crap. When Apple released Safari with a big fanfare, claiming that it was "secure from day 1", obviously people were not impressed when security flaws were discovered within hours. If Microsoft made claims like that, Microsoft would also be ridiculed. But Microsoft doesn't.
And IE is (fairly) decent Windows software, and Safari isn't. Let's not forget that IE 7 was heavily criticised for messing with Windows UI conventions, and for enabling ClearType by default - but it still fitted the fundamental Windows paradigm, while Safari tries to impose a totally foreign windowing system on people who cannot imagine only being able to resize a window from the bottom right corner, and a totally foreign font system that looks like nothing else on the Windows platform.
Sorry, but the same standards are being applied all round. If Apple can't take being held to the same standards as Microsoft, it should go back to a platform where it gets to choose what the standards are.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:1, Insightful)
When the CEO or Chairman wants to use his iPhone, which he bought because he thought it was slick, with the company systems, who's going to tell him otherwise? Not some IT person, whose job depends on said iPhone user...
The blogger has no idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The insular Apple universe is a relatively gentle place, an Athenian utopia where Apple's occasional missteps are forgiven, all partake of the many blessings of citizenship, and everyone feels like they're part of an Apple-created golden age of lofty ideas and superior design."
that phrase in particular is utter crap and an invention necessary to justify the argument
It's funny that the author clearly has no idea on Apple at all. In fact the Apple audience are known to be excessively vicious to the Apple company, suing it for the slightest of issues. E.g. Right now apple is getting sued because some users believe the pixels on their displays "sparkle" a little bit.
Apple have -never- been in some kind of tech utopia where it's audience has willingly blind sided all their mistakes. Geeze, people still wave newtons around at Jobs during keynotes in silent protest.
Also, while the blogger believes that no one is interested in safari.. it seems to be downloading it's pants off. (So it seems that people are even interested in just having a look, which is contrary to this impenetrable wall of windows browsers that they author conveys.)
I think the author needs to get used to seeing safari around, especially once iPhones start browsing the web.
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:1, Insightful)
1. If you don't put any applications on the device then you don't have to manage them. Several companies lock up the Blackberries they give thier employees so that they do not install anything else on them. What besides a webrowser, email, address book, calendar (appointment reminder) and doc (word, excel) readers do you need on the phone? That is pretty much the set that folks on locked down Blackberries get and utilize.
2. The iPhone is just about as closed as an iPod. In fact it is to a large extent just an iPod with a phone and larger screen tacked onto it. Where is the huge outcry that the enterprise can't install applicatinos on the iPod been for the last 3-4 years? Oh that's right; there hasn't been one.
3. For internal corporate applications why do you want to store "enterprise data" on an iPhone... which can get left on the train, fall out of the pocket, dropped and destroyed, etc????? If the data isn't there, why put the application there? Why not put the put the application on the path between you can manage without connectiong to 100's, 1000's of devices? I'm sure there are Fortune 1000 business out there that are being run by a collection excel spreadsheets with really spiffy macros and VBA scripts on 30-40 folks' desks.... but why would you want to have a system like that? Or by giving everyone a PDA and having 100's or 1000's of calendars versus having a centralized calendaring system. Which one leads to a more collaborative calendaring situations?
4. Training costs. If folks can use the same Web 2.0 app on their PC as on their iPhone they don't have to learn anything 'new' (besides navigation quirks of the device; mouse, multi-touch) to move between both devices depending upon which one is most immediately available.
I'm sure someone will wail about what happens when it is disconnected, but the "i" in iPhone is largely there for "Internet" (not "I" as in individual ). If you are not hooked to the internet most of the time by the phone in where where you need to use it... why by it. It is like saying what can you do with a cellphone when you are off-network and can get no signal.
Yes there are some situations where one would want a specialized app on the iPhone. However, it would be dubious to launch iPhone so that it was all things for all people on the first release.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Why Apple really released Safari on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
it's an iphone SDK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh look! (Score:3, Insightful)
It was really interesting, in that he has no idea what he's trying to say.
Safari on windows will do exactly what apple wants: Get another ~1% of the market-share, make things easier on native apple users, and create a nice alternative to FF/IE/Opera/Gecko
Re:They're Not There to Win (Score:3, Insightful)
geez, get over it, safari is the iPhone devkit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh look! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only that I'll bet there are more people who have the skills to write a dashboard widget using a little bit of html and scripting than have the skills to produce the equivalent in windows mobile api. I'll bet that literally thousands of widgets appear for the iPhone in the weeks following its launch. Some of them will even be really good!
Not About Winning (Score:2, Insightful)
And in any case, Apple isn't out to win a browser war. There isn't a war, or even any battles. Apple's tilling the ground for the release of the iPhone with its Safari-like browser and web apps, and it wants to make sure that Windows developers start checking their web sites for compatibility issues. If a lot of people decide the like Safari, that's great, but it's not the priority at the moment.
As for all of that other claptrap about starry-eyed Apple Mac users drifiting in a dreamy utopia, the man knows nothing beyond the sleek, stylish ads that apple runs if he thinks that's the world that Mac users inhabit. They are anything but bucolic.
Re:Oh look! (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't care a bit about taking market share in the browser space, that would just be icing on the cake. What they really needed was a way to get web developers to write apps for the iPhone which has no SDK. The only 3rd party apps will be Safari web apps and non-Mac developers needed a way to write to the platform without being forced to buy a Mac if the iPhone is going to be successful.
Re:The blogger has no idea. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the author are referring to the Apple fanboys that go on messageboards and discussion-sites (like, say, slashdot) and defends Apple to the teeth, claiming that the safari-browser is really catching on, despite a bogus downloading number and the mountains of criticism it it has gotten. You know, the type that claims that apple fans really are the greatest computer users ever, that they do hold apple up to a huge standard that apple (and only apple) can possibly meet! It's not only apple that's the greatest computer company of all time, they also have the best greatest fans!
Ever seen those kind of posts?
(you can argue all you want, but if you can't agree that apple-users are biased in favour of apple, then you are too biased yourself. The author certainly has a point.)
I repeat (Score:4, Insightful)
IT'S AN IPHONE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM.
IT'S AN IPHONE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM.
Goddamn tech journalists and their ratings-driven "story templates." People are reading way to much into this. Safari for Windows is an iPhone development platform, not picking a fight.