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Networking (Apple) Businesses Operating Systems Windows Software The Internet Apple

Safari for Windows Downloaded Over 1 Million Times 439

Posted by CowboyNeal from the popularity-contests dept.
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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Safari for Windows Downloaded Over 1 Million Times More

Safari for Windows Downloaded Over 1 Million Times

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  • It makes me wonder... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jZnat ( 793348 ) * on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:07AM (#19532027) Homepage Journal

    These statistics make me wonder if Konqueror 4 [konqueror.org] will become another large competitor on Windows. Konqueror and Safari both share a very common core (KHTML [wikipedia.org]/WebKit [webkit.org]), so the renderring and page handling should be relatively the same. Web designers can get another speedy and a more native web browsers that tests their sites for the same purpose, and general users can get a lightweight, standards-compliant, open source web browser (without the OSS requirements, you can already get this with Opera [opera.com], of course) that won't try to enforce another platform's "look'n'feel" like Apple's apps all do.

    For the interested, you can grab an alpha copy of KDE 4 [kde.org] (download qt-copy, kdelibs, and kdebase at the very least; you can use either GCC/Cygwin or MS Visual Studio to compile it). On OS X, there are precompiled universal binaries for everything, and Kubuntu and openSUSE users can get packages for it from their respective websites.

    • Re:It makes me wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:16AM (#19532099) Journal
      These statistics make me wonder if Konqueror 4 [konqueror.org] will become another large competitor on Windows.

      It won't. The only reason Safari took off like this is because Apple is behind it.

    • It may be even better than that. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Balinares ( 316703 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:25AM (#19532175)
      Actually, the KDE guys (in particular, the ever awesome Zack Rusin [blogspot.com]) are working with the WebKit people in order to make WebKit work on the same rendering canvas that KDE uses (namely Qt's QPainterDevice). So Konqueror 4 will most likely use WebKit itself, rather than KHTML, on all three platforms, Linux, Windows and Mac.

      The reason why this is such great news is that this could possibly make WebKit, one of the most standard compliant engines out there, the number one option after IE (alongside with Gecko), which will hopefully prompt Web developers to, at last, respect the standards as the basics for any Web development.

      ... Just so long as WebKit doesn't end up deviating from the standards for whichever reason, anyway. Y'know. (Yeah, I've been in this industry too long to remain optimistic, I know.)

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by encoderer ( 1060616 )
        <quote>which will hopefully prompt Web developers to, at last, respect the standards as the basics for any Web development</quote>

        You don't think that developers would like to be able to develop against concrete standards today? We have to develop where the users are. And if the users are on IE, as unfortunate as it is, we have to develop there.

        In a perfect world I'd prefer everyone was on Firefox, but that's just my pref. If I could count on a critical mass having XUL and SVG, etc, it would fre

        • Re:It may be even better than that. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by thegnu ( 557446 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [ungeht]> on Saturday June 16, 2007 @12:03PM (#19533117) Journal

          And while I might get flamed for saying this, I don't really care: If all this compliaince BS was actually to HELP developers, the OSS community would've adopted IE settings as the standard.

          Because it's not consistent, and it's broken. It doesn't act as you would expect it. Microsoft is a member of the W3C, who decides on webstandards. Then, IE breaks them (Microsoft owns IE).

          Microsoft helps make standards. Microsoft breaks standards. So, to reiterate, it's unfeaseable, and a stupid idea is why.

        • Re:It may be even better than that. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @12:07PM (#19533157)

          If all this compliaince BS was actually to HELP developers, the OSS community would've adopted IE settings as the standard. I mean, why not?

          Because the standards are there for a reason, and IE's implementation is broken. It might not be a big deal in the short-term - but if we pander to people who break the standards, where does it end? In 10 years, we have a thoroughly broken "box model" just because Microsoft uses a broken model today? It's about consistency and logic, not expedience. And if we start caving to Microsoft today, what does that bode for the future? they will just be more brazen, because they can expect any changes they make to be be added to the standards.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by gig ( 78408 )
            > If all this compliaince BS was actually to HELP developers, the OSS community would've adopted IE settings
            > as the standard. I mean, why not?

            Because this would require cooperation from Microsoft and they do not cooperate.

            The WebKit and Gecko programmers work together on standardization. For example, WebKit introduced the canvas tag which is used in Mac Widgets, and Gecko implemented this also, however during the standardization process, the way the canvas tag "should" work was changed, and then WebK

        • Re:It may be even better than that. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Balinares ( 316703 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @12:25PM (#19533301)
          Several things there.

