Mozilla Exec Claims Apple is Hunting OSS Browsers

Rob writes with a link to a Computer Business Review article on the negative impact Mozilla COO John Lilly sees Apple is having on Open Source. Lilly claims that Jobs' recent discussion of Safari on Windows is an attempt to create a duopoly of browsers (IE and Safari), with Firefox and the rest on the outside looking in. "The graph 'betrays the way that Apple, so often looks at the world,' Lilly said. 'But make no mistake: this wasn't a careless presentation, or an accidental omission of all the other browsers out there, or even a crummy marketing trick,' he said. 'Lots of words describe Steve and his Stevenotes, but 'careless' and 'accidental' do not. This is, essentially, the way they're thinking about the problem, and shows the users they want to pick up.'" We discussed an analyst's opinion on this subject this past Friday.

Apple on Windows

[gowen (141411)]

Gee, I hope its as user friendly as iTunes. I simply live to see the message "You cannot use iTunes because another user is running a copy". That's user friendliness right there.

Re:

[Aqua OS X (458522)]

When does iTunes do that?

Re:Apple on Windows

[lewp (95638)]

Presumably when another user is running a copy.

Re:Apple on Windows

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

Then uses hers to play Elton John and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack

Damn. I knew Slashdotters were hard up for female companionship, but this is over the top. Why don't you just stick to porn and wanking like the rest of us?

Re:Apple on Windows

[Shakrai (717556)]

Why don't you just stick to porn and wanking like the rest of us?

Because it's not as fun and a lil Elton John and Moulin Rouge is worth having access to a sex partner?

Re:Apple on Windows

[MBGMorden (803437)]

People already detailed the "switch users" reason earlier in the thread, but if I've learned anything, it's that you should never ask "Why would you want to do that anyways?" in regards to most computer questions, ESPECIALLY in a moderately to heavily tech-oriented forum. People are creative. They thing of ways to use things that lots of others don't. They ALWAYS have a reason to want to do it.

Same base reason why DRM sucks really. A company starts out and thinks up 5-10 ways that people are "allowed" to use something and shuts everything else off. Then they wonder what the hell is wrong when the masses start complaining that it's not doing what they need it to.

Re:Apple on Windows

[WinterSolstice (223271)]

"I will never own a Mac until Steverino departs the scene..."

So, you have an older PowerMac, then right? Scully was more your cup of tea?

I've never seen this itunes error, and I use fast user switching all the time. On OSX it just simply works. :) Of course, that's part of why I think Safari on Windows is silly - itunes on Windows is silly too. Broken crap under Windows doesn't convert people to use Mac, it just pisses them off.

On not being #3

[Animats (122034)]

In computing, you can be successful as #2, but the #3 player usually loses out and disappears. (Remember Amiga? Commodore? DEC? Ask Jeeves?) If Apple wants their browser to have any commercial significance, they have to pass Firefox.

Re:On not being #3

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

Yeah, like Gateway, Opera, XBox...wait a minute...

Nothing to Worry About...

[morari (1080535)]

Safari is even less enticing on Windows than it is in its native environment.

Pie Chart is all about marketing

[MSTCrow5429 (642744)]

I find it hard to believe that Apple, which from time to time is king of marketing, seriously believes that the browser battle is between just itself and IE. It's no doubt well aware FireFox is number 2, and Safari is close to last, in terms of market share. Instead, this is Apple trying to create the illusion that it really is the big dangerous new browser on the block, and create the perception of market dominance and leadership. I don't think it will work, and this is likely to make Apple look foolish in the eyes of the non-default to IE market, but that's what Apple is trying to do with these silly charts and pronouncements.

Re:Pie Chart is all about marketing

[truthsearch (249536)]

That's not at all how Apple operates. You're completely ignoring their real motives. They don't care if they own the dominant web browser. They know it's basically irrelevant to their business.

What Apple sells is a particular computing experience. To have people develop web apps for the iPhone they need the browser platform it runs on: Safari. So Safari on Windows lets non-Mac users develop iPhone applications (similar to OS X's Dashboard).

Apple does not care if only developers use Safari on Windows. As long as there's a lot of iPhone apps to download. Having people browse the web with Safari on Windows does nothing for Apple's bottom line. But as a development platform it's critical to their latest product.

Re:Pie Chart is all about marketing

[suv4x4 (956391)]

Instead, this is Apple trying to create the illusion that it really is the big dangerous new browser on the block, and create the perception of market dominance and leadership. I don't think it will work, and this is likely to make Apple look foolish in the eyes of the non-default to IE market, but that's what Apple is trying to do with these silly charts and pronouncements.

