Safari for Windows?

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I say YES for following reasons:



1. If Safari is available for Windows, and it becomes vaible alternative for browser then more website developers will make it work with their site.



2. IE for Windows will not exist after 6, so give people on that side of the fence choice for a standalone browser.



3. Since its all open source stuff, give it away for nothing but put lot of Apple logo's on it. Nothing beats Free Advertisting 8)



4. Who's the competition? Opera, Mozilla... Lightweights, If you put out a properly branded Browsers that people recognize then people will use it.



5. Make switching easier once they become familiar with the product that they would use most often.



6. What is MS going to do, stop Apple from giving away free software. Whoever heard of not charging people for product? Oh wait a minute, Microsoft does that!
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 61
    alpha macalpha mac Posts: 463member
    Yep, Safari for windows would be nice.
  • Reply 2 of 61
    dave k.dave k. Posts: 1,306member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    I say YES for following reasons:



    1. If Safari is available for Windows, and it becomes vaible alternative for browser then more website developers will make it work with their site.



    2. IE for Windows will not exist after 6, so give people on that side of the fence choice for a standalone browser.



    3. Since its all open source stuff, give it away for nothing but put lot of Apple logo's on it. Nothing beats Free Advertisting 8)



    4. Who's the competition? Opera, Mozilla... Lightweights, If you put out a properly branded Browsers that people recognize then people will use it.



    5. Make switching easier once they become familiar with the product that they would use most often.



    6. What is MS going to do, stop Apple from giving away free software. Whoever heard of not charging people for product? Oh wait a minute, Microsoft does that!




    Yes. It's only a matter of time.
  • Reply 3 of 61
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Ignorance is bliss. It will never happen. There is much more demand for Final Cut Pro for windows and that won't happen. Why a little web browser?
  • Reply 4 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    Ignorance is bliss. It will never happen. There is much more demand for Final Cut Pro for windows and that won't happen. Why a little web browser?



    Well for one thing, its not really Apple's product, Its based on an open source browser. And Apple gives away this product.

    (sorry forgot an important word there)



    Also Apple want High-end Video editing people to stay on Apple Platform. And for that kind of work, PC will always be cheaper, so people will use PC's for Final Cut Pro, thus taking sales away from Mac. Which would be counter productive.



    Why do you think Apple is making iTunes for Windows? so people will see great product from Apple. Now if you were a casual PC user and your MP3 player and Web Browser sucks ass. But here come Apple with their product that works great, that person will think about buying a Mac next time.



    Also this is also a mission to get Safari accepted as an alternative to MSIE on the windows side. Not only will this development help Apple, it will help users, more websites will work properly with it thus helping Mac Safari work with more site. Its all reciprocal.



    Product loyality does not exist for casual computer user. People will switch computer in a second if they feel it sucks. Get into peoples head. Think man, think, use your noggins You have to stop thinking in such a limited way.
  • Reply 5 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    Well for one thing, its not really Apple's product, Its an open source browser. And Apple gives away this product.



    You couldn't be more wrong.



    Sure, Apple builds Safari from some open source projects, but the software itself is private, closed-source. You could say the same thing about Mac OS X itself. Darwin is open source, but does that mean the whole operating system is? Where's the free version of Mac OS X? Where's the x86 version of Mac OS X?



    If Safari is open source, I ask you to point me in the direction of the code so I can compile it for myself.



    To quote a recent Mozilla.org posting:

    Quote:

    Safari is a browser built on top of open source technologies. While Safari uses those technologies--KHTML from the KDE world, parts of the "view manager" from Mozilla, and perhaps others as well--it combines them with other, closed-source technologies to create a closed-source browser application. Some of the features Apple highlights for Safari appear to be developed through a traditional closed development model. In other words, Safari is built using open source technologies, but it is not an "open source browser."



  • Reply 6 of 61
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    Why do you think Apple is making iTunes for Windows? ... Think man, think, use your noggins You have to stop thinking in such a limited way.



    Profit, for starters. They have the best music service out there and can make TONS of money off it. As for my limited thinking... Giving away the source code will eventually lead to much competition between M$ and other companies. While Apple could build a browser for PC, it will never be as popular and will always play catch-up with new inventions it helps create. It's best to strengthen the Mac platform first before taking on Microsoft it their home territory.
  • Reply 7 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    Profit, for starters. They have the best music service out there and can make TONS of money off it. As for my limited thinking... Giving away the source code will eventually lead to much competition between M$ and other companies. While Apple could build a browser for PC, it will never be as popular and will always play catch-up with new inventions it helps create. It's best to strengthen the Mac platform first before taking on Microsoft it their home territory.