          1) De-facto standards, where a given arbitrary product is the reference, and codified standards, as described for open implementation, are VASTLY different things. Can you tell why? (Here's a hint: the answer contains the words 'lock-in'. I'll let you ponder that while ruing the lack of Firefox and XUL user base.)

          2) However, reference implementations are a good thing, because they, as you rightly point out, help developers. Not providing a reference implementation of CSS is possibly the biggest mistake the W3C made.

          3) In a perfect world, you'd be using just whatever the hell you want and it would make no matter. Gecko lock-in is not much better than IE lock-in. (Case in point: browse the commit logs of other browsers and count how many entries there are that go, "Emulate Firefox bug such-and-such so as to display somesite.com correctly". Seriously.)

          And lastly,

          4) I am slightly annoyed that you seem to assume I don't know about Web development. Because, meanwhile, in the real world, our issue tracking system is littered with tickets that read something like:

          "Dear Mr. Important-customer-at-huge-company,
          The issue you report looks like a bug in Internet Explorer. We'll allocate developer ressources to implement a work around for the next revision of the product. Kind regards, etc..."

          This costs money. This costs resources that could be allocated to building better mousetraps, to make awesome shit, to create stuff to be proud of and to drive things ahead. Instead... Working in this field today is trying to build castles on swamps, and it's a daily struggle to not cave in and just sell shaky wooden shacks (painted cheap gold as per marketing's instructions) like the rest of 'em.

          And this is not something I can do anything about.

          However, you can.

          Will you, in all consciousness, make the choice to be part of the problem? That choice is yours and yours only.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by zstlaw ( 910185 )
          As a professional web developer - standards compliance would be nice. It would allow mediocre developers to again claim to be web developers and compete with me but it means that I could spend more time developing application functionality and not handling formatting differences.

          My company only officially supports IE and yet there are rendering issues, CSS bugs, and scripting errors between IE versions. Even worse behavior varies on the same version of IE on different versions of windows (IE6.0.2900 handl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 )
      If you consider that the only version I've downloaded isn't even capable of displaying bold text, I'd say Safari on Windows may one day become the third browser, but we're nowhere close to that right now.

  • Dumb speculations (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alphager ( 957739 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:08AM (#19532037) Homepage Journal

    "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."

    If my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle.
    • If the dog hadn't stopped to have a crap, he would have caught the rabbit.

  • Excellent news :-) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:10AM (#19532047) Homepage Journal
    That's almost as many downloads as firefox got in its first 24 hrs.

    A new browser - that will target a different userbase to FF & divide the market up a little more, will make the web a better place for everyone.

    • Re:Excellent news :-) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thomas.galvin ( 551471 ) <slashdot&thomas-galvin,com> on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:15AM (#19532091) Homepage

      A new browser - that will target a different userbase to FF & divide the market up a little more, will make the web a better place for everyone.


      Absolutly, and I think that's the only market that will really go for Safari. I'm a Mac guy, but I use Camino at home and Firefox at work. Safari doesn't have anything great that will make me switch. But, if it's bundled with itunes, I can see a lot of people who use IE because it's the default making the switch.
    • Except Firefox was not new except in name, it had an established user base that wanted to try it immediately. I agree with your second comment. The more competition on Windows for IE, the better. Perhaps it will convince developers to quit releasing web applications which require ActiveX...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) *
        Except Firefox was not new except in name, it had an established user base that wanted to try it immediately

        That's why I made the comparison. FF 1.0 went from 0 to a huge userbase very quickly. For Safari to get downloads in the same ballpark is fantastic. Imagine what's going to happen when they bundle it with itunes.

    • Re:Excellent news :-) (Score:4, Informative)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:33AM (#19532241) Homepage Journal

      If, of course, people keep using it.

      I've downloaded Safari for Windows (twice, in fact: home and work), and while I'm keeping it around for testing (like I keep Opera around) I have no intention of using it as my primary browser.

      There are a number of reasons for this, but the most basic reason is that Safari doesn't fit in with Windows that well. I'm not talking about the "look," Aqua under Windows is fine, I'm talking about the "feel." The biggest example for me is that the back/forward buttons on my mouse don't work in Safari. They do work in Firefox. Plus Safari doesn't use standard Windows shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-] for next tab versus Ctrl-Tab, for example).

