Apple invites Windows users on Safari

Apple is hoping for another crossover hit.

After bringing iTunes over to Windows, the Mac maker announced on Monday that it is also making its Safari Web browser available for users of Microsoft's operating system. The company released a "public beta" version of Safari 3.0 that runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista, as well as on Mac OS X Tiger.

When Apple first announced plans to bring iTunes to Windows PCs in October 2003, CEO Steve Jobs characterized the move as hell freezing over. These days, though, Apple does much of its work with the Windows world in mind.

Its iPod is used by far more Windows users than Mac users, and its iTunes media player software has been downloaded more than 500 million times by Windows users, Jobs said in his keynote speech on Monday at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

But the main impetus for bringing Safari to Windows may be the fact that Apple is also pitching Safari and Web-based applications as the way to write programs that run on the iPhone. So given that it is already pouring resources into the browser, trying to get more return on that investment makes sense, analysts said.

Gartner analyst Mike McGuire said the decision to move Safari to Windows is about the iPhone "as much as anything."

McGuire said Safari has some interesting features but added that it is not clear whether that will get it a spot in the Windows Start menu of most PC users.

"You've got to wonder how much people are willing to be promiscuous with the number of browsers they run," McGuire said.

In addition to Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer browser, Apple also finds itself competing against Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser.

[Cpollaro]

If you just want speed, and don't mind anything else.

The Good: It passes the acid2 test (Opera does, Firefox and IE does not). It's fast; however, I don't believe it is as fast as the Apple claims. My Opera worked just as fast. If there is a different, it seems dependent on the webpage. Also, Apple tested it on an iMac running XP Pro.
It was probably compiled on the same machine. Nice easy clean install.

The Bad: It is ugly as hell, and you can not do anything about it. You can not change the skins. No add-on support. It doesn't default to a home button and status bar(I like to see where a link is going before I click on it). No support for the mouse wheel click scroll. The font rendering is not good. It is not even close to IE. It looks like it bolds everything and tries to round it to a point where there is almost no space between the letters.

[john55440]

Yawn - No Thanks

I use IE7 99% of the time, and keep Firefox installed as an "emergency backup". I have no interest in Safari.

[gkflyboy]

Not for everyone...

I'm a big Apple fan.

Safari for Windows, though, seems more for Mac users who want to run Safari on their Windows side.

I'll stick to IE in Windows, though...

[Vegaman_Dan]

Not even Mac users use Safari if they can avoid it.

Safari is okay, but Firefox is more commonplace on the Mac.

[jeolmeun]

No ClearType?

Just anti-aliasing.

[prakatmac]

What if it were already there?

Chances are everyone that has been using their iPod with their
windows machine ( and therefore iTunes ) has already used
Safari's rendering engine (Webkit) to check out the iTunes music
store. If that's true then Safari the browser is mostly there
anyway. Maybe Apple will just include the two together. Or
maybe make Safari a requirement to run iTunes, just like
Quicktime is a requirement. Whatever the case, they definitely
have a way to get users to download Safari onto Windows. I for
one hope that a lot of users start using it, and then pressure
Apple to contribute back to the Konquerer open source project
that they started from in the first place

[jeolmeun]

No middle click drag scrolling?

No middle click drag scrolling?

[Orion Blastar]

Why use Safai when Firefox is better?

Safari is based on the KHTML code from Linux and KDE, modified for Aqua and OSX. I used Safari before and I don't see a valid reason to use it over Firefox. Firefox has more extensions support and renders HTML pages a lot better than Safari.

I suppose this is some way to get Windows users hooked on the Safari interface to ease migration over to OSX?

[sbasv]

anti-aliasing is good, but other things screw up

I just downloaded Safari for Windows.
A disappointment in general.

While the anti-aliasing effect and blue box high-lighting effect are all cool.

