Apple makes Internet browser for Microsoft-based machines
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Apple on Monday launched a new attack on rival Microsoft, unleashing a Safari web browser intended to dethrone market-ruling Internet Explorer (IE) and be the iPhone gateway to the Internet.
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A beta version of Apple's Web browser is now available for Windows, and budding iPhone developers can use it to create applications.
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A growing set of developers is setting to work making Web browsing on a phone match the experience on a PC.Skyfire, a startup in Mountain View, California, joined the fray on Monday when it unveiled a free browser intended to support everything a PC browser can. That includes Flash video, Quicktime, Javascript, AJAX, and more, though not everything may be there right now, according to Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire&#39;s CEO. The browser is now in a private beta test for U.S. users only. The software was demonstrated at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, California.Apple&#39;s iPhone changed the mobile browsing world last year when it drew a huge following with its Safari browser. Unlike most browsers for phones, it lets users view a full, standard Web page all at once and zoom in to make up for the small size of the screen, though it doesn&#39;t support Flash video and some other standard Web features.Meanwhile, more opportunities have opened up for third parties to get any sort of application onto a consumer&#39;s mobile phone. Parts of&#160;Google&#39;s Android development environment&#160;are already available to developers, and Apple is preparing a software development kit for the iPhone. Both Verizon and Sprint Nextel, two of the biggest U.S. operators, have outlined plans to allow any device and any application on mobile networks.&quot;The iPhone has pretty much settled the debate. People want a rich, full Web experience,&quot; Skyfire&#39;s Bhandari said. &quot;There&#39;s a lot of consciousness that that&#39;s the bottom now, and everything now has to be there or above it.&quot;Since the phone&#39;s June debut, Mozilla has started developing a mobile version of Firefox, which looks somewhat like mobile Safari in screenshots on Mozilla&#39;s wiki. However, Mozilla has been vague about when that software will come out. Norwegian browser vendor Opera has its own mobile browser, Opera Mini.Skyfire&#39;s product will be set apart from Opera Mini and others by supporting the full browsing experience, Bhandari said. It does so by relieving the phone from some of the heavy lifting of presenting a Web page. In fact, a server transcodes every page into an efficient protocol that Skyfire has developed over the past 18 months, he said. The additional exchange of packets between phone and server to make that possible isn&#39;t a problem, because the server can carry out tasks much faster than a phone, according to Bhandari.&quot;The delay added by the server is actually such a small percentage of the time we&#39;re actually saving ... that it&#39;s actually a huge benefit in the end-user experience,&quot; Bhandari said. Skyfire operates the servers in its own datacenter.Skyfire can deliver full versions of popular Web sites, such as YouTube and ESPN, as demonstrated in a YouTube video. The zooming function, the critical tool for viewing full-size Web pages on a small screen, is different from the iPhone&#39;s &quot;pinch&quot; and &quot;unpinch&quot; gestures. A gray box appears over part of the Web page, and users can size that box to cover the area of the page they want to see full-screen, then tap on it to zoom in, Bhandari said. The browser also features a search bar and a tab with featured links in categories including news, sports and video.The browser is available only for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 today, but a version for Symbian, as well as an international beta test, are coming later, Bhandari said. Skyfire might also develop versions for Android and for the iPhone once Apple&#39;s SDK becomes available, he said. It is talking with handset makers and mobile operators about having the browser built into phones, but also sees search and advertising as possible revenue sources.In addition to invited testers, a limited number of public users will be allowed to participate in the beta. They can sign up at Skyfire&#39;s Web site.