Apple's marketing was always extreme, and that is their style for as long as Jobs is on top.

This achieves few things:

- The core of Mac users become even more devoted to the Apple brand (it's sort of like a cult, it doesn't matter sometimes Jobs says ridiculous things).

- The rest of the world sees Apple as arrogant, sometimes foolish, but always and always interesting nonetheless.

- Which on the other hand makes Apple a great news material, and gains it a huge media coverage.

So the bottomline: they're doing what they have to, to survive. The "reality distortion field" of Jobs isn't a myth - it's very real, and the guy's doing it to get the exact effects he gets.

Apple always tries to create its own bubble where it competes with mythical collective enemies such as "The PC", "Microsoft", "The rest of the Phones", "The rest of the browsers". To support this bubble, you need the extreme kind of marketing Jobs does, otherwise it falls a apart and Apple will have to compete in the real market like any other company.

Jobs uses bubbles in his own company as well. Many people know that he would separate his employees in "buubles" and let them "fight" each other (in their work) to full exhaustion (such was the case with Apple II and Lisa teams). The other team is the enemy, and you gotta do everything humanly possible to support your own bubble.

Re:Pie Chart is all about marketing

[dangitman (862676)]

Apple's marketing was always extreme, and that is their style for as long as Jobs is on top.

What do you mean by extreme? It's always seemed fairly sedate and understated to me, with the exception of the raucous iPod ads. Remember the Mac ads when Jobs came back? They were all elegant, and barely even dared to "sell" the products - they were mostly just sparse shots of the product on a white background, with little elaboration.

I think the marketing of Microsoft and Dell are much more extreme. The Windows Vista ad is ridiculous - as if people actually say "Wow!" at a new version of Windows. Or there's the Microsoft ads that talk about how they empower people to conquer the universe. Or the Dell ads, with their SUPER COOL!! CHEAP!! BUY NOW!!! AMAZING FEATURES!!!!

All of those examples seem much more extreme that the comparatively quiet and friendly Apple advertising.

it's sort of like a cult, it doesn't matter sometimes Jobs says ridiculous things

Why should it matter? I use Apple products because they work well. Should I use something different just because Jobs occassionally puts his foot in his mouth? I don't understand why anyone would choose a computer or software based on the personality of the CEO, rather than the usefulness of the hardware and software.

Apple always tries to create its own bubble where it competes with mythical collective enemies such as "The PC", "Microsoft",

Geeee, that's all a fabrication. It's not like Dell or Microsoft have ever acted antagonistically towards Apple, or "declared war" on them. Oh wait, they have. The other players have just as much, or more, of a problem with this mentality than Apple. Just look at all the big-noting over companies trying to create an "iPod killer," for example. If anything, Apple is happy surviving alongside the other players, where the likes of Microsoft and Dell aren't happy until they crush all the competition. To them, being in second place means losing. Apple's definition of victory is totally different.

Re:Pie Chart is all about marketing

[the linux geek (799780)]

Bullshit. They directly compare two charts - one with IE, Safari, and FF, and then a "future chart," with only IE and Safari.

I have a MBP...

[imperio (1044250)]

and installed both Firefox and Thunderbird after about a week of owning the thing. The MBP is great, but iMail & Safari are pretty weak. I don't think Mozilla has anything to worry about.

1996 called

[by Anonymous Coward]

It wants its bounce message back. Most spam these days comes from faked, and sometimes legitimate, email addresses, so you're basically bouncing the spam back to an innocent person and possibly spamming them if the original message is included.

Imminent Death of FireFox Predicted. JPGs at 11.

[srmalloy (263556)]

Meanwhile, Abraxor has taken available data and projected [abraxor.com] that Firefox will overtake IE in August...

Re:Imminent Death of FireFox Predicted. JPGs at 11

[Bearpaw (13080)]

What that data seems to projects is that FF may overtake IE6 ... whose numbers seem to be dropping mostly because of the people switching to IE7 . IE6/7 still has a comfortable lead over FF.

Apple is Hunting OSS Browsers

[syntap (242090)]

We're on a Safari and we're hunting OSS browsers. (slaps self) I mean we're developing Safari and HURTING OSS browsers.

Who gives a shit?