There are few things clearly missing / screwed up, after using for just 30 mins:
(a) No clear highlight between HTTP and HTTPS ... worse
(b) The tab background is dark gray ... making the black characters on the tab difficult to read
(c) Some well-known advanced AJAX sites do not work. (english content)
Gmail works, while Yahoo new email does not.
(d) Some well-known internationalized sites do not work.
http://news.google.com/news?ned=h
Google Hong Kong news works.
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/
Yahoo Hong Kong news does not.

Of course, either Firefox or IE has these problems.

It makes you wonder why Apple does not just branch off from Firefox and create a Mac specific version of Firefox as the next version of Safari.

Mozilla Public License (MPL) terms issue ?

[jeffrok]

several missing things

Can't find out how to change from the ugly metallic theme to something else.. No middle click.. My bookmarks imported from Firefox but never actually showed up anywhere in the Bookmarks list. No "New tab" button option!?

And to top it off, it crashed within 10 minutes.

[bobpenn]

Tried it ... don't see the advantage so far

I tried Safari on a Core 2 2.4 duo running Vista Ultimate. I can't really see the speed increase Apple is talking about so far. I did notice that bookmarks are a little harder to deal with, and that they don't scroll down if they go off the screen, nor is there a vertical scroll bar along the right hand column.

Further, the text, at its default setting, looks "fuzzy," like the ClearType effect (though it appears you can control this via preferences).

Spoke to a couple of Mac people at work who tell me that they don't use Safari ... they use Firefox. Safari doesn't have very many plug-ins and when they compared the two, Firefox won in most ways. Looking at the Vista version, it looks nice, has a couple of fancy Mac ways of building dialog boxes which is fun to see in Windows, but once the novelty of running a Mac app on the PC ends (probably by tomorrow), I will return to Firefox 2.0 as my primary browser.

One last thing. Most Windows users like and use IE. The average user has little incentive and little interest in switching to even a superior browser like Firefox. IE does the job for 90+% of the population. So I doubt that Safari will be like the iPod (as Jobs made reference to) and grow in the Windows market. The iPod worked in Windows because it offered a superior portable music experience against scattered competition. Safari must battle IE7, which, to most, works just fine.

[Parkmount]

Way Better than IE and Firefox

I have tried IE, Firefox and Safari all in Win XP Pro on my PenIII
850MHz Laptop and Safari for Win is pretty impressive and good
crispy fast rendering. It is even better than the current Safari on my
Mac. IE is already gone to trash and Firefox is waiting to be
trashed.

[My-Self]

Good for web developpers who need to test their pages

Safari on Windows is good for web developers who need to test their pages and make sure they are compatible with Safari (rendering, Javascript), else, for the end user, I can't see any advantage ...

[GibsonSG]

Doesn't work on Vista

I would have liked to use it to test web pages at the least, but every time I try to start it I get the familiar Vista message "Safari has stopped working". It seemed to install ok, but I can't get it to open. Oh well.

[Tomcat Adam]

True.

Most people are used to most Apple products being flashy/"perfect" immediately.

[rleon]

APPLE INVITES WINDOWS USERS ON OSX!!!

I think there is something underlying in Safari... more than what
we might think.
Did you see "Flower Cow"? What is the piece of software from
Apple that Windows Users have the most? Get it?!
Cover Flow is iTunes (or its interface) and iTunes downloads
count by millions a year, and most of them are the windows
version of it.
People have being seduced by the easy of use of this program,
and now Apple have implemented in the finder.As a reference
here:
When windows 98 debuted, it was more like a browser than an
actual OS, and many people thought it was the best windows
ever because they where so used to use a browser.
My guess is that iTunes & Safari are part of Apple strategy to
gain terrain over Microsoft. Even thought, I do not see clearly yet
how Safari can help, I think we are witnessing a new battle that
we dont really know is there and is already half the way. As other
posters have had said, we will have to wait and see.

[Brons2]

ad blocking is not the same as pop-up blocking

Firefox had a 3rd party extension available called Ad Blocker that can block all inline ads in a web page. That is not the same as a pop-up blocker, which most browsers nowadays have.

