“In just a couple short years, assuming Apple achieves its internal goals for iPhone sales, there will actually be more iPhones on the planet than Apple computers. Developers don’t want to have to test their standards-compliant Web applications against an Safari for Macs and Safari for iPhones and Safari for Windows. They want to know that if they test against Safari — any Safari — that their Web application will work just fine, no matter what platform they run it on. Just like Apple today provides ‘Create once, listen or view anywhere’ audio and video media for iTunes, Apple wants the same experience for the Web using Safari,” Carl Howe writes for Blackfriars’ Marketing.
“This experience is something Microsoft can’t do, since it has trivial penetration of cell phone browsers (there are more Nokia browsers out there on phones than Microsoft ones by a factor of 10 or more), and has lost interest in supporting Internet Explorer on anything except Windows. And Firefox doesn’t run on phones. Only Apple has the kind of software development reach that can cover all the platform bases. And don’t be surprised if Apple reaches out to Red Hat or Canonical to see if they’d like to bundle Safari into their Linux distributions. The ability to develop for one standards-compliant browser is compelling, especially when we look at the ability to develop desktop widgets from browser pages. And as Jobs noted yesterday, Web pages are currently the only way developers can get applications onto the iPhone, so making that process easy is in Apple’s best interest, even if those developers are on Windows machines,” Howe writes.
“Safari for Windows is just a beta now. It clearly needs refinement and will undoubtedly have to have some security issues resolved it’s as secure as Firefox or Safari on Macintoshes. But it’s another marketing tool in Apple’s software offerings to draw Windows users and developers into the Apple environment. And even small success there can boost both the content and sales of Apple’s software and the iPhone — and that’s worth one to two billion dollars every quarter from 2008 on. That’s one heck of a lot of money and revenue for Apple from a free product,” Howe writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Windows Safari is getting slammed for its bugs.
I wish Apple pre-tested this beta a little more before letting out in the wild.
The World Wide Web was created on the NEXT CUBE using NEXTstep.
Does it surprise you then that Apple inc has the capability to support any software that operates on the web?
beta
Is it just me or is Steve Jobs a bonefide genius?
MW=knew…as in I wish I knew how many of these ideas are his or the people around him.
Beeeel-yuns! I picture SJ secretly pointing his pinky to the side of his mouth and chuckling to himself. Is Cupertino on top of a volcano?
Safari for Windows SUCKS!!!!! Crashes and is very buggy!! Bad move for Apple to release this premature product even though it’s in beta it should be in alpha. (off he goes to defend Apple with the Bill Gates disciples….)
it is just you Buster
Sure Jobs is clever and lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, but as a whole the rest of the industry is down right stupid, greedy and for the most past clueless
Why did Apple call this a beta? Its alpha quality at best.
The Beta Safari for Windows sometimes loads pages, and other times it hangs, displaying nothing. This occurs for the same site(s). It’s all or nothing.
That said, when it works it is fast and it looks fantastic (especially fonts and the tasteful buttons) in comparison to the corporate mandated Internet Explorer on my work laptop. I dread the day the IT software inventory finds this rogue application and tells me I have to remove it. Once stable this one’s gonna be killer.
I sent an e-mail to my M$ friends telling them to give the best browser in the world a try.
Many of them told me: “It is crashing all the time”…
Not a good advertising for Apple.
Safari on Windows might be a great idea. I hope it won’t turn out to be a kamikaze move…
“Windows Safari is getting slammed for its bugs.
I wish Apple pre-tested this beta a little more before letting out in the wild.”
Yeah, right, because IE never has bugs .. oh, wait a minute, yes it does:
http://secunia.com/product/11/?task=statistics_2007
So don’t come on all innocent with posts like that.
Assuming people actually BUY the iPhone. Am I the only one smelling a G4 Cube flop coming down the pike with the iPhone?
“I sent an e-mail to my M$ friends telling them to give the best browser in the world a try.
“Many of them told me: “It is crashing all the time”…
“Not a good advertising for Apple.”
Yeah, right. Sure, you’re an Apple user, and sure you did that.
How much did MS pay you for posting that all round the net?
Safari for Windows is not perfect, but I’ve run it on Windows and I’ve ***yet*** to see it crash.
Running Parallels – Safari on XP worked FINE for me. Not a single crash.
Video playback in Safari worked exceptionally well too.
I was pleasantly surprised.
But since Explorer is tied to the OS – it will never be completely displaced. I only use it for system updates. It’s too untrustworthy for anything else.
iPHONE will be a MODEM too.
iPHONE will be a MODEM for MAC, IPOD , now with Safari ,even Windows Computer ( with extra connector).
Just connect with iPHONE,
We will be able to use Full internet thru AT&T wireless line,anyplace in the world.
No extra monthly cost.
@ Buster’s shadow
“Sure Jobs is clever and lucky to have been in the right place at the right time….”
You talk in the singular. it would appear he has been in the right place many times…ipod, colored iMacs, iTunes store, Intel/bootcamp and now iPhone. Surely this is not merely an uncommon alignment of the moons….
MacBill
Yes you are.
@MacBill…yes you are the only one that smells…lol
MacBill = MacDude
welcome back from the hospital
Safari for Windows is still off to a good start despite the problems with it.
Apple should have done this long ago.
Microsoft should have seen this coming though.
Microsoft only suggests they support web-applications and open source, while trying to kill them.
It is Google-Gears and Adobe-Apollo running via a browser such as Safari that will be cool. There will always be a variety of development environments: Carbon, Cocoa, Dashboard widgets, AppleScript, Java, Flash, etc, but I believe we are about to see the birth of a new web-based set of development tools that works seamlessly cross-platform (including Linux?) and across form factors; desktop, laptop, aTV and iPhone. And this set of tools are from a group of companies who want web-apps to succeed, not to kill them because they threaten their existing markets.
BTW, is QuickView on the iPhone? This would be cool to view email attachments. Also the button and scroll bars in Safari for Windows look like Aqua! – I assume to make switchers more comfortable. The only preference missing is synchronising bookmarks on Windows and Yahoo searching on the Mac.
P.S. try expanding this text-entry box in Safari 3.0 – very nice!
I’ve been using it since Monday A.M. on XP and have experienced no crashes. With the only error being trying to get into GMail.
Stefano Jobso,
The day that Apple’s software is measured by the same quality standards as Microsoft’s is the day that I stop using Apple’s products.
The issue here is not the quality (or lack thereof) of Microsoft’s browser on Windows.
The issue here is the quality (or, in this case, the surprising lack thereof), of Apple’s browser on Windows.
Apple has a long track record of shipping beta software that was far more usable, stable, and reliable than shipping products from many other companies.
The state of Safari for Windows falls far short of Apple’s (thus far) strong track record of software quality.
To preserve its reputation for quality software, Apple had better fix the crashes and other bugs in Safari for Windwos – and fast.
I LOVE the new find function is Safari3.
Also the options for resetting Safari. Cool.
And spellcheck,
I’ll put up with some quirkiness just for the new find function.
Safari for Windows, Apple better missed the WWDC in this case.
But as always; Steve Jobs created -a lot of noise around Safari- and on the long run he will succeed.