“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.
Safari on Windows is such a major strategic and public move, that Apple will have to apply major engineering and quality control resources to stamp out the bugs. Just remember, Firefox on Windows started out the same way. Let’s see how fast Apple responds to the problems found — then we can judge.
OK, where the heck is iChat screen sharing???
That was one of the three major new features Apple promised for Leopard last year–and now it’s gone from Apple’s website! This was BIG–and one of the main reasons I was excited by Leopard. Sorry this is unrelated, but I’m hoping someone with a copy of the Beta can confirm whether it’s still in there. Does anyone else agree with me that this was important? Maybe we could join to push Apple to put this feature back in.
P.S. I’ll post on other threads as well–sorry if this is repetitive for you.
Like it or not, Beta has increasingly become a catch all term for software that isn’t finished. Perhaps it should be an Alpha but Apple aren’t the only ones who do it. Really, forgetting any overall stability issues or security problems, no-one should be actively using this thing – even web developers since rendering isn’t totally up to scratch yet apparently and therefore doesn’t serve a purpose for replicating the iPhone and/or Macs.
Seen all the critical bug fixes for Winodws and other Microsoft progs out today? Does that mean MS should not have released XP 5 years ago????
To the idiots who wanted a PERFECT safari beta, get real.
On a different -positive- note, I see that PDF’s in Safari now respond perfectly to the Command + or – for resizing. Thank you Apple. Having to go to the right click menu was a bore!
I’ve been using an HP laptop with Vista now for over 3 months without a problem or crash. On the 2nd day of using Safari it crashed the laptop hard, ironically while I was reading the Ars Technica review of how buggy Safari 3 is. It took forever just to get the machine responsive enough to shut it down. This morning Safari got uninstalled.
Having a Mac (and aspiring to replace HP junk with a MBPro) I know Apple software is generally great, but this is not the way to get a foothold on Windows computers. Apple should withdraw the Windows beta until it is better developed. Yes, it’s a beta, but the Boot Camp beta worked flawlessly and that’s what people expect from Apple.
well done…
A little uneasy to see Safari in such rough shape when the iPhone is due. Did Apple fully test the phone? You would think they would have had a decent Safari out, Yikes.
Hoping the phone launch is tight.
I hate it when windowsfanboys have something to pick on.
Tried Safari for Windows on a brand-new work PC today. What a fscking joke. It popped up a window asking for a proxy password (possibly fair enough – we do have a proxy server in place – although neither Firefox nor Internet Explorer need to explicitly know a user name or password for this). It then promptly crashed. Rinse and repeat several times. I then uninstalled it, and it left my Internet Explorer configuration shafted, so that IE could no longer access internal server pages.
Apple have really dropped the ball here. Beta or not, this does nothing to persuade people that Apple is the superior brand. Indeed, completely the opposite.
In contrast, Safari 3.0 on MacOS seems rock stable so far.
MacBill, wait until the iPhone gets released and everyone can judge it on it’s own merit. Compared to some other phones (without a wireless contract plan subsidy) it’s priced well.
I think the hype is just far too high for iPhone and don’t appreciate that as expectations will be enormous. MadTV did an excellent spoof on the unveiling of iPhone =) i was skeptical when iPod was released so i won’t pass judgement on iPhone until i get my hands on one.
The Cube was awesome but it was priced too high for what you got. iPod was far better than anything else out there at the time. I’m not so sure iPhone is far better than other phones.
Is it me, or are we seeing the beginning of the end for the PC (inc. Mac)?
iPhone device
OS X built in
Safari browser
Web apps
remote .Mac account
any external monitor (pref touch-screen and wireless)
… or ultra thin dumb MacBook.
stefano
your excuse for safari is poor. it’s just like when a young boy was asked to explain his poor grades in school by his mom, his reply was ” but mom, many of my classmates did badly too…”
this is the first apple browser for windows and first impression last…
“Tried Safari for Windows on a brand-new work PC today.”
