Apple today launched their new version of their Safari browser for the PC and it's not making people very happy. Security vulnerabilities were immediately detected and the unlikely darkhorse in the browser race is already running on a lame leg.
BetaNews says:
Safari is built on top of an open-source Web browser engine called WebKit, whose developers announced on their blog this morning that the first nightly build of the Windows version of WebKit will be released sometime today. At that time, perhaps veteran Windows developers may become available to flesh out and plug the holes which Safari's disconnection from Mac OS X left open.
Basically, Apple wasn't ready for the gaping holes in the Windows security model and their first attempt at a PC ready browser demonstrated this. The question for me is, what does Apple have to gain by doing this? Why not work to promote Firefox?
Is their goal really to beat Microsoft or to try to show them up? Beating them is a sound business goal, showing them up. not so much.
Jim -
The only strategy that I can come up with that makes any sense is that Apple wants it to be easy for Windows developers to build web sites that look great on the iPhone. Nothing else comes to mind that would justify the effort and expense.
Posted by: Ed Vielmetti | 12 June 2007 at 22:16
I think the strategy is to give Apple another way to get iTunes on to Windows machines. Every time QuickTime self-updates it defaults to "and install iTunes too".
I bet that Safari does the same thing in spades.
Posted by: Robert W. Anderson | 13 June 2007 at 10:08
Safari makes money for Apple. See John Gruber's analysis of Safari:
"It's not widely publicized, but those integrated search bars in web browser toolbars are revenue generators. When you do a Google search from Safari's toolbar, Google pays Apple a portion of the ad revenue from the resulting page. . .
"The same goes for Mozilla. . . the Mozilla Foundation earned over $50 million in search engine ad revenue in 2005, mostly from Google.
"My somewhat-informed understanding is that Apple is currently generating about $2 million per month from Safari's Google integration. That’s $25 million per year. If Safari for Windows is even moderately successful, it’s easy to see how that might grow to $100 million per year or more."
Posted by: Jay Fienberg | 13 June 2007 at 15:34
Oh, I forgot typepad is not designed for the real world wide web, uses the shortsighted and corrupting nofollow without prejudice, and so stripped out the URL in the link I included in my comment:
http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote
Posted by: Jay Fienberg | 13 June 2007 at 15:39