“Mozilla’s chief operating officer, John Lilly, is calling Steve Jobs’ plans for building Safari’s market share ‘out of date’ and ‘duopolistic,'” Jo Best reports for CNET News.
“Lilly made his comments following the Apple CEO’s keynote speech last week at the Worldwide Developers Conference, where the Mac maker unveiled a version of the Safari browser designed to run on Windows Vista or XP,” Best reports. “In the speech predicting how Apple would expand its market share, Jobs showed a slide with Safari dominating almost a quarter of the market–a market shared only with a single other browser, Internet Explorer.”
Best reports, “Lilly says he doesn’t believe that this was an omission or simplification, but instead an indication that Jobs is hoping to steal people who use Firefox and other smaller browsers in order to run a ‘duopoly’ with Redmond. ‘This worldview…betrays (Apple’s) thinking: it’s out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented…It’s not good for the Web. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don’t think this two-party world will really come to be,’ Lilly said in his blog.”
Full article here.
Yeah, “out-of-date” is the one thing that best describes Steve Jobs’ thinking. Puleeze. Out-of-date? Let us know when you ship a browser that passes the Acid2 test, Mr. Lilly. Basing business expectations and crafting public responses on a single Keynote slide is about par for the course with open sourcers. Regardless of the slide’s meaning or lack thereof, Mozilla has good reason to be fearful.
until Safari for Windows supports plugins (such as adblock) then Firefox will always exist. Plus Safari only supports 2 platforms — Windows and OSX. I have no choice to run Safari on my Linux boxes.
John Lilly is on crack by saying anything is out-of-date. Look at the form web objects in firefox… yah those are out of date. I use FF, and will continue to do so until Safari is a bit more stable. But this guy is off his rocker if he thinks Jobs is out to “steal” market share. This browser was released for a few other reasons, getting more market share is just icing on the cake…
A) So windows users can test iPhone apps
B) So more security holes could be found and patched up in both versions
C) So more people take Safari serious in support for websites.
Bold words for a man named Lilly.
if anything i hope it drives true standards for the web. Web developers worhsipping at the feet of Redmond and using IE as the ‘standard’ isn’t good for anyone.
I hope that is not what he is thinking. There is plenty of room for three browsers and plenty of innovation that will come from those three.
Along the same lines, I hope the OS wars see the same trend of three OSes that are all competing (OS X, Linux, and Windows). Having three viable solutions would force people to choose based on what they think is the best for them and would encourage developers to write cross platform software.
wait while firefox pens………………
……………….okay now I can comment on how great Mozilla is!
Perhaps I’m just off my Wheaties today, but . . . Who gives a damn about what browser Linux boxes can handle? Apple is shooting for consumer market share here, “plugins,” not the avant-garde, bleeding edge corporate IT guy. For good or ill, there are just not enough of you to matter in this arena.
Can’t wait for him to open mouth and insert crow
Mozilla should be applauding Safari rather than bashing it. Anyone that pushes web standards and gives users another option besides IE is a good thing for everyone concerned. Lilly needs to stop being so short sighted and realize that IE is the real enemy here, and that Firefox alone isn’t ever going to be enough to stop it.
This will definitely be hurting the other browsers. But if there is something meaningful about the other browsers, users will stick around.
I for one, I submitting this comment on Safari for Windows
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‘This worldview…betrays (Apple’s) thinking: it’s out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented…It’s not good for the Web. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don’t think this two-party world will really come to be,’
Oooh Reeeeaalllyy. Seems to be working pretty good in the real world with Republicans and Democrats balancing things out for a coupel hundred years. Seems that this model never goes out of date. Wake up and smell the blood in the water Mr. Lily, your blood.
Lilly just doesn’t get it. It’s all about the iPhone, having a Windows version of the same browser used on the iPhone lets small businesses leverage the investment in the web 2.0 apps they internally for the iPhone.
Hey Lilly….until you get a decent version of Firefox out for OS X, keep your pie hole shut. Firefox for Windows is fine, but the OS X version sucks, that’s why I use Safari exclusively on the Mac side….
With all the recent noise about browsers, I went and downloaded the most recent versions of all the competitors to Safari.
I block a lot of ad sites (yes, including some on MDN) with edits to my /etc/hosts file.
In the end, I liked Safari best for one reason – when attempting to display blocked material and failing, it leaves the intended space on the page blank. Every other browser fills the space with an error message, shich is almost as annoying as the ad it replaces.
If there is a way to turn off this behavior in other browsers, please post it here! Thanks!
Lilly should get back to the valley and focus his attention on upcoming “in date” features for his next release of FF for Windows and Mac. Funny, its OK for him to make products for both platforms, but it is not ok for Apple. He is showing his fear…instead, he should be welcoming the competition and how another player helps to keep monopolistic-ness on the backburner. Either you want to play or not, Mr. Lilly? This has revealed your feel of comfortness and should get your butt moving.
From what I’ve been reading online, the tech crowd has been almost universal in it’s derision towards Safari, and favorable to Firefox. The sole exceptions being for iPhone development and Mac Users with BootCamp wanting a familiar browser.
This makes sense to me. But when people start downloading Safari with their next iTunes update, some small percentages might emerge.
I tried Safari. I wouldn’t ditch Firefox for it.
I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Apple guy, but FF is simply a better browser. It supports more protocols under the hood, does a better job rendering pages, has better support for HTTPS sites, and has an AWESOME plugin library. Perhaps Safari 3 will close the first three gaps, but until they open up to allow for add-ons, FF will be the browser of choice. I mean, even IE7 now allows for third party developer add-ons.
It’s foolish to criticize a company for wanting to take market share. There is plenty of IE market there for everyone to take a bite.
It will be good for Redmond to watch their market share dwindle. Any amount will be cool. Like to see IE under 60% realistically.
I think the FF folks will be fairly loyal to FF.
Anything less is icing.
Open source is free– why would Jobs be actively competing against a non-commercial product. I think he sees open source as more of an ally. IE is the only real commercial competitor, just like Media Player is the only competitor, not VLC or others.
People try to fill in what they perceive to be “blanks” in his statement(s), when he means exactly what he says. He isn’t competing with Mozilla.
Can someone explain the use of the word “betrays” in this context. It seems portrays is what he was groping for, no?
I like and use Firefox as my main browser. The extensions available to it make it invaluable for me. Almost everything works in it.
That being said, it runs like a Windoze app and is sometimes maddeningly slow.
If Google Talk worked in Safari, I would switch back tomorrow.
Steve Jobs isn’t going to tell the likes of Mr. Lilly the real reasons he released Safari for Windows, but the most obvious answer is for the iPhone to sync with on a PC. It’s not about browser market share. DUH.
http://www.MittensRomney.com/
Safari is better than IE. Obviously.
But better than Firefox? Not in the least.
The vast majority of people don’t give a rat’s pancreas what browser they’re using. They just “get on the internet.”
“My internet isn’t working.”
Oh boy. “Okay, what’s happening?”
“When I click on the internet, it doesn’t work.”
Sigh. “Can you describe the problem?”
“It says, ‘Your connection is..’ like, not there or something like that. I tried restarting my computer and everything.”