!

*snore*

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

I don't know how many Windows people will use Safari as their browser (even my Mac friends like FireFox due to its plug-ins). But, for web app developers like myself who are on XP, it makes it much easier to test our work on Safari (I already have one Ajax app that I know looks a bit off on Safari, and this way my company may not need to buy a Mac). Plus, since iPhone apps will be Safari apps. it makes a lot of sense to make it easy for Windows people to develop iPhone apps.

On its own, this may not "move the stock" but since it adds to the potential feature-set of the iPhone, it will help the bottom line, I think.

dsbrady

This is actually huge.

Finally a browser that can kick IE arse.

The engadget update referred to this as a "public beta." Does that mean peons like myself can download it?

Just go to apple.com you'll see the link on the main page.

*snore*

Actually, I think that this is going to be huge. I think I get the picture:
Apple is creating a whole new platform with the iPhone, and Safari is the new ocean that enterprise and other web apps are going to swim in, if the iPhone is as successful as we hope it is.
This is going to put tremendous pressure on IE and Microsoft (and, eventually Windows?).

Safari: the new ocean web 3.0 will swim in.

HUGE!


Lav

Just go to apple.com you'll see the link on the main page.

Thanks - I tried apple.com/safari directly, and I got a redirect to the Safari page for the OSX feature set. I'll try the front page first next time. ;-)

Apropos of nothing - although the keynote was kind of a non-event, I have to confess I'm a little excited trying out Safari for Windows.

-lizmonster

I've just never been a fan of safari.

I use firefox or camino on OS X.

I use firefox or camino on OS X.

I use Firefox at work, and Safari at home. I like the different feel of Safari, but otherwise I find them pretty much equivalent.

Apart from ONE THING that Firefox does that Safari does not - if I have a bookmark folder in my bookmarks bar, I can right-click on a bookmark in that folder and choose "Open in new tab." I can't do that in Safari.

(BTW, the Windows download was quick and painless.)

-lizmonster

I prefer Firefox's live bookmarks to the safari RSS implementation.

I also like "find as you type" searching in Firefox, which you have to enable as an option. Does Safari have that?


...posting from Safari on Windows.

I prefer Firefox's live bookmarks to the safari RSS implementation.

I'm not that up on RSS, but I'll look into this - it sounds interesting.

I also like "find as you type" searching in Firefox, which you have to enable as an option. Does Safari have that?

I'd never tried it before, but the Windows version seems to do it.

-lizmonster, also posting from Safari on Windows. :)

When iTunes ran on windows it allowed the PC world to enjoy the iPod.

It seems like Safari will be the controlling program for the iPhone.

So for selling iPhones this announcement may open up the path to sell a gazillion iPhones.

Apart from ONE THING that Firefox does that Safari does not - if I have a bookmark folder in my bookmarks bar, I can right-click on a bookmark in that folder and choose "Open in new tab." I can't do that in Safari.

But you can do that with items in your bookmark bar in Safari. If you just right click a bookmark, it opens in a new tab (no menu). If you have a directory of bookmarks in your bookmark bar, you can right click to open a tab with each of them.
-JMP

But you can do that with items in your bookmark bar in Safari.

My bookmark bar is almost entirely folders. When I right-click, I can choose to open ALL the bookmarks in that folder as tabs; but I can't just choose one.

Finally a browser that can kick IE arse.

Windows already has such a browser - it's called FireFox.

Of course, it's good to have more than one now.

dsbrady

A couple of notes on my quick test:

1) I have an Ajax app that looks a bit off on Safari 2 on the Mac. It looks perfect on Safari 3 on Windows (presumably it will look the same on the Mac -- otherwise, the Windows version if pointless for me :) ).

2) Took me about 30 seconds to find the first bug. In "Advanced" section of the options dialog, it refers to pressing "Option-Tab". :)

3) I wish they would use the Windows API for the title bars. Instead of being able to click the standard button to move Safari over to my other monitor, I have to drag it (yeah, I'm THAT lazy).

I didn't have time for a full test, but it's good to have the option.

dsbrady

well, I"m running Safari on XP and it is snappy quick!

Paul

But, for web app developers like myself who are on XP, it makes it much easier to test our work on Safari

Talking to colleagues in that boat (web developers on Windows), and Safari on Windows pretty well kills any need for them to buy a Mac for website UI testing. A few people were considering getting a Mac mini for Safari testing, so now that's a sale which is no longer going to happen (a small market to be sure, but still...).

The advantage on the other hand is also clear: there are a huge number of developers on Windows, so making it easier for them to work with Safari in turn makes it easier for them to develop for the iPhone.

However, "no SDK for the iPhone" kinda sucks. No local storage usable by the developer (which would've been handy). You're not really making iPhone apps, you're just making iPhone-optimized web applications. Tech like Google Gears, if/when brought to the iPhone, would be a big help though.

PS. it looks like the store downtime was purely for the site redesign (for the whole site, not just the store). The redesign was much needed IMO... before it seemed they were trying to make 2 designs co-exist (the "white" sections, and the "black" sections), which didn't really work.


