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."

KDE / Konqueror

[bms20]

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

No, they aren't

[k_187]

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.

Safari...?

[motek]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Firefox is the most at risk

[Dynedain]

I don't think that IE has much to fear from this. I think the project most in trouble by Safari on Windows is Firefox.

Firefox is already very easy to get and setup. And most people who have switched from IE have decided to go with FF.

I'm one of those people who think FF is getting bloated. Just look at the preferences panels... they used to be simple and clean, even nicer than what Safari currently has, but with each version, they've been getting more and more like the kludgey ones in IE and Mozilla (pre seamonkey).

And if Safari starts getting bundled with iTunes, then watch the install base soar, and the Firefox user market shrink.

Safari is the iPhone SDK

[null-und-eins]

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:OMG not another one

[Denis Troller]

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.

Hopefully

[Hawthorne01]

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.

Re:Open Letter

[oyenstikker]

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.

I am split

[Billly Gates]

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.

Re:All of the major news

[Anonymous Coward]

Vinceb, too proud to hit "Tab"
:P

Not an Apple-branded virtualisation solution?

[green pizza]

>> Not an Apple-branded virtualisation solution?

I, for one, am very happy Apple chose not to compete with Parallels / VMware. Apple and MS have already stomped on the toes of too many app developers in the past.

Re:Why Safari?

[hondo77]

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).

Re:Safari For Windows Fails For Me

[shmlco]

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

Re:A Kick In The Balls For Microsoft

[jb.hl.com]

It's the same "bundling" that got IE as the majority browser used against Microsoft for a change.

If Apple did that, they would be opening themselves up to antitrust actions, for the precise same reasons Microsoft got hauled over the coals; leveraging their monopoly in one area to gain one in another. Why the sudden glee at this thought? Is an antitrust violation now somehow a good thing if it's Microsoft on the receiving end? What sort of playground logic is this - two wrongs make a right, the enemy of my enemy...what? Why the sudden love of peoples' settings being changed transparently, and unrelated software being installed, by third-party software installers? Isn't that what RealPlayer gets slated for every so often on Slashdot?

Seriously, you're not the only one to suggest this, and it's a stupid idea. Maybe if you spend your time formulating ways to bring down Microsoft, it's a lovely thought, but to everyone else it's just plain stupid.

Re:Open Letter

[Sciros]

That's an ok way to think about it, but from a practicality standpoint it just doesn't matter. Since conforming to the w3c specs isn't something browsers are generally keen on, it's more an issue of how many different ones need to be accomodated than anything else. Which one of those browsers is "correct" is hardly relevant. It becomes moot altogether when that browser is 3% of those out there (depending on your audience, of course) :-/

Re:Open Letter

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Free versus paid software

[klubar]

Why is it that Excel (and Office in general) are wonderful mac apps and even programmed following the base platform standards, yet Mac apps that are ported to the PC always stand out like a sore thumb. I'm clearly not the only one that hates QT -- why does this app need to be in the systems tray? Is it possible to uninstall/kill quick time. Either the macs folks don't know how to program for the PC or want to kill the platform with bad software.

I think the difference is that Microsoft needs to SELL office on the Mac whereas Apple has to give away it's PC software.

And by the way, did the PC need yet another browser (beyone IE and Firefox)?

Re:Open Letter

[TheRaven64]

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

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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

[quacking duck]

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.

Unoptimized CPU hog

[Zhe Mappel]

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:All of the major news

[garbletext]

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.

Re:I agree 100%

[Incadenza]

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.

Re:fastest?

[J0nne]

It's not even the fastest. I compared both Firefox and Safari in a vmware image containing Windows, and Firefox beat out Safari on every page I threw at it. I'd test it natively, but for some reason Safari wouldn't install in WINE. Actually, when I compare konqueror's rendering speed with Firefox on Ubuntu, Konqueror is slower than Firefox too (on Ubuntu).

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

[Paulrothrock]

What's in it for Apple? Well, the more people associate Apple with a good experience, the more folks are going to want to buy Macs rather than PCs. Then, Apple makes more money.

The iPod is part of this strategy. The iPhone is part of this strategy. Safari for Windows is also part of this strategy.

Re:So you totally missed.....

[pushing-robot]

Apple is encouraging developers to write Ajax apps for the iPhone. Now Windows users can develop and test their webapps in Safari easily. Makes sense to me.

And with the same browser for OSX/Windows/iPhone, I'm sure Apple will be pushing for widgets/apps/whatever that carry over from your desktop to your iPhone.

Re:All of the major news

[mrsteveman1]

Inability to drop in commodity hardware remains one of the biggest reasons Apple will not gain as many converts as people think.

As much as Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on software, Apple has a literal monopoly on nearly everything that touches their machines.

Re:Cool

[drinkypoo]

the "in-window" menu bar (which is bad UI design

Stop saying that! I do not think it means what you think it means. Personally, I like being able to see the menus for various applications at the same time. It means I don't have to click the window and wait for something unattached to the window to update before I can make changes.

If you like the single menu bar, that's fine. I'm happy for you. But it's something that always bothered the hell out of me about the macos, and I'm glad they're the only ones doing it.

You are stupid

[EraserMouseMan]

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

[moderatorrater]

As much as I love standards, and I do, it makes it hard to deal with safari when every other browser works differently. In my opinion, if the standard works differently than 90% of the market, then maybe the standard needs to change.

Ugly

[Schnapple]

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:Let me know when...

[dr.badass]

Apple makes Safari run on Windows 2000

Why? Is there some advantage other than the fact that you would prefer it? You gloss over this point.

or when Safari can be installed on Gentoo.

Konqueror on Gentoo will render the same most of the time.

Then I'll be able to waste 10% of my time dealing with Safari's eccentricities

What eccentricities? Complying with standards? Have you even heard of Safari before?

I'm not upgrading Windows just because Apple says I should.

Where exactly did Apple tell you to upgrade Windows?

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

[diamondsw]

I don't know - if I told my business they could implement something two different ways, only one would alienate 10% of the user base - there's no way in hell they'd do it. The web has very different economics than desktop software. A bank is not going to alienate 10% of its customers. Amazon, eBay, NewEgg, Discover, etc are not going to let 10% of their potential customers walk away.

Re:I'm totally getting the Ultimate version.

[drsmithy]

"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:All of the major news

[heinousjay]

You know, you don't speak for everyone at Slashdot either.

Re:I agree 100%

[ptudor]

You must have not been old enough to suffer Word/Excel 6 for the Mac.

Yeah... I consider Office 98 to be a grand example of Mac integration from Microsoft, but that's from the perspective of Word 6.