[SeizeCTRL]

Why stop there???

Why not write an open x86 version of OSX that will run on ANY hardware, not just what Apple sells.

This is the sole reason they got their ass kicked in the computer market. If I could load OSX on any setup and it was an option I had to chose between Windows and Linux, there would be many many cases I would buy OSX for some of my hardware.

Until Apple makes some really and I mean REALLY significant market share gains, you just aren't going to see it moving into corporate America and taking over in business applications.

[ZRoyal]

Russian Safari

So is any one else getting Russian when they have downloaded the beta Safari? I'm not kidding, it looks like all Russian text in the browser. I uninstalled it twice each time it came up Russian. Whats up with that?

[Rover8]

DO NOT USE iTUNES OR SAFARI ON YOUR WINDOWS VISTA OR WINDOWS XP COMPUTER

DO NOT download or use APPLE's ITUNES, SAFARI OR QUICKTIME FOR WINDOWS VISTA OR WINDOWS XP!

The saying "There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch" couldn't be more true in the case of iTunes/Quicktime from Apple Inc.

iTunes & Quicktime for Windows contains Spyware -- software used to track usage of your computer and alter its operation. In addition, running these programs on Windows Vista can often crash your computer.

Personal information is transfered by Quicktime/iTunes, without your knowledge, to Apple computer, and its marketing partners, over the Internet.

IF YOU ALREADY HAVE iTUNES OR QUICKTIME INSTALLED ON YOUR NEW DESKTOP COMPUTER OR LAPTOP YOU CAN REMOVE IT BY GOING TO THE "PROGRAMS AND FEATURES" CONTROL PANEL (in VISTA), OR IF YOU ARE USING XP, BY GOING TO THE "ADD/REMOVE SOFTWARE" CONTROL PANEL.

How Apple's spywhere scheme works:
Since at least the year 2000, the Quicktime (and now iTunes) installer from Apple installed several programs, without the user's permission or knowledge, which permanently altered the user's Windows system.
In my case, I tried removing some of the components, but still, each time I visit ANY website that has Quicktime support, something installed by iTunes causes a couple of invisible background processes (qttask.exe and ituneshelper.exe) to get installed in my computer's Startup Programs list and launched. The claim for "ituneshelper.exe" is that it "required" for burning CD's, but it does not make sense why you need an INVISIBLE BACKGROUND PROGRAM running on your system 24 hours a day just so you can burn CD's once in a while. No other CD burning software has such a requirement.
The other program "qttask.exe" is also spyware with apparently no other purpose.
WHEN THESE PROGRAMS AUTOMATICALLY CONNECT TO APPLE'S SERVERS, BEHIND YOUR BACK, APPLE USES YOUR IP ADDERSS, AND OTHER INFORMATION TRANSFERRED TO APPLE FROM YOUR COMPUTER, TO PERSONALLY IDENTIFY AND TRACK YOU ON THE INTERNET FOR MARKETING (AND OTHER) PURPOSES.
APPLE INC. HAS A HISTORY OF SUCH ACTIVITIES AS WELL AS CASES WHERE REGULAR EMPLOYEES USED THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM MILLIONS OF COMPUTER USERS TO STALK PEOPLE.

I have since switched to alternatives (see below), but I was still stuck with Apple's spyware for weeks before I was able to remove it.

ALTERNATIVES TO APPLE'S QUICKTIME/ITUNES SPYWARE
=================================
IF YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO PLAY QUICKTIME (AND OTHER TYPES) OF MOVIES, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD "VIDEOLAN" FROM http://www.videolan.org/
VIDEOLAN PLAYS QUICKTIME AND MOST OTHER FORMATS IN EXISTANCE INCLUDING DVD, MPEG ETC.

As far as music downloading service goes, there are many many alternatives including MusicMatch.com, Rahpsody.com, etc...