      Other things like extensions also keep me using Firefox over Safari. I like AdBlock Plus and NoScript, and those just aren't available for Safari.

      • Actually there are several AdBlock-like extensions available for Safari. I don't know that the extension structue is availabe on Windows, or that the extensions would work there anyway, but it's possible. I personally use Saft [apple.com], there are also alternatives that don't cost $12. I haven't found anything that works like NoScript (or the extension I really want -- FoxyProxy [mozdev.org]) but ad-blocking at least is available.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gig ( 78408 )
        > I've downloaded Safari for Windows
        > I have no intention of using it as my primary browser.
        > Firefox.

        The thing is, Apple doesn't really want you to use Safari. Neither does Google. They are really happy with you as you are because you are already using a standards-based browser. You are a good Web citizen. You are easy to author for, easy to serve in the future.

        However there are many people using Explorer because it came with their PC and they don't know any better. Getting those people to just tr

    • Re:Excellent news :-) (Score:5, Informative)

      by RalphBNumbers ( 655475 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:52AM (#19532401)

      That's almost as many downloads as firefox got in its first 24 hrs.


      That kind of depends on which release of Firefox you're talking about.

      The first "preview release" of Firefox took about 100 hours to break 1 million downloads.
      Then Firefox 1.0 hit 1 million downloads in about 24 hours.
      And Firefox 1.5 hit 1.5 million downloads in the first 24 hours.
      And Firefox 2 hit a bit over 2 million downloads in the first 24 hours.

      I'd say the first public beta of Safari for Windows is most equivalent to Firefox's first preview release, so in those terms it's doing pretty damn well, especially considering it was just mentioned at WWDC and then immediately posted on Apple's website, whereas Firefox had been publicly developed and hyped for a long time before it's preview release. But then again, it's still well below the rate of download of the most current release of Firefox.

      A new browser - that will target a different userbase to FF & divide the market up a little more, will make the web a better place for everyone.


      Well, everyone except microsoft and mozilla, who could lose market share and search revenue...

      I really hope that Apple does carve itself a good chunk of windows browser market share, because that would provide a lot of support for a more standards based and platform/browser independent web. But I'm not sure Apple is really betting anything on their ability to do so; if they just make it easier for more web developers to target and test for Webkit/Safari/iPhone/etc, I think they'll consider Safari for windows a success and take any market share gains as a nice bonus.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Poromenos1 ( 830658 )
        Based on your data, they should just release Firefox 6000, then the browser wars would be over.

  • Also (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:14AM (#19532077)
    Congratulations to Slashdot and its 1 millionth Safari 3.0 story!

  • Competition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by desenz ( 687520 ) <roypfohNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:14AM (#19532085)
    I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by kanweg ( 771128 )
      Well, in the sense that PC users who are adventurous enough to try Firefox might also give Safari a try and perhaps stick with it, yes. But Apple has something Firefox doesn't: iTunes. Apple can reach millions of PC users who may never have heard of Firefox, but may give Safari a try because they like iTunes.

      I don't cry any tears over a little loss of marketshare for Firefox. Let's rejoice the fact that the marketshare of standards-compliant browsers goes up. THAT's why it is important to eat away at IE's m

    • Backwards (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:41AM (#19532307)
      It seems more likley to me, that a casual user who is just roaming along using IE today and blissfully unaware of Firefox would be more likley to stuble upon or otherwise install Safari - especially if it's installed as part of the iPhone setup, but even just normal Apple marketing may reach them. Firefx users might rty it but are less likley to switch since it offers less over what they already have.

    • Re:Competition (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doctor Crumb ( 737936 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:48AM (#19532373) Homepage
      I'd be willing to bet that a large part of that 1 million downloads is neither IE users nor FF users; rather it would be those people who run multiple browsers already for various reasons (cross-platform web development being one). We'll see what the browser market share numbers do, but I predict that there will be minimal switching going on.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dwater ( 72834 )
        yeah, now those people don't need a mac to test on, so this'll reduce the number of macs sold.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gig ( 78408 )
        Of course lots of Web developers are downloading Safari, that is the same type who knows what WWDC is and cares about what browsers are out there.

        Consumers are going to get Safari for Windows free with their iPod and iPhone, just like they get Explorer free with their PC.

