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So who's going to switch to Apple's Safari browser?


Aaron C-T

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Article Below:

By MAY WONG - AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO(AP) 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.

"What we've got here is the most innovative browser in the world and the most powerful browser in the world," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said during his keynote speech at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Safari, which was released a few years ago for Apple's Macintosh computers, has captured about 5 percent of the world's browser market share with more than 18 million users, Jobs said.

Internet Explorer, which is built into Windows, has a 78 percent share, while Firefox has rapidly climbed to gain about 15 percent of the market, he said. Like the other Web browsers, Safari is available at no charge.

Jobs claimed Safari performs twice as fast as its competitors.

Never one to disappoint his audience, the iconic chief executive _ in his final highlight of his 1 1/2 hour speech _ said Apple's upcoming iPhone will run Safari.

That means, Jobs said, that any application designed to run on the Safari browser for Macs also would be fully compatible with the iPhone _ Apple's highly anticipated combination cell phone, iPod and wireless Web browser. The iPhone will be available in the U.S. on June 29.

The move to make Safari available to non-Mac users is not unprecedented: Apple also makes its iPod media players and iTunes Store for Windows. The strategy is aimed in part at drawing more people to its Macintosh computers.

It appears to be paying off. Mac sales have grown significantly over the past two years, pushing its slice of the PC market in the United States from 3.5 percent in 2004 to 4.9 percent in 2006, according to IDC, a market research company.

"Safari is another Trojan horse that introduces an innovation of Apple to the Windows community and entices them to the Mac platform," said Tim Bajarin, an industry analyst at Creative Strategies, a technology consultancy.

I've used Safari on Macs before, but I think that for windows Mozilla Firefox does me just fine. Is anyone excited about this and going to make the switch? Also, they say it's the most innovative browser.. but, I dunno, maybe I didn't really check Safari out enough but I didn't really see what the big deal was. It was better than Internet Explorer, yes.. but then again, I kind of hate IE anyway.

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I seriously don't know what Apple's doing.

It's a good browser, don't get me wrong, but the only reason I used it was due to the slowness of Firefox 1.x. As soon as the 2.0 release came out, I switched to good ol' Firefox, and turned on Ad-block.

That's the reason I don't use Safari. There's a lame css work-around, but it doesn't catch every banner.

Although, supposedly Safari loads faster...but I can't tell a difference.

And what are you guys talking about? Asian languages look better in Safari than in Firefox.

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Apple, Macs, iPods, iPhones, and Safari all rock hardcore. I don't give a shit if Microsoft is supposedly more mainstream. Nothing works for it.

proof plz.

I don't think apple is going to be able to impact the browser market unless they add something completely new/ make something very unified that makes me enjoy using the browser, and let me get what I want done in an easy manner ( like firefox and its bookmark toolbar <3 )

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attachment.php?attachmentid=286&stc=1&d=1181693017

This "Public" Beta sucks terribly. I've seen nightly builds of Firefox (even during the switch to Gecko 1.9) performing quite better than this.

Here's my review:

Stability

It crashed when I first tested it (I was totally hyped - quite a deception), and it refused to work until I tried it on another windows account (!). Even then, it crashes when I try to do almost anything other than loading a page. I'm pretty sure they left some SSE2, possibly even SSE3 instructions on the compiled code. Apple, PC users do not all have state-of-the-art Intel Core 2 Duos.

Rendering

For some stupid reason, it also doesn't render bold text -- People have reported it not being able to render ANY TEXT, even for the UI.

The box model seems to be broken to me, thought I'm not sure, and instead of performing faster, it rendered pages slower than Firefox.

It fails at the Acid2 test.

Page loading

Three words: Slower than Firefox.

UI

Porting Safari didn't require that much work, in fact, most of the common controls and window handling stuff was already ported for iTunes. While I must agree that having Mac controls on Windows looks damn cool, the Safari user interface feels completely inconsistent... because it MIXES Windows and Mac controls.

Instead of having that smexy flexible sheet effect for everything, it calls some of the Windows' common dialogs. It doesn't use the cool brushed-metal look and feel the Mac version has, but instead a totally cheap ripoff of it... Many of the program strings weren't adapted to windows... (I've found ones refering to the "Option key", for example)

I'm totally disappointed with you, Apple.

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Which happens way too often. Safari was great fun to stuff around with, I loved the font rendering, though the lack of adblock made me sad. Never crashed for me, though I'll stick to Firefox if only for the extensions.

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Well, now that I'm looking at it, it does seem to run a bit faster than Firefox.

As for the Acid2 test:

firefoxacid2.png

Firefox 2.0.4

safariacid2.png

Safari 3.0 beta

This has me sort of interested. I might play around with it. I noticed these features offhand:

safarifeature1.png

It makes sure you don't X-out of a window when you have something in a text box.

safarifeature2.png

After a Google search, Safari highlights the phrase on a webpage. I know, Firefox can do that too, but you have to turn on the find function.

Nothing groundbreaking, but neat none the less.

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"Apple, Macs, iPods, iPhones, and Safari all suck major ass. I don't give a shit if it's supposedly more secure. Nothing works for it."

. . . Yea. iPods totally suck, which is why they definitely don't have something like.. 50% of the market share. And Macs are definitely crap because they don't work. Which is obviously why people buy them. While I don't care for iPods myself (I'd rather a Zune) that sounds very much like.. I dunno.. brand-hating.

"It's like Windows for Macs except the other way around."

Speak of which, how well does running Windows using Parallel on the new intel-based Macs work? I'm considering getting a Mactop for college. >.>;;

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Speak of which, how well does running Windows using Parallel on the new intel-based Macs work? I'm considering getting a Mactop for college. >.>;;

From what I've heard, Parallels works really well. However, you have to pay for it (or "pay for it" wink wink). From what I've read, Boot Camp, which is free, will just suspend each OS, so every time you switch from Mac to Windows, it starts just where you left it.

I believe Blues and Koray can give you some more insight on this, because I still use an old PowerPC Mac.

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