“Is Safari coming to Windows? There have been rumors floating around for a while that Apple might be porting its Cocoa language to the Windows platform which would allow WebKit, the engine behind Safari, to run natively in Windows,” Scott Gilbertson blogs for Wired News.
Gilbertson writes, “Now it seems that the Mozilla Foundation thinks a Windows Safari port is a possibility. Buried in yesterday’s tentative Firefox 3 wiki roadmap document is this line: ‘WebKit may be ported to Windows.'”
“With the announcement of the iPhone the possibility of a Window’s WebKit port does seem like it would make sense… Some people think Apple would be better off not porting its software to Windows and keeping the ‘Mac experience’ unique to their own platform, but as Apple becomes less a computer manufacturer and more a device manufacturer it might make more sense to strive for interoperability.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bizarro Ballmer” for the heads up.]
what an idiot, why go to the firefox site to find information about a port of webkit to windows, when it’s all over the webkit site itself ?
by the way, the port of webkit to windows is NOT done by apple, AND webkit is not enough to make safari run on windows.
I was watching the keynote with no sound and got to carefully look at the effects Steve used on the keynote, and not listening (beeing distracted) to what he was saying. As a photographer I know from experience that most of the time people LOOK at things, but dont really SEE them. I was not able to replicate the effects used in the keynote in the current version of “Keynote” so we were probably also given a preview of iWork 07 and did not noticed it, but not so few people complained loudly that there was nothing said about the Mac. Dont just look at things, try to SEE them and if possible beyond the obvious.
I’m sure that the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place soon enough and iLife 07, iWork 07, Leopard and iPhone will create a very “nice”package. Like the other phones looked dated AiP (After iPhone) I’m certain Vista will also, sooner than later. Is it really necessary to port Safari to windows do do that?
There were some slots open on the home screen of the iPhone, who knows what will be in them between now and June?
why stop there? Why not port the iLife suite, too? Make much of the Mac software available for Windows, in the end I believe it’ll make more Windows users want to use Macs.
“Firefox is a great browser, and it is as good as Safari”
Then why do the Radio button in Firefox look like PC crap?
That’s just what we need. A lot of Mac software that looks just as shi*ty as their PC version.
A lot of Mac software that looks just as shi*ty as their PC version.
———————
Umm.. Hate to burst your bubble, but web browsers is one area where Apple didn’t exactly “innovate.” Safari came along after a slew of other PC web browsers and there wasn’t much difference between what Apple did vs. the PC guys. There are even a large segment of Mac users who use browsers other than Safari.
I’m with you, Macster1.
1) I like Firefox’s plugin architecture, but Firefox doesn’t work with .Mac.
2) Safari is faster—not by much, but it is faster.
3) Safari looks better (those radio buttons must be from Windows 3.1 or something)
4) Safari bookmarking rocks
I’m not sure if these 4 reasons are enough to convince some PC user that just switched from IE to Firefox to switch again to Safari.
NoSound: no, I saw – not only look at the 😀 I also saw Steve giving a sign of iPhone before talking about it
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I noticed something with the keynote, but I never really used it much, so I thought maybe there’s a way to do that effect.
Furthermore, those who said there was no mac are dumbos.
iPhone is running Mac OS, so that’s a Mac there!
“Hate to burst your bubble, but web browsers is one area where Apple didn’t exactly “innovate.”
Hate to burst your’s… Mosaic was the first browser and was available for the Mac before for the PC… then Netscape etc.
Then M$hit came out with IE, which was a lousy browser and with millions of mindless M$ lemmings they took over the Web and destroyed an emerging standard.
Apple iPhone have safari (browser) bookmarks, iTunes and iPhoto synchronization, and it’s compatible with both windows and macs. I’ve said it before that Apple will release iLife for windows and safari. If not, Apple has to figure out which browsers to sync the bookmarks and which photo program on windows to sync them.
Look at this way, at $79 a pop, Apple still makes a lot of money by selling iLife to both macs and pcs.
They’d be better off putting their effort into porting iChat for windows.
Macster1, you need to re-read my post. I’m not talking about who made the first browser (and it wasn’t Apple,) I’m saying that with Safari, Apple didn’t re-invent the web browser. Safari was (and is) very similar to every other web browser before it. And BTW, Mosaic was not made by Apple.
So there, your bubble is burst!
I can see no benefit to Apple by porting Safari. Ain’t gonna happen unless there is a business reason to do so. The iPhone will sell itself, so no need there.