        - 100 million iPod users
        - 300 million iTunes for Windows users
        - 400 million QuickTime for Windows users ... all about to get Safari for Windows for free. It's as good as Microsoft's pre-install or maybe better since there is a moment where

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by A Friendly Troll ( 1017492 )

      I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.
      According to Steve Jobs, that is exactly what Apple wants [jubjubs.net].

  • Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:16AM (#19532101)

    If these downloads manifested into regular Safari users...
    I think a very large number of people, including myself, downloaded it just to see what it was like and have no intention of actually using it.
    • Of course not all those million people are going to keep using it, but just like Firefox download counts it shows a certain level of interest that is impressive (in the case of Safari an impressive number for something that was only mentioned at a keynote at a developer confernce).

      Who knows if Safai will stick with many people, but Apple did a good job of getting the word out it is there.

    • Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:45AM (#19532347)
      Yeah. I almost downloaded it just because I was curious of how Safari would look on Windows. (I stopped the download when I started reading about how this was a real Beta and not a release candidate build that we (as of late) have called Beta.)

      Perhaps Apple will make Safari an optional download when people download quicktime or iTunes. If so, they will likely get a lot of IE converts.

      While a couple years ago I would have said that they would not get a lot of Firefox users. But since Firefox is now mainstream, they will likely get a lot of converts from people that think the Firefox icon is for the internet and have no idea what an application really is.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Same here. I'm a browser junkie, so I had to download it. I was not impressed! I mean, I play with nightly builds of Firefox and SeaMonkey that are in better shape than the builds of Safari we've seen so far.

      The only reason anyone is taking Safari seriously is because Apple is behind it. If this were just another open source project, people would have just laughed at it and forgot about it.

      Even though Apple is behind it, I don't think it's a serious contender. It lacks the majority of the features which cau

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by syousef ( 465911 )
      I had every intention of using it. I downloaded and installed it at work only to learn that using a proxy caused a crash, and turning the proxy off required that I do so in IE and restart Safari. In any case proxies aren't optional where I work (and many others are in the same boat). What kind of piece of shit browser does not even support proxies in a public beta? Apple wasted my time. The experience irritated me and I probably won't be trying Safari again for a very very long time. I wonder how many other
  • Seeing as many of those downloads will be from web developers and plain ol' interested folks wanting to see what all the fuss is about. If all those FireFox downloads were actual FireFox users, FireFox would be the most-used browser on the market, or at least have a larger-than-25%-or-whatever share. Downloads!=users, especially for software as buggy as Safari.

    (And I'm not flaming anyone or anything here, just pointing out the fact that 1m of anything only equates to 1m of exactly that, and nothing else)

  • I believe it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Azureflare ( 645778 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:19AM (#19532117)
    I downloaded Safari when it was announced, and it's a really slick browser in windows. It's got a little quirks that are reminiscent of mac os x features that might be confusing to PC users, but honestly it's great being able to test safari, firefox, opera and IE all in windows now. It makes my job much easier as a web dev.

    I'm really glad that apple released this, and I hope it does well at establishing a good sized customer base. Competition is _always_ good, even if it draws market share from firefox.
  • Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE. It's main competitor is Firefox, but I can't imagine many FF users switching to Safari as it confirms every prejudice I as a Windows user have about Mac software: it looks grey and it works against me (e.g. no ctrl-enter, can't resize it easily).
    • 'Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE.'

      My prediction is that when Safari is available on windows (right now it is just an unstable beta) it will be as simple as not unchecking the box when installing ITunes. Every house with a teenager will have Safari installed.

  • Canabalizing FF? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:20AM (#19532121)
    It's safe to assume that a certain percentage of windows users will never download a different browser b/c a) they don't know about alternative browsers b) IE is good enough c) don't care. How many of those users that don't fall into the above catagories downloaded firefox and then in the past couple of days downloaded Safari? Could sarfari be canabalizing FF users? Are we just seeing 'churn' here whereby people go from FF to safari and back again?

    I highly doubt these 1million were users that have never used a third party browser.

  • Unfortunately... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:21AM (#19532133) Journal
    Unfortunately, the type of computer user that would download and evaluate different web browsers are the type of users that have likely already switched to Firefox. So if these people stick with Safari then it will be mostly at the expense of Firefox.

    The majority of people I know that use Firefox do so because I either told them to download it, or I downloaded and installed it for them. They will use whatever program gives them internet access that has a convenient shortcut on their desktop or quick launch menu, and as long as webpages and stuff appear when they click on things then that's what they will use until they replace their computer.