I tried it in the first minutes it was available. No problems. No crashes. No messes. It’s still working just fine, and it’s the quickest browser on the damn box, bar none. And it looks good. One semi-glitch- the minimize box in the start bar doesn’t work- have to use the buttons. Big deal. No security issues, although we’re pretty heavily firewalled here. Made it the default browser after opening the second web site.
“Am I the only one smelling a G4 Cube flop coming down the pike with the iPhone?”
Yes.
“I then uninstalled it, and it left my Internet Explorer configuration shafted, so that IE could no longer access internal server pages.”
REALLY? Safari can take out IE on a PC??? THAT’S AWESOME!!! I’m going to install it everywhere!
Not sure what all of the complaining is about, I’ve been using the Safari for Windows beta for 2 days now and it hasn’t crashed on me once. Sure, it has some quirks that definitely need to be ironed out, but no crashes yet. Sounds like the ones having major issues are having problems with something else in their buggy Windows install….
THis is indeed bad news. If Safari is as bad as it seems to be on the PC, it sure will handicap the iPhone.
More surfing on Windows with Safari today. Never a crash – never.
I like it. It works great.
Could be because I’m running Windows on a Mac that it just runs better than on standard PC equipment?? Possibly?
Safari on windows is great news,
but what about iWorks?
I want iWorks 07 with spreadsheets!!!!!!!!!!
Oh well, at least this is better news
REALLY? Safari can take out IE on a PC??? THAT’S AWESOME!!! I’m going to install it everywhere!
Well said ChrissyOne!
I’ll join you on that crusade.
If you’re using Safari on Windows and it hasn’t crashed yet, just wait…
The Ars Technica review brought up another point about Windows Safari UI. What looks great in OS X is totally incongruous with the Vista or XP UI. You can only resize from the bottom right, the minimize/close buttons don’t have any color (at least maximize does actually do that, as opposed to OS X). MS Office 2004 plays nice with the Mac and looks great in OS X.
Safari on Vista looks about as silly as IE 7 would look on OS X. If Apple wants to live in the Windows operating system, why not make it look at least a little integrated with it like every other software maker. Love it or hate it, Vista has a consistent look that other 3rd party software works with. Safari/iTunes/Quicktime just don’t look right in there.
I just wanted to let you know that when I’m reading posts I immediately stop and move on when coming across idiotic but apparently fashionable terms as ‘fscking’ ‘biatch’ (and variants) ‘wtf?!!’ and the reprehensible ‘ROTFLMAO’.
I changed my default browser from FireFox to Safari on my HP/Compaq PC and it has not crashed once. Safari is working over the corporate VPN and directly.
Now if they could only get the Windows key to act as the Control-key!
“If Safari is as bad as it seems to be on the PC . . .”
beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta
beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta
beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta
beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta
beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta beta
<h4>Beta</h4>
A beta version is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world black/grey-box testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release.
The users of a beta version are said beta testers. They are usually customers or prospective customers of the organization that develops the software. They receive the software for free or for a reduced price, but act as free testers.
Beta versions test the supportability of the product, the go-to-market messaging (while recruiting Beta customers), the manufacturability of the product, and the overall channel flow or channel reach.
Beta version software is likely to be useful for internal demonstrations and previews to select customers, but unstable and not yet ready for release. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, a prototype, a technical preview (TP) or as an early access. As the second major stage in the release lifecycle, following the alpha stage, it is named after the Greek letter beta, the second letter in the Greek alphabet.
Often this stage begins when the developers announce a feature freeze on the product, indicating that no more feature requirements will be accepted for this version of the product. Only software issues, or bugs and unimplemented features will be addressed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_stage
Any of you critical Melvins out there ever stop to think the proportionality of crashing incidents of Safari in the Windows environment may be due to the infinite configurations of hardware and software and versions in that environment. Not to mention the fact that the environment is so sloppy without true preemptive memory isolation and pervasive memory leaks of all the apps and utilities in windows. It’s a wonder anything runs on windows for any length of time.