    I wasnt really saying you had a limited thinking, I was just saying you have to think out side of the box,



    I dont think the browser has to be the default browser on the PC side, just get name recoginition on their side. My god people are willing to use that Bloatedware Navigator.



    I dont think it will take that much more effort to make a product that runs on both platform equally, I mean we ask Adobe, Quark, Macromedia and MS to do that.



    Just make a browser that browses the internet fast and correctly. I think people would appreciate that. Whether they use a Mac or WIndows
  • Reply 8 of 61
    kelibkelib Posts: 740member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    I say YES for following reasons:

    Since its all open source stuff, give it away for nothing but put lot of Apple logo's on it. Nothing beats Free Advertisting 8)





    This would man no peezee nurd out there would use it UC. The Apple Logo would scare people off
  • Reply 9 of 61
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    i would love nothing more, being a web designer by day (and a superhero by night), than there to be a completely html and css1 and css2 level compliant browser out there that was marketed well enough to get larger sites to adhere more toweb standards as their user-base grows.



    but, i gotta wonder where apple will "draw the line" and say that to use great software like "fill_in_blank", you have to have a mac. they could do it with itunes, because they justified it through sales of hardware to windows users, too.



    now, if apple were to, say, release the super-pda that no one could live without, AND it only used safari to do its internet work, then you might see a safari for windows.
  • Reply 10 of 61
    While politically/economically it may be a good idea to port safari over to Windows, technically, the argument looks much worse. In order to port Safari to windows, Apple would have to port the cocoa frameworks to windows first, because that is what safari is based on. This is not true of iTunes, because iTunes is based on the carbon frameworks and quickdraw. Quickdraw has already been ported to windows (that is how quicktime runs on windows).



    It may be true that Apple probably already has windows frameworks from Next but, those would have to be updated for newer versions of windows, same way that had to be for the PPC. The PPC port of cocoa, while it was a new port and added java took almost 2 years to complete, so, it is not a trivial matter.



    I hope that Apple will port safari, and possibly other cocoa apps to Windows, but, frankly, I am doubting it. Just be thankful Apple is porting iTunes.
  • Reply 11 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    I dont think it will take that much more effort to make a product that runs on both platform equally, I mean we ask Adobe, Quark, Macromedia and MS to do that.



    Just make a browser that browses the internet fast and correctly. I think people would appreciate that. Whether they use a Mac or WIndows




    You are forgetting many things here in your zeal.



    Adobe, Quark, and Macromedia all get paid in one fashion or another for their cross-platform products. What would Apple get in return for its investment in porting Safari to Windows? Not money... you can't do that well selling a browser to compete with perfectly good free alternatives (IE, Mozilla, etc.). Name recognition? Perhaps. But whether or not it's worth the effort is another matter. The chance more of your faithful will move over to a cheaper, faster platform and still be able to get all their favorite, familiar programs? I would think that'd be something to worry about.



    Apple is porting iTunes over in order to open their Music Store up to the other 95% of the market, in the hopes of making millions of dollars. It isn't because they want to share the goodness of their software with the poor Windows heathens.



    Apple is a corporation. It's main purpose in life is to make money, not to do things people appreciate. Currently, it chooses to make money by providing the best innovation and style it can to their paying customers.
  • Reply 12 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally posted by John Whitney

    You are forgetting many things here in your zeal.



    Adobe, Quark, and Macromedia all get paid in one fashion or another for their cross-platform products. What would Apple get in return for its investment in porting Safari to Windows? Not money... you can't do that well selling a browser to compete with perfectly good free alternatives (IE, Mozilla, etc.). Name recognition? Perhaps. But whether or not it's worth the effort is another matter. The chance more of your faithful will move over to a cheaper, faster platform and still be able to get all their favorite, familiar programs? I would think that'd be something to worry about.



    Apple is porting iTunes over in order to open their Music Store up to the other 95% of the market, in the hopes of making millions of dollars. It isn't because they want to share the goodness of their software with the poor Windows heathens.



    Apple is a corporation. It's main purpose in life is to make money, not to do things people appreciate. Currently, it chooses to make money by providing the best innovation and style it can to their paying customers.




    Yes, it will cost money, whatever it is, it will be worth it. If it becomes an accepted alternative browers on Windows side, then we don't need to make "Oh NO!!!! This site doesn't work on a Mac!" complaints.



    But you know what, Quicktime is available on PC. And Apple doesnt charge money for that now do they. (yeah I know they have a pro version but most people dont get the pro version of QT)



    If its out there and it does something that others dont, people will use it.
  • Reply 13 of 61
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    But you know what, Quicktime is available on PC. And Apple doesn't charge money for that now do they.