Unless it is to utterly obliterate IE, and wipe it from the face of the earth. Then it might make business sense.
@Drunk Cheney
You can download Windows updates in Firefox (XP at least, I will never be able to speak for Vista) using the IE Tab extension, which will launch specific browser pages in their own Internet Explorer tab within Firefox.
It’s not truly using a different browser, but at least it helps limit your exposure to IE’s mediocre, godless heathen interface and security.
Cocoa is “unportable” to Windows.
Then explain this:
http://www.gnustep.org/resources/sources.html#windows
“Unless it is to utterly obliterate IE, and wipe it from the face of the earth. Then it might make business sense.”
Not a bad idea. This would help the adoption of web standards, and make it easier to tailor websites to both platforms.
Maybe Apple are doing some deal with Google (and/or Yahoo!) and will keep it exclusive to Safari. Something like web-aps to run on the iPhone – and also of course on a users desktop or laptop box. Then it becomes necessary to port Safari to Windows.
Get a F’king Mac and then you will have Safari.
Amen, DanoX – I can’t see any compelling reason for a Safari port to Windows. There’s no money in it, only a lot of hassle as frustrated Windows users try to get Safari to work on whatever mishmash of software and hardware they have cobbled together. It would be much easier to sync bookmarks from IE or Firefox and photos from the “My Photos” folder than to waste time with a browser port.
Maybe Thought Process is right about getting Safari’s numbers up.
Maybe it will be needed to update the iPhone also.(iTunes makes more sense)
Maybe iChat will be needed for videocalls to Macs AND PCs.(after 3G update)
Maybe iCal and Address Book will be needed for syncing.
This would get many to use Apple software besides iTunes.
People would then want to try more….
iWork and iLife and the others would need to stay a Mac experience.
Why? Firefox is at least as good.
I’d argue that Firefox is way better than Safari. Even on the Mac, itself. It works with everything and the choices in add-ons are practically infinite. Safari seems a bit snappier, but I would expect that from Apple software. If someone would ever optimize Firefox like Camino, you’d have the greatest browser ever..
Safari isn’t such a big deal, it’s a great browser, but not a wow experience.
iLife on the other hand is a WoW experience – people won’t switch to macs for Safari they will for iLife.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Safari for Windows. It’s better than Internet Explorer.
Apple would also be returning the favor to Microsoft. If you recall, Microsoft provided IE for the Mac before Safari was available.
To make it an option for Windows users, Apple can just bundle it with iTunes. Imagine, with tens of millions of iPod users already out there, that’s a lot of potential converts to to the total Mac experience.
Safari for PC for Free. That could be a new benchmark and utilize some form of security that works! People would download the hell out of that. If it worked, they’d want more Apple software.
At some point Apple may find the tipping point where a massive desire for Mac Mini computers occurs in the market place. I own two, they’re some of my favorite Macs. As Apple TV takes off there’s a LOT of upside here for Apple Inc.
There seems to be some confusion here about what “Cocoa”, “Safari” and “WebKit” are (as usual).
I’m not really an expert, but my understanding is:
1) Cocoa (or its predecessor) was already on Windows back when NeXT/Apple was making WebObjects for Windows. Remember “YellowBox” (the former name for Cocoa) and how it was going to supposedly run on Windows? Apple decided not to continue with this path, however, for reasons others have mentioned.
2) WebKit means 2 different things: it’s the API framework in OS X that safari and other apps can use to render web pages, AND it’s the browser engine itself (contained within that framework), which is open-source and based on KHTML.
3) The browser engine in WebKit is not really Cocoa technology, as it began life on Linux in the KDE project as KHTML. I doubt those folks wrote KHTML in Objective-C. The fact that WebKit is used on mobile phones and stuff is an indication that it’s something more “common denominator” like C++.
The NeXT development environment was available as “OpenStep Enterprise” on Windows NT, shortly before Apple bought NeXT. It’s still the best product of its kind ever shipped on windows, with the possible exception of some smalltalk products.
HOWEVER…
There’s a lot of code that’s come along since 1997, including a complete replacement of Display Postscript and Renderman with Quartz 2D and OpenGL, and bringing up today’s AppKit on Windows would be rather more work than it was to just bring up OS X on Intel.
Offering Apple’s crown jewels on Windows makes no sense. There’s not enough revenue available for it to be worth Apple’s time. The only companies that stay in business selling development tools are Microsoft, and a handful of third-parties who entire yearly profits combined don’t amount to a rounding error on an Apple quarterly report.
-jcr