    Dan East

  • Flawed assumption (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:21AM (#19532141) Journal
    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.

    That is, supposing it gets the 10% market share from IE, and not from Firefox, for example.

  • For how long...? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:21AM (#19532143) Journal
    The interest seem to have been pretty high, but I wonder if anyone there could use it for more than a straight full hour.
  • I'll also will be using it only very rarely.

    Why? 1) I was curious, and 2) I thought that maybe I could use it for those very rare pages I visit that don't work well with Firefox, rather than use IE. Although, I have to have a very good reason to visit pages that don't work with Firefox -- usually I just boycott that site, probably forever...

    Honestly, I probably would use Safari more, because it is faster, were it not for one simple fact:

    No Flashblock. No Adblock. No Use.

    Just that simple. You wi

  • Safari & XP64 not in love ? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chatterton ( 228704 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:29AM (#19532219) Homepage
    I have just downloaded it when I saw this story, but safari doesn't seems to work very well with slashdot or other more simples web page on my XP 64 box :(

    See by yourself: Screen shot [cabuzel.net]

  • I hate to admit it, but john Dvorak had an interesting theory[1]. Google pays the mozilla foundation $50 million/year or so for redirecting searches their way. I believe Google also had a deal with Opera (the latest version of Opera seems to default to yahoo, though). Is google paying Apple for Safari searches? If so, a windows port could bring in $10 million/year easily, enough to pay for the port and subsidize continued development.

    1. Actually, he had one interesting sentence, which I'm expanding on.

  • 1M downloads != 1M users (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brundlefly ( 189430 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:33AM (#19532237)
    Nobody can know for sure, but many suspect that this isn't one million accountants and ebayers downloading Safari. It's more likely a combination of curious iPhone developers, eager Apple fanboys, and a bunch of your average browser-tier developers.

    No story here.

  • Apples extra spice ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SplatMan_DK ( 1035528 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:34AM (#19532251) Homepage Journal
    The reason Safari for Windows might actually be a serious competitor on the browser market, is because Apple has something many others have not: Talented GUI oriented developers who can add that extra "spice" that will make ordinary people actually switch IE7 with something else.

    Think about it. People with technical insight choose FF/Opera over IE because it offers them features that IE doesn't have. People without technical insight just don't care about these features - they don't use plug-ins, skins, or strange shortcut keys.

    If I were to convince "regular non-technical users" like my mother, aunt, neighbour, etc. to switch to a non-IE browser, I would need something that appealed to them. Fancy plug-ins ad strange/smart hotkeys is not what they are looking for - they want a sleek, graphically appealing and (for them) intuitive user experience.

    Apple is in the business of delivering that EXACT experience! Not too many fancy settings and details, just the sleek and appealing interface that common people understand.

    If Apple play their cards right, they could be a serious challenge.

    Personally I'll stick with FF (on all 3 platforms I use) but I can certainly understand why the less technical "common users" would fall for the "Apple experience". They are really good at adding that extra GUI spice ...
  • When trying to use passwords Safari will crash.

    Their site says the fastest browser but i really doubt that.

  • Downloads aren't users (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:36AM (#19532261)
    I downloaded Safari right away just because it was there. I ran it, thought, oh that's nice. Maybe good for testing browser compatibility some day. Then went back to Firefox. Same thing with everyone I know who downloaded it. Certainly Safari on windows will never be anyone's primary browser. But it will certainly find uses. Testing web pages, iphone development, and of course embedding the engine in iTunes (did it use IE up til now?). Jobs claimed Safari was the best web browser on all platforms. I call BS. Even almost all mac users I know use firefox or camino because they need features and capabilities that safari just doesn't have. As far as features go, Safari is at the very back of the pack (worst). Even IE 7 is much better in terms of extensions, core feature set. Safari for Windows is the Steve Jobs reality distortion field at its finest.

    I do love how Safari for windows uses the nicer Cocoa font rendering. Really makes Windows' native font rendering look blocky and horrible. Does anyone know how to tweak freetype on linux to render the fonts closer to OS X? I already have hinting turned off and that helps, but the contrast of the fonts still isn't right (OS X fonts render a bit heavier, which I like on the screen).

