Safari: June 2007 Archives

The theory that Apple's Safari release is a step along the way to Apple offering pre-bundled Windows on its Macintosh line is offered today on Ed Bott's Microsoft Report:

So, my prediction: Come October, when Leopard ships, Apple will announce that anyone buying a new Mac can order an Apple-customized version of Windows Vista preinstalled on the same system. If I’m an Apple stockholder, do I care that those machines aren’t running OS X full time? Absolutely not. Windows can hang on to most of its market share, while Apple cuts a huge slice out of the hardware market currently owned by less nimble, less cutthroat competitors.

I’d consider buying an Apple-branded box if it came with Windows preinstalled. Would you?

Hmmmm. The only reasons I don't think that this is totally whacked out are:

A) Plenty of people are already buying and loading Windows on their Intel Macs,

B) It's no skin off of Microsoft's nose whether somebody buys Windows for the Mac or PC platform, as long as they buy Windows,

C) The Mac is a big player in the high-end laptop and desktop market, and Microsoft would love to broaden its market in that segment.

D) As Mr. Bott says, Apple stands to make money by selling Windows -- money it's leaving on the table now by making machines that run Windows and telling customers to buy the OS elsewhere.

E) I keep forgetting that Steve Jobs sees Apple as a hardware maker, even though Apple's software has been a powerful motivator for hardware purchases over the years.

Scot Hacker at O'Reilly Network thinks the real reason for Safari's port to Windows is because of the search bar. Since the searches generally go through Google, Apple gets a cut of the ad revenue generated by those queries.

O'Reilly's Hacker cites John Gruber for the following:

“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 (and, I presume, just about every other mainstream browser.) … For example, the Mozilla Foundation earned over $50 million in search engine ad revenue in 2005, mostly from Google. … 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.“

Money -- it's what's for dinner. Not that there's anything wrong with it. (Insert your own cliche here).

Can you tell I've been trolling the ZDNet blogs today? Here's another analysis of Apple's Safari-for-Windows announcement, this one from Alan Graham of ZDNet's Web 2.0 Explorer blog.

Among the things coming out of Safari for Windows, Graham cites a growing market share for Safari, a revitalization of QuickTime as a video medium of the Web (sorry, Steve Jobs, that ship has sailed, and the name on its backside is "Flash") and the (to me puzzling) connection between Safari and the nascent iPhone platform.

Here's his take on the iPhone connection (go to the whole item for the rest):

We know that Apple is releasing a Safari/webdev kit so developers can develop web apps for (the iPhone). Why limit this to Mac developers? The phone is obviously designed to appeal to Mac and Windows users, so to ensure development for the phone on the Windows side, they need a platform to build on. Safari will no doubt be the major component that ties the phone and iTunes together, and we’ll likely see an explosion of web app development this fall after the phone is released. Windows support is crucial to their long-term phone strategy and that is especially important when it comes to browsing. Just look at all the sites that are popping up to work with the Wii…I have no doubt in my mind we’ll see lean and mean Safari sites for the iPhone.

Apple does have some great programmers, and maybe they can turn Safari into something that has value for both Windows and Mac users. I still think that Mac OS X is one of the best GUIs out there (based on BSD for those who care to know, so it's directly comparable, in my mind, with all the Linux/BSD GUIs out there, including KDE and GNOME). If Cupertino can innovate in the browser space, it can and will bring more people to OS X and the Mac platform.

And the development of Safari will answer, again, whether or not the iPod was a lucky hit for Apple, or the result of great minds making great products. We'll see, won't we?

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog downloads and tests Apple's new Safari browser for Windows. Besides wondering why, he doesn't much like the look of it but does like its bookmarking and RSS capabilities.

He sums up thusly:

I don’t see Safari catching on in any big way on the Windows platform. Safari for Windows - yes, it does crash!!!It’s too ugly (really ugly, especially on Vista, in fact, I’m looking at it now and it’s so darn ugly that it’s actually making me angry) and there’s no one unique feature that stands out as being worthy of making a switch. I also wasn’t all that impressed by the fact that the browser crashed on me a couple of times in about an hour. The crashes, combined with the speed with which a exploit was uncovered make me wonder whether Apple can write code for Windows.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. As I wrote yesterday, I'm really a creature of habit. Once I start using something, I pretty much stick with it until I find a reason not to. At that point, something new not only solves my particular problem with the old product but also gives me a host of new features I didn't even know were there, but which I now need and want.

That's how I switched from Safari to Firefox on Mac OS X. And while much has been made of Apple's melding of the iPhone and Safari (developers for iPhone can get it done solely with Ajax and Safari, or so I read), I'm not in the iPhone demo because a) I'm not wealthy by a longshot, and b) I ALSO keep my cell phones until they're obsolete, so my Motorola V180 is still rocking it big time with the new battery I just bought for it from eBay.