Sure Firefox does OK but until the crash incidents show a pattern across the different hardware and software no resolution can be made to correct Safari. This is research that can’t be done with Alpha software. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think Alpha software undergoes rigorous testing in house before it becomes Beta. The testing that Safari is undergoing now can only be achieved with a beta product. So all you cry babies out there can either help develop a superior browser or get the hell out of the way.
Bil-yons and Bil-yons of stars….
MW: degree — 33rd fer sure!
Something is going on today – AAPL is down $3.50 with heavy volume… Could Windows browser problems cause this?
Why is APPL stock down over $3.50 , with heavy volume this morning?
The vertical integration of software/hardware is the key. Occam’s razor is in effect. It just works.
MW: home — welcome home
Is it just me or is Steve Jobs a bonefide genius? —Buster
He’s a genius. There are obviously lots of talented people out there. How come nobody else thinks of these brilliant ideas? Steve really dropped Da Bomb with his “one last thing” announcement of Safari for Windows. My guess is that most “analysts” haven’t figured that out yet.
@iMac
I quite agree; while I love working with OS X on my Macbook, when I’m at work on Windows I expect certain things to work like most other major Windows apps.
My UI issues with WinSafari, as a power user of both platforms:
– inability to easily maximize Safari with standard keyboard shortcuts (alt-space, then x)
– inability to cycle through page tabs with control-tab and control-shift-tab (something I don’t like about MacSafari, too)
– inability to minimize Safari by clicking on its taskbar icon
These are all issues that I have as a power user. I like just about everything else I’ve seen during my limited testing. These are all little things that hey, maybe a typical Windows user wouldn’t care about… but as Mac power users we’re supposed to be extremely detail-oriented, and just as we take MS to task for not adhering to basic Mac standards, I have to take Apple to task for not following the few UI standards Windows does have.
Yes, I noticed control-m minimizes Windows Safari… but I hate using control-c, v, etc on Windows, because it forces me to use my weakest finger instead of the strongest (thumb).
I’ve already submitted these comments to Apple, hopefully they’ll be addressed.
Been running Safari on an XP machine and have had fewer issues than IE (but normally I use firefox)
I have yet to see these ‘bugs’ or crashes being reported.
How a bout a few links that will crash it? Obviously that is the problem. A web site with bad code not being executed correctly in Safari.
It just couldn’t be all the extra crap you have loaded on your machine or had loaded in the backround when you were browsing with a different browser, right?
I don’t actually hate M$, I just think they have peaked and will take a long time to go down. Wonder when Apple can buy them?
Enjoy
Safari on Windows is tied to Quicktime just as strongly as iTunes is tied to Quicktime.
The bozos who download the version of Safari for Windows without Quicktime and don’t have Quicktime already on their Windows system with along with their copy of iTunes are having crashes.
Surprise, surprise.
Personally, I think they are doing it on purpose and then coming here to post.
Safari for Windows works fairly well when installed correctly.
“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”
As far as I could tell, this person is not to good at writing, but is the above statement correct or did he forget to put the word “so” in between “resolved” and “it’s”.
@iMac
“If Apple wants to live in the Windows operating system, why not make it look at least a little integrated with it…”
Yeah, right, just like M$ works hard to make their Mac offerings look like they belong on a Mac. Pffffft!
The paid Redmond trolls and fanbois have been out in full force since they released S3 for windows. Wonder if they’re sniffing some blood in the water…and realizing that it’s theirs.
ChrissyOne: Still trying to get the earlier ‘bbq sauce’ reference out of my head… 😀
@GranitW
Before you criticize someone else’s grammar/spelling, you should probably proof read your own sentence. Then you won’t look like such a douche bag for using “to” instead of “too.” And for the record, I believe that person meant to include the word “so.” Douche bag.
To: Microsoft Employees
It has come to my attention that thousands of Microsoft employees have begun to use the Safari browser on their Corporate computers. Anyone found with this software on their computer will be disciplined and/or terminated.
Many of them told me: “It is crashing all the time”…
Now Windows users can see what Mac Fanboys get to experience every day, yet sweep under the rug.
My Mac never crashes or locks up la la la la Macs are Great la la la…