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The free Firefox Web browser, which has chipped away at the market dominance of Microsoft Corp.&#39;s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Internet Explorer, has been readied for a full release including new features designed to make it more
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is using the same tactic for its online services that made its Internet Explorer browser ubiquitous among Internet users. With new beta technology it's releasing Wednesday, Microsoft is tying its Windows Live services directly to its Windows OS. A new unified installer for Windows Live services will help users download Wednesday's updates of photo-sharing, mail, instant messaging, online safety, and other services, the company said on its Windows Live Wire blog. The new installer also will automatically update those services on Windows Vista and XP going forward. "This new suite of applications is a new way that we can make connecting, communicating, and sharing anywhere a terrific experience on your Windows PC," according to a blog post by Chris Jones, vice president of the Windows Live team at Microsoft. "Together with our Web services, we have a complete suite that combines the best of the Web and the best of Windows and works the way you want." As Microsoft tries to catch up to rivals Google and Yahoo in building out a portfolio of online services so it can sell more advertising, it's no surprise the company is tying those services to what remains its most popular product, Windows. Most people probably don't need more than one set of free online services just as they don't need more than one browser, and the strength of tying IE to Windows was that people used the browser over Netscape just because it was there. But what worked for IE may not work so well in the world of Web 2.0, where things move much faster than they did 10 years ago. When Microsoft cut the frequency of IE upgrades and enhancements, customers became restless for a better product; enter the Mozilla Firefox browser two years ago, which now has a nice niche for itself. Microsoft also is fighting two well-respected and entrenched competitors that started their businesses on the Web and have loyal followings in their own right. Creating user-friendly Web-based clients for everyday applications also is more complicated than creating a browser --Â and not so easily commoditized, said Matt Rosoff, analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "With Internet services, there is a lot more differentiation possible," he said. Using the Windows Live unified installer also is still an option -- not a requirement -- of the OS, so the services are not as tightly linked to Windows as IE was, Rosoff said. While he would not be surprised if Microsoft eventually made integration between the OS and Windows Live services even tighter, the company must be wary of inciting the antitrust gods with such a move. "They have to be careful with that sort of thing," Rosoff said. In addition to tying Windows Live to Windows, Microsoft also added new features to specific services in Wednesday's beta refreshes. Windows Live Photo Gallery now allows users to share photos directly on its Windows Live Spaces social networking site and its Soapbox on MSN Video video-sharing service, the company said. It also enables people to import photos from digital cameras and have them automatically organized into events based on date and time within the service. In other enhancements, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 includes additions to security and performance, while the Windows Live OneCare Family Safety update extends support to its Mail, Messenger, and Spaces services. More information about the updates and the ability to download them is available on Microsoft's Windows Live services Web site.
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America Online, Inc. is reported to be developing a Web browser based on Microsoft Internet Explorer technology. It is not known when the browser will be released
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In the first 48 hours of availability, customers downloaded more than 1 million copies of the Safari for Windows public beta. Safari 3, the worldâs fastest and easiest-to use web browser, supports all modern Internet standards including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG and Java. Itâs available as a free download at www.apple.com/safari/.
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The new browser wars are only a week old, but already one participant is suggesting that the two biggest players are trying to divide the world. Last Monday, Apple announced the beta release of Safari 3 for Windows, and by Thursday it said downloads of its new Web browser had already reached one million. On the same Thursday, the Mozilla Foundation&#39;s COO charged that Apple is envisioning the Web as the domain of itself and Microsoft, at the expense of open source browsers such as Mozilla&#39;s own Firefox.
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Microsoft Corp., hoping to take a bite out of Apple Computer Inc.'s highly popular online music service, is gearing up to launch its own Web site for selling songs over the Internet.
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Mozilla browser is less complete than Internet Explorer but is much more than just an anti-Microsoft statement. Is computing not making the progress it used to, or did I just read a story
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Norwegian browser specialists Opera Software announce a version of their browser for Microsoft&#39;s Windows Mobile platform is forthcoming.
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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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Microsoft Corp, hoping to take a bite out of Apple Computer Inc&#39;s highly popular online music service, is gearing up to launch its own Web site for selling songs over the Internet.
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It took Apple just two days to reach 1 million downloads of its newest Safari Web browser for Windows.
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Apple Inc.  Chief  Executive Steve Jobs on Monday said his company had created a  version of its No. 3-ranked Web browser, Safari, for Windows  users, aiming to gain share in the market for browsers.
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By John Markoff  Apple will make its Safari Web browser available for Windows- based PCs, opening a new front in its rivalry with Microsoft.
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Still in beta form, new browser allows you to view pages as they would appear in IE.