OmniWeb browser takes aim at minority Mac market
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SUCH an embarrassment of riches. Apple Macintosh users have two new web browsers to choose from. It&#39;s a curious market. All Macs come with two free browsers: Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer 5.2, and Apple&#39;s own slick and elegant Safari.
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By Steve Lawson  MORE than a million copies of Apple's Safari 3.0 internet browser for Windows XP and Vista were downloaded within the first 48 hours of it being made freely available last week.
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Firefox 1.0- Mozilla Foundation&#39;s first product aimed at users looking for an alternate browser, has met with an overwhelming response from users worldwide.
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(InfoWorld) - The debate is still on about why Apple Inc. decided to develop a version of its Safari browser for Windows. One of the most popular ideas online -- though one that doesn't appear to be widely supported in the analyst community -- is that Apple hopes to use its age-old rival, Microsoft Corp., to boost its revenues. Offering Safari to Windows users could significantly increase the number of Safari users, and that larger user base could translate into revenue for Apple because some browser makers have revenue sharing deals with search engines, says John Gruber, writer of the popular Daring Fireball blog. Search providers like Google Inc. reportedly split with browser makers the advertising revenue generated when browser users type search terms in the bar embedded in the browser. Gruber's suggestion has spread wildly across the Web, with bloggers and mainstream publications as far flung as the BBC picking up on the idea. It's difficult, however, to confirm Gruber's suggestion. Google declined to comment on any such arrangements that it might have with browser partners. Mozilla Corp., however, has said that it earns a significant portion of its revenue from the search bar in its browser. In its official company blog, Mozilla's CEO Mitchell Baker wrote last year: "We are very fortunate in that the search feature in Firefox is both appreciated by our users and generates revenue in the tens of millions of dollars." Firefox comes with Google as the default in the search bar and users can change that to five other options including Yahoo and Answers.com. Mozilla didn't respond to additional questions about how exactly it earns revenue from the search bar. Apple did not reply to questions about a potential revenue share with search providers. Safari users can choose Yahoo or Google to run the search bar. Microsoft Corp. doesn't have any kind of compensation deals with search engine providers or other browser makers based on users who set Windows Live Search as the default search engine or based on users who set other search engines as the default in Internet Explorer, a company spokesperson said. Google could very well have a similar deal with Apple as it may have with Mozilla, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. Still, he doubts that revenue from the search bar is the primary reason Apple developed Safari for Windows. "Whatever incremental revenue they'd get is almost irrelevant for a company of Apple's size," he said. Instead, Apple has a stake in making sure that Safari has strong support in the market from users and developers because it is a critical piece of the Mac OS and will serve as the primary application development environment for the iPhone, he said. Revenue from the search bar could play a role in the reason behind making Safari for Windows but it's probably not the primary one, said Danielle Levitas, an analyst at IDC. "I think the revenue is not insignificant," she said. "Maybe it's the tactical reason but the strategic initiative is more about the connected device vision and using the browser to deliver Web-based applications." Apple appears to be trying to position itself so that it can control Web access in a variety of devices, including phones, televisions and computers, she noted. The move to Windows could encourage the development of more attractive applications built on Safari because developers will be able to create applications on Safari that can reach Mac and Windows users as well as the iPhone, Van Baker, a research vice president at Gartner wrote in a blog posting on Friday. He doesn't mention the potential revenue gain as a reason. Whatever the reason, Apple has already learned that Windows users are interested in Safari. On Thursday, Apple said that 1 million copies of the Safari for Windows beta were downloaded in the first 48 hours after it became available. Safari has around 5 percent of the browser market share, compared to Microsoft's Internet Explorer's 78 percent and 15 percent for Mozilla's Firefox.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple's just-released public beta of the Safari 3 Web browser -- the first version to run on Windows as well as Mac OS X -- is drawing fervent and sometimes heated reactions from early testers. The following is an unexpurgated sample of what bloggers, ranging from grumpy Windows users to Mac fanboys, had to say in the immediate aftermath of Monday's Safari 3 announcement: Is Safari faster than Steve Jobs speeding on Hwy. 280 in his Mercedes SL AMG? "I miss the spell-checking, but damn -- this gives Opera a run for it's [sic] money in terms of speed. I just tested loading my homepage with both of them, and I have no doubts about it." -- Griffith, Forever Geek "After downloading and installing Safari on XP (w/ 1GB RAM, P4 3Ghz, yada yada yada), I have to say that it is a complete joke ... the browser is just so horribly slow. Did they test this? It takes literally at least 5x longer to render pages in Safari than Firefox. Sometimes even longer. Very sad." -- Doug, Read/ Write Web "I did a comparison of loading CNN on both browsers,and Safari beat Firefox by a mile." -- Hoobam, Download Squad "The more I run Safari on Vista, the faster it launches. Am I hallucinating? Is there a cosmic force that means just when I complain about Safari taking 57 seconds to launch, as soon as that complaint is made public, it launches much more quickly? Am I going insane? Or is someone playing a clever prank on me?" -- Joel Spolsky, Joel On Software Fonts: fuzzier than a peach skin? "If you sit really close to the monitor, then the Windows way is better. However, if you move back a couple of feet (3 feet or so from the screen to your eyes), then the Apple way seems more readable. The Apple rendering is definitely darker." -- Brendan Dowling, Coding Horror "It looks like they've skewed the contrast of the fonts to an absurdly low level. I'm curious why Apple's default font rendering strategies, to my eye -- and to the eyes of at least two other people -- are visibly inferior to Microsoft's on typical LCD displays. This is exactly the kind of graphic designer-ish detail I'd expect Cupertino to get right, so it's all the more surprising to me that they apparently haven't." -- Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror "In Safari, go to Edit/Preferences ... and then select the Appearance tab. For "Font smoothing," choose Light (the default is Medium). Much better now. Not perfect, mind you, but much better." -- Tom, Coding Horror "I also noticed that if I increase the font size, Apple-style anti-aliasing becomes tolerable. I'm beginning to think that the differences are. 1) Apple doesn't hand-tune the font aliasing hints for smaller font sizes. 