[beavis88 (25983)]

If Safari turns out to be better than Firefox, they deserve to take their marketshare. If not, well, Apple deserves to see this fall flat on its face. But I guess "OMG teh evils corporashuns!!11!" is likely to attract more readers...

Bah!

[Moby Cock (771358)]

This is all a tempest in a teapot. Safari on Windows is not going to harm OSS browsers any more than Opera does. There is no reason to think that Safari is going to displace Firefox (or Konqueror or whatever). The users of those apps use them because they had a choice and found a product they liked.

Remember: more competition is always a good thing.

By the way, Safari isn't even the best browser on OS X (that honour goes to Camino) so I really can't see how it will have much impact on Windows.

It's the simplicity, stupid!

[Protonk (599901)]

Apple (Read Jobs and handlers) left out lynx, Opera, FF, tinybrowser, etc out of the presentation because the end result would have looked much more visually confusing that they wanted, IMO.

TFS/TFA make a critical logical error. They state that nothing Jobs does in these presentations is accidental, because we all know how meticulously planned they are. Therefore, if nothing is accidental, then the omission must be a sign of Apple's malevolence toward open source. QED!

Bullshit. The graph doesn't necessarily 'betray the way Apple looks at the world', it betrays they way apple wants the shareholders, newspapermen and fans to look at the world. Their ongoing conceit (diff than deceit) has always (From the late 90's on) been, we are competing against this giant monopoly, here we are, the valiant underdogs. True or not, this is the image (RDF) that has been provided. Apple's recent success may cause people to forget this, to assume that the marketing message is different now. An assumtpion like that would have to come butressed with facts, not shoddy logic.

Does this mean that Apples wants to make nie with open source, or acknowledge the contributions of open source, etc? Of course not. But that doesn't mean that a graph is really a coded browser battle plan to get rid of FF. Apple would be perfectly happy competing for a plurality in browser market share, especially if it meant that users would/could be intimately familiar w/ the iphone interface out of the gate.

Negative?

[greg_barton (5551)]

Using BSD as the basis for OSX basically gave FOSS credibility in the consumer market.

It's like a decade of free positive publicity.

Mozilla can take the competition. If it can't it shouldn't be in the game.

Are we supposed to feel bad for Mozilla?

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

Are they honestly crying in public because a competitor wants to... compete with them?

Firefox has managed to get a 25% marketshare against Microsoft, on their own OS. Hell, I'm typing this from Firefox on a Mac right now, because I like the addons. If Safari is trying to "edge out" Firefox, they just need to make sure Firefox is a significantly better browser. If it's not, well, you can hardly blame Apple for making a better product.

No, not really.

[JLavezzo (161308)]

The headline makes out like Mozilla's whining, but the actual quotes from John Lilly are more about an analysis of Apple's corporate outlook than, as the reporter puts it, "sour grapes."

Um

[jb.hl.com (782137)]

Apple is gunning for open source software...and he bases this on a pie chart?

Apple's main target by releasing Safari on Windows is Internet Explorer; they want to basically get newbies who have tried iTunes or have iPods and liked it, and might be willing to try other Apple stuff. They aren't going after Firefox users, so a comparison of Safari v IE v Firefox makes no sense. Hell, why not include Opera as well, and OmniWeb, and Lynx! It'll be one confusing motherfucker of a pie chart, but by god Norwegians, both the people using OmniWeb and text-mode fetishists need representation too!

To me, this smacks of "Yoo hoo! Over here! Firefox still exists! Yes! Wooooo! Give us publicity too!". And he's somehow extrapolated a simple omission from a pie chart into a hatred of open source software in general. Very nice.

(Not that I think Safari for Windows is there yet, it's nice but not wonderful. I still use Firefox if I'm use Windows, but prefer Safari under OSX.)

They are going somewhere else

[TrippTDF (513419)]

I don't think Apple's interested in the browser market as it exists, I think they are interested in having cross-platform "client" to run a new generation of web-based content that they will release over the next few years- things like a Safari-based Word Processor, or perhaps photo editor- a remote connection client so you can always get to your Mac. I think Apple wants / need certain features to make this work, and it's easier all around if they use their browser rather than IE or FF. Watch Safari turn into a client for Safari apps, not a new entrant into the browser war. They want it cross-platform so PC users will also be able to take advantage of it, possibly selling more Macs in the process.

Sorry, didn't know FireFox was ONLY competing w/IE

[King_TJ (85913)]

IMHO, this is ridiculous! Safari gets released for Windows, and the Mozilla team immediately has an outcry against it?