    I also personally don't mind the cocoa widgets either. Cocoa looks nice and is highly functional. That's all I care about. Although it definitely would look very out of place on Vista. But on XP, I think it's fine.
  • and in other news, 999,990 of those were mac users installing Safari on the Windows PCs they're forced to use as desktops as work. The other 10 people were simply bored, and slightly curious.
  • Yet another platform to test my CSS / javascript / DHTML / Ajax on...

    Sigh...

  • And Uninstalled 1 million times (Score:5, Funny)

    by gtinferno ( 1012325 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @10:56AM (#19532433)
    There! I said it.
  • How long did it take the first version of Firefox to get to 1 million downloads as compared to Safari?

    That may say something about how the general public feels about open source offerings v. closed source offerings outside of Microsoft. Note: I am not making any comparisons about the quality of Firefox v. Safari (I use both, I like both), so don't blast me off Slashdot...

    I am just wondering what it says, if anything, about the general public's perspective.

  • Buggy As Hell...Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @11:06AM (#19532519) Homepage Journal
    Over a million downloads of Safari for Windows probably means a whole lot of disappointed people at this point. I personally have had nothing but trouble with Safari, textless menus and lockups. I finally gave up and uninstalled the thing. I know that betas are test versions, but honestly, Safari for Windows feels more like alpha class software right now. The general public should not be using this right now. I think they rushed this out in this bad condition because Steve Jobs wanted to talk about it and Safari as the host for 3rd party apps on the iPhone. It's always a bad thing when software is released to the public too soon in order to satisfy some marketing goal.

  • Half a million downloaded it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thabenksta ( 125165 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @11:08AM (#19532543) Homepage
    Then the same half a million downloaded it again the next day for the bug fixes.
  • Safari for Windows Downloaded Over 1 Million Times

    10 Million more Windows crashes reported.

    Of course, the question is: Who gets the blame over this. Microsoft, or Fake Steve Jobs?

  • Why switch to Safari if you already have Firefox?

    And neither runs ActiveX, meaning IE won't go away any time soon.

    • Safari offers two things that no other browser offers: Apple's font rendering and color space recognition of images [robgalbraith.com]. Lots of Windows people seem to hate Apple's font rendering, but as a Mac user I prefer it. Windows font rendering seems ugly.

      The color space stuff is a big deal to photographers, and it's very annoying that no other browser seems to respect the ICC color profile in images. I've seen a lot of discussion about Firefox versus Safari on the Mac and why Firefox seems to "wash out" images. It's rea

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gig ( 78408 )
        > Safari offers two things that no other browser offers: Apple's font rendering and color space recognition of images.

        In other words, publishing production standards instead of PC production standards.

        This will be especially important when we have 300 dpi displays, because at that point, all of the "screen" based media becomes obsolete and the screen becomes just another print medium. We will show things in inches/cm and the computer will use as many pixels as it can. That is the whole idea behind the PD
  • Step 0: Use Firefox. Step 1: Read on Slashdot, "Safari on Windows" Step 2: Google, "Safari download" Step 3: Safari downloaded. Step 4: Safari installed. Step 5: Wow! Safari is so coool. Step 6: Import bookmarks from Firefox. Step 7: Open 5-6 heavy websites, like Calendar, Gmail on both Firefox and Safari. Step 8: Safari is able to render the pages better, wow!! Step 9: Close Firefox. Step 9: After 5 minutes, safari crashed. Step 10: Open Firefox, forget Safari. Step 11: Happy!!

  • Why? Safari is just an SDK! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattgreen ( 701203 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @11:50AM (#19532987)
    Or at least that is what I was told by several people numerous times in the last Safari thread. Why are end users downloading and running this "SDK" as if it is an actual browser?

    Either its a browser or its an SDK. It doesn't change its role based on whether the news is good or bad.

  • People will download anything (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @12:48PM (#19533477) Homepage

    I'm always amazed at what people will download. I used to have a plug-in for Softimage|3D, the high-end animation system, on my web site. To download it, you even had to fill out a form. Yet thousands of people downloaded it, more than could possibly use it for anything. Even after I added large type warnings that you must have Softimage|3D to use this thing, there were still people downloading it. Even after Softimage|3D was discontinued.

  • How Apple cheated on benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)

    by g8oz ( 144003 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @01:52PM (#19534105)
    Basically the Safari fires the onload event before the document is ready. This gives the mistaken impression in some test suites that it is faster than it really is.

    http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/safaribenchmarks.html [howtocreate.co.uk]

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