2) Apple chose a much, much darker contrast level for its anti-aliasing algorithm." -- Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror And now for today's bug report.... "Seems like the only website my Safari works with is Apple's own homepage. Crashed about 15 times and I've only been _trying_ to use it for an hour." --Â  Brandon, Download Squad "I installed Safari, and every single time I attempt to bookmark something, it crashes -- hard." -- EJ Passeos, TechCrunch "The only browser unable to correctly display a Google result page. Wow." --Â  Xavier, TechCrunch "Oh damn, I just crashed with Safari at the 1st Google request by entering Japanese characters." -- Eirikur, Engadget "ALL the menu dropdowns don't work (they are just empty). Half the text is missing on many pages. URL bar doesn't work. Selects a non standard font for the pages. Need some more?" -- ScOObyDoo, Engadget Well, how about the new features? "The most notable new feature is an improved Firefox-style way to search for text on a Web page. Hit Control-F, and an oval search box appears towards the top of the window. Type your search term, hit enter, and watch the page go gray with your search terms highlighted in white or bright orange (that's the selected result)." -- Narasu Rebbapragada, PC World "Tabbed browsing? Been done. Easy Bookmarks? Been done. Popup blocking? Old news. Inline Find -- stunning visually but also been done. SnapBack? This is a gimicky [sic] back button -- not good enough. Forms autofill -- zzz. Built-in RSS -- yawn. When are we getting to the good stuff? Er ... okay, so that's it, there is nothing new here." -- Vincent Maher, Media in Transition "The display window is VERY clean; even the status bar at the bottom of most Windows applications is missing (configurable to have it return) to give maximum viewable area. Notably absent are the OS X style green, yellow, and red Window controls in the top right of every dialog window -- stylized but otherwise standard Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are found instead." -- Scratching The Surface "If it wasn't so damn ugly, and made use of more than 2 mouse buttons (no middle button click-to-scroll or back/forward at present), it may be useful. I admit the WebKit is rather snappy at displaying web pages but I can't stand the interface." -- Lizard.boy, Download Squad The final word(s)? "The new version is 3 and really it does what they claim, SPEED. The only problem is I have become so comfortable with Firefox that just speed isn't enough for me to switch." -- Jeremy Jones, Multimedia-PCs.com "It's like software from a different world installed on a Windows-powered computer (much like how Windows users might initially find iTunes)." -- J. Angelo Racoma, J Spot "I've used it for a good 4 hours straight just surfing along a bunch of websites and stuff. It is a lot faster than Firefox, which was my browser of choice, and it is much faster than IE. There are a bit of glitches on it, which is understandable since it is a beta. Once all the features are perfected and the glitches are fixed it'll be a find [sic] browser." -- Jae, Engadget "I'm surprised nobody has said that XP/Vista is making Safari crash ;) After all you know, Apple can do no wrong." -- ssummer, Engadget
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Apple Inc. launched a version of its Safari Web browser for Windows-based PCs on Monday, pitting it against Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.
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WWDC 2007 - In a surprise "One more thing..." announcement at its Worldwide Developer Conference Monday, Apple says it will release version 3 of its Safari Web browser with Leopard in October, as well as a version for Windows XP and Vista.
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By May Wong Associated Press  SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple Inc. launched a version of its Safari Web browser for Windows-based PCs on Monday, pitting it against Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.
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While Firefox wins rave reviews for its browser technology and appears ready to chip away at Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) dominant Internet Explorer market share, the open-source browser is probably a long way off from unseating IE in the enterprise.
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The debate is still on about why Apple decided to develop a version of its Safari browser for Windows.
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By Anonymous  Deutsch Technologies, in Dresden, has made DirecType 2 software for creating motifs available for all Mac users. It aims to help creative agencies run image personalisation on Mac OSX.
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By LEE BARNES  Has Apple CEO Steve Jobs done it again?  No, not really.  On Monday, Jobs introduced the Windows version of Safari, the Web browser that many Mac owners use.
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Editor's note: This story was reprinted from Computerworld. For more of Computerworld's coverage of the Mac, visit its Mac Knowledge Center.
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AOL are working on a new own-brand web browser just as the browser wars enter a new phase. Recently, Microsoft really has shot itself in the foot - it looked like the once-bitter war was over and that just
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Mozilla's latest pre-release version of its browser remains buggy, but performance enhancements give us reason to get excited. In Monkey Bites.
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Apple has posted yet another beta of its Safari Web browser for Mac OS X and Windows.
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There's one problem with Safari for Windows -- Safari sucks. Many Mac users wonât even run it on the Mac.