- Sri

Okay, now that everyone is having fun running Safari 3 on their PCs, I have to ask, what's new in it for Mac users?

I downloaded it and installed it on my PB G4 12". I forgot to make a backup of Safari 2, so I'm running without a safety net, but so far, it seems pretty snappy and -- apart from hanging on my first startup -- it's as stable as expected. I'm not unhappy.

However, the only new feature I could identify easily is the ability to drag tabs around. I tried Apple's Safari page, which is rather Windows-centric, and all the features they highlight appear to be features Safari 2 already had. What am I missing that makes this worth a whole revision number upward for Mac users? Resizable text fields and inline find?

-awlabrador

> What am I missing that makes this worth a whole revision number upward for Mac users?

Find some text on a page. Remember how bad Find used to be?

Okay, now that everyone is having fun running Safari 3 on their PCs, I have to ask, what's new in it for Mac users?

As a Mac user there may not be much exciting in the announcement. It's business as usual. But as an Apple investor the difference should be huge. It is obvious that the way an iPhone will be managed is through Safari something like the way an iPod is managed through iTunes.

Unless Safari was made readily available to PC users there would be the big question of how useful a gadget is that can only be managed easily through a Mac. Today Steve Jobs pressed how easy it is to put Safari on PC and even showed that it is faster.

All he really wanted to do was to break down the resistence that someone with a PC might have to installing Safari onto their computer ... because that is all it is going to take to manage your iPhone!

The market has not picked up on this. So, as an investor we get the additional bonus of having the price made a little cheaper for a day, a week or a couple of weeks. If people smarten up quickly the discount may have disappeared by tomorrow's opening. But I doubt that.

Wake up, investors. This announcement wasn't about making a better experience for the Mac users. It is specific for the investors who are looking for massive sales of the iPhone.

Joel

So for selling iPhones this announcement may open up the path to sell a gazillion iPhones.

It also makes it very difficult for the others to duplicate. Even within handheld OSs there are variants for specific manufacturers and models. It will require a great deal of coding (in all the variants of handheld OSs and the stripped down "browsers" they use) to do a "Safari 3.0" across the spectrum of competing "smart phones".

My bookmark bar is almost entirely folders. When I right-click, I can choose to open ALL the bookmarks in that folder as tabs; but I can't just choose one.

Click on a folder, then hold down the apple key and choose a bookmark.

Click on a folder, then hold down the apple key and choose a bookmark.

Nope (at least not in Safari 2).

Nope (at least not in Safari 2).

Oh! Well download 3 then! It's pretty stable. They've had a bajillion builds of it over the past year.

It is obvious that the way an iPhone will be managed is through Safari something like the way an iPod is managed through iTunes.

It's not obvious to me at all, and in fact it contradicts both my recollection and Jobs' Macworld 2007 keynote. It's more obvious to me that since iTunes already syncs media, contacts, and calendars to iPods, iTunes should be the application to manage iPhones. In the Macworld Keynote, approximately 37 minutes from the start, Steve says that iTunes will manage not only the iPhone's media, contacts, calendars, and photos, but also notes, bookmarks, and e-mail accounts. Safari, as a web browser, is not a natural application to manage any external hardware.

The obvious benefit for Safari being on PCs is so that more web developers who currently target and develop for only IE and Firefox may eventually start targeting Safari, which should benefit Mac Safari users. Macintouch has a whole set of pages devoted to complaints about Macs and Safari being marginalized on the web. If Safari is successful on PCs, Safari on Macs should reap the benefits.

-awlabrador

Okay, now that everyone is having fun running Safari 3 on their PCs, I have to ask, what's new in it for Mac users?

I don't know about what is new in it for Mac users, but there is a benefit for Mac users.

There are a fair number of websites that disallow Safari.

If Safari becomes comparable to Firefox in popularity on the Windows platform, the number of sites refusing Safari should drop.

Paul

> It is obvious that the way an iPhone will be managed is through Safari...

How'd you come the *that* conclusion???! That's a crazy idea. iPhones will be managed via iTunes. They have an iPod connector. They play the same content as iPods. They interface with Contacts/Address Book the same way. Safari has nothing to do with that.

The only reason I can fathom right now is that they'd like web developers on Windows to have easy access to the Mac/iPhone's browser so it's easier for them to test web compatibility. If it happens to increase Safari share too, so much the better.

I don't see happy customers as the outcome of forcing people to use Safari just to use their phone.

Here's an article elaborating on the active strong choice to use Safari as an operating arena for small app developers for the iphone.

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9728298-2.html

Oh! Well download 3 then!

Ah! It works!! Thanks - I love Safari again. :-)

The obvious benefit for Safari being on PCs is so that more web developers who currently target and develop for only IE and Firefox may eventually start targeting Safari, which should benefit Mac Safari users. Macintouch has a whole set of pages devoted to complaints about Macs and Safari being marginalized on the web. If Safari is successful on PCs, Safari on Macs should reap the benefits.