    Good point. But I tend to see Quicktime as a balls-in-vice situation. If Apple doesn't do it, Quicktime will loose popularity. They are competing with Window media and realplayer (which are cross-platform) as the number one internet format. Also, it is just the player that is free for PC's and if Quicktime became the standard web format, web sites would buy the Pro version to encode their Audio/Video.
  • Reply 14 of 61
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Brad, didn't Apple release the open source code part that they used to help safari back after they worked on it and made some of it better?
  • Reply 15 of 61
    Only the HTML (WebCore) and ECMAScript (JavaScriptCore) engines have code publicly available. Even in these cases, the public code is only updated on occasion by Apple and not regularly like the CVS checkins that most open source projects use.



    Yes, I believe the code that Apple changed in these has also been contributed back to the KHTML and KJS libraries in the KDE project.



    Contributing updates to an existing open source project is one thing. Saying that therefore Safari is an open source browser is something completely unrelated and is not true. I say again: if Safari is an open source browser, point me to the code so that I can compile and build a copy of Safari myself.
  • Reply 16 of 61
    Well, I guess Apple lost any chance of making significant impact on browser market.



    Firfox is everything Safari should have been. I use it on my Mac along side Safari.
  • Reply 17 of 61
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    4. Who's the competition? Opera, Mozilla... Lightweights, If you put out a properly branded Browsers that people recognize then people will use it.





    So, while Firefox (a product of the Mozilla Foundation), according to you, is everything Safari should have been, its also 'lightweight' at the same time? I fail to see the logic here.



    Leave Firefox aside, even Opera is light-years ahead of Safari in terms of speed and stability.

  • Reply 18 of 61
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gene Clean

    So, while Firefox (a product of the Mozilla Foundation), according to you, is everything Safari should have been, its also 'lightweight' at the same time? I fail to see the logic here.



    Leave Firefox aside, even Opera is light-years ahead of Safari in terms of speed and stability.




    If you haven't noticed, when this thread originally started, Firefox in current form wasn't even around. So instead of delivering "smartass" zinger, look at the date when it was said and why it was said.



    So next time, instead of making comments, just read carefully. And do yourself a favor and learn some social skills.

    Yeah, internet is impersonal but still it's no reason to be rude.





    This recent article about Firefox is the reason I revived this thread:



    Article



    And if Apple's goal is to convert people from PC to Mac. It's software, that people use most often and comfortable with, which makes the switching easier for people.
  • Reply 19 of 61
    gavrielgavriel Posts: 175member
    Firefox, much like Safari, is a browser that adheres to the W3C standards. Any market share gained by it on Windows will benefit Safari aswell, since it convinces programmers to target the WC3 standards rather than proprietary Microsoft solutions.
  • Reply 20 of 61
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by I.P.Freely

    [B]If you haven't noticed, when this thread originally started, Firefox in current form wasn't even around. So instead of delivering "smartass" zinger, look at the date when it was said and why it was said.





    What do you mean 'in current form'? I've been using it since 0.5 and haven't had any problem with it. Unlike other browsers that start with 1.0 as the basis and then build upon, Firefox started with 0.1 and went 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, et al up to 1.0 that is now.



    So it had quite a few releases, albeit, officially unsupported, and in its current 1.0 release it kicks serious ass when compared to others that are at 6.0 or 7.54 or whatever. It was very stable and feature rich even in 2003 when this topic was started.







    Quote:

    So next time, instead of making comments, just read carefully. And do yourself a favor and learn some social skills.

    Yeah, internet is impersonal but still it's no reason to be rude.



    If I was rude, I apologize.





    Quote:

    This recent article about Firefox is the reason I revived this thread:



    Article



    Yes, it says 'it continues gains' which means that it was gaining even in its 0.x form. Which goes to show something.



    Quote:

    And if Apple's goal is to convert people from PC to Mac. It's software, that people use most often and comfortable with, which makes the switching easier for people.



    I don't really care what Apple's goal is and I don't really buy these 'switching' stories that Apple is advertising on their website and whatnot, but they could learn a thing or two from Firefox and Mozilla Foundation in general. That means improving the browser continuously and making the browser the lightest possible while offering a set of useful features.



    Right now the browser is not light, doesn't have many features (although not as feature-lacking as initially), and is slow. It had its chance to do something, and it lost it. On these I concur with you.



    p.s. and geez, take it easy. I don't think I said anything bad except that I didn't see how it made sense what you said. That's nothing bad, just an opinion.
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