-awlabrador




Exactly! Safari is THE browser for the iPhone. As such, Safari will attract a lot of attention.

Exactly! Safari is THE browser for the iPhone. As such, Safari will attract a lot of attention.

Palm, Nokia, Motorola, "smart phone"/Wintel user says: "Wow, this is the browser on the iPhone? It beats the crap out of IE7 AND the piece of crap on my phone. Maybe I should take a look at that iPhone?"

Unless Safari was made readily available to PC users there would be the big question of how useful a gadget is that can only be managed easily through a Mac.

Why do you need to use Safari (or any browser) to manage your iPhone? I can understand how it helps web content developers, but is there a reason beyond that?

Why do you need to use Safari (or any browser) to manage your iPhone? I can understand how it helps web content developers, but is there a reason beyond that?

Safari as it used by the iPhone is a full fledged browser, not some stripped down imitation of a browser. You don't require Safari to manage your iPhone. The iPhone is managed using iTunes, just as is the iPod.

The confusion about Safari is the release of 3.0 which also works on XP and Vista. Safari 3.0 is not required for users of the iPhone.

The business case for Safari 3.0 for Windows is that the user can use the same browser that is on his/her iPhone, on their Windows computer, and that browser (Safari 3.0) is 2X faster than IE7 (which currently has a 68% share of the browser market.

Seeing how powerful the browser is on their "smart phone", compared to the stripped down excuses for browsers on competing products, and seeing how much faster Safari 3.0 is than IE7, coupled with some currently unique features within Safari 3.0, might help convince more Wintel users to switch to MacOSX (from whatever else they are using).

Further, increased usage of Safari (caused by porting Safari to Windows) might entice Windows centric websites to port for Safari as well. Increased Mac support eliminates perception of compatibility limitations, in the Mac environment, that may be holding back even greater numbers of switchers to the Mac platform.

Safari as it used by the iPhone is a full fledged browser, not some stripped down imitation of a browser.

Well, one thing that's not entirely clear and which nobody to my knowledge so far has asked is whether iPhone's Safari will support plugins and/or whether -- and if so, how -- Apple may allow plugins to be installed on the iPhone. QuickTime and Flash are plugins that come immediately to mind.

-awlabrador

It is obvious that the way an iPhone will be managed is through Safari something like the way an iPod is managed through iTunes.

It's not obvious to me at all, and in fact it contradicts both my recollection and Jobs' Macworld 2007 keynote.

What appears obvious to me may not be so obvious to others. In my haste to write my post I left out "to me." - It is obvious to me. Even after explaining my reasoning it still might not be obvious to others.

I guess my association with Apple as an investor since 2001 has given me some memories to refer back to. I got to see how the iPod was introduced.

I believe that Steve Jobs learned from Bill Gates the formula for how to become the wealthiest person on earth. He chose not to complain how badly he was beaten by Microsoft and instead implemented the same success formula that made Bill Gates rich and applied it to the music players. I don't have to know exactly what that formula is to benefit from it. All I have to do is watch him do his work.

He is hungry for a bigger market and is applying his method of success to the marketing of the iPhone. He is precise with his execution.

I was listening to the keynote through the link posted on this board. I heard "One more thing." He paused... and I thought iPhone. Instead he spoke about Safari. Insignificant? Not likely. He spoke how great it is and that it is now perfected for PCs to use. Then he said "and now, One Last Thing." It was, of course, the iPhone. He was speaking to the WWDC and appropriately spoke about how the connection between Safari and iPhone relates to the conference attendees. From this it became obvious to me that Safari will not just be mass distributed to allow for the 5000+ developers to write applications for the iPhone. It will have a more integral part in the users experience much like iTunes has for the iPod. Both Safari and iTunes will play a part in iPhone management. Even if iTunes is the overall manager there will be a need to download Safari in order to make the best use of the iPhone.

Joel

Ok, here's what nobody seems to understand. Releasing Safari for Windows is the secret killer application for the Web. ...

Think about it. Now there is one browser usable on virtually all computers connected to the web. What's a corporation to do?? They've got this whiz bang web based application that they want to develop and they want it to work everywhere.

The answer now, is that they can develop the web application to work on Safari and they get the best of all worlds.

1) It works on Windows XP and Vista
2) It works on all Macintosh computers with a recent version of OSX
3) It works [unaltered] on the iPhone.

Talk about offering it to a broad market. Safari for Windows is not a toy. It's the enabling technology for all future web based applications that guarantees the largest market possible with the least amount of coding. You only have to work on Safari and you work everywhere.

It's subtile, but powerful. 8^)

Think about it. Now there is one browser usable on virtually all computers connected to the web.

Firefox.

-awlabrador

Firefox.

Beat me to it. :)

Think about it. Now there is one browser usable on virtually all computers connected to the web.

Response:Firefox.

Valid, however two advantages of Safari

1) Faster
2) You get iPhone capability for free.