The more competition, the better, I say! May the best man win, and all that. I didn't realize Firefox was being strictly worked on as a project with a goal of defeating IE, and no other players were ever supposed to "interfere" with that mission!?

This isn't even a scenario that's real comparable to iTunes - despite that getting thrown around as a comparison. With iTunes, Apple was releasing it as a vehicle to sell music on their store. In that regard, the whole thing was a commercial venture - and it simply made sense to allow the vast number of Windows users a "front end" to be able to purchase Apple's music, instead of keeping it just for the 5-7% of the marketplace that uses Macs.

With Safari, on the other hand, it may become useful or required as a development tool aiding in building apps for the iPhone ... but that won't directly add to Apple's bottom line. They aren't likely to make anything SELLING Safari for Windows either - so it's more or less going to remain a freebie you can opt to use or not use, as you see fit.

who cares?

[nanosquid (1074949)]

Actually, I think Safari was a bad decision for Apple but a good decision for everybody else. The easy solution for Apple would have been to put Gecko inside a Cocoa app, which would have given them much more compatibility with Web 2.0 sites. By struggling to establish a third standard, they are actually helping everybody else. And if they manage to establish Safari as the #2 browser on the web, all the better: FOSS will simply take the Safari rendering engine (which is open source) and wrap it in a Gtk+ UI.

Re:who cares?

[rumith (983060)]

Or rather, wrap it in a Qt UI. Oh, wait. Such a thing already exists, Konqueror the name.

It's called competition.

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Considering the slide Firefox has been in in my personal satisfaction index, I find myself not giving a damn that they're afraid of a little competition.

I use OSS because I like the way it works. If it doesn't work well enough, I use something else. Firefox isn't going to stay my browser of choice if there is something out there that does the job better.

Now I'm not really fond of Safari, but if it runs fast, loads fast, doesn't hog system memory, I'm going to start using it. End of fricking story.

Darwinism

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

If the only way that Mozilla can survive is for Apple (and whoever else wants to toss their hat in the ring) to refrain from building a browser, then Mozilla doesn't deserve to survive.

But the good news is, Mozilla can survive, and it will, if it is good enough to compete against Safari and IE and Opera (and whoever else wants to toss their hat into the ring.) And presently, it is that good. I don't foresee that changing anytime soon. And if and when it does, I'll gladly adopt whatever the best browser is on that day, just as I've ditched Netscape 1.x through 4.7, IE 3 through 6, and all the rest I've tried over the years. Right now I like Firefox.

Oh come off it!

[dr.badass (25287)]

Can we please kill this meme? As I wrote the other day: "There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference."

That's it. There's no story. Safari on Windows doesn't hurt anyone except maybe Microsoft. Just because Jobs didn't take time out of his keynote to stroke the collective Firefox ego does not mean Apple is "hunting" Mozilla.

The exec also highlighted Mozilla's attitude about market share: "We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource," he said.

The subtext being that Apple somehow is contrary to this. As if releasing a browser (based on an open source rendering engine) which actually has better adherence to standards than Mozilla browsers is going to make the web less open and public. Sorry folks, but that is a dead end.

OSS

[ceeam (39911)]

WebKit is not OSS now? Hm...

Anyway - how is Safari-the-WebKit-engine worse than Firefox-the-Gecko-engine? If anything I'd like to see more standards compatible browsers and then there's a chance we can defeat evil MSIE. Gecko-is-the-standard did not play well last time when Netscape gone under and Microsoft won the first browser war, right?

Re:Um... what?

[aichpvee (631243)]

You meant inferior, but I'll forgive you since I know you're using a mac and the keyboard has all the keys in funny places.

Re:Um... what?

[catwh0re (540371)]

There are quite a few misconceptions about what apple do as a company to help or harm the OSS industry. It's a combination of balancing their goals as a business that needs to innovate to stay profitable versus keeping good PR with the sprawling list of partners. An example of this is why apple chose kHTML to start with, they needed a small project they could take control of, mozilla was of sufficient popularity that apple would have very little control in directing it to suit their needs over time. kHTML and now webkit allow this. Also I personally feel it's good to have two mature open source web browsing engines, having one leads to pigeon holing over time (hence why mozilla is suffering a little bit of bloat in recent times.)

I don't agree that Apple are lacking in their support for open source - Apple run their projects as open source when available (you can't open source company secrets and as a result they don't open those older projects to the community). They also use open source throughout their operating system. (http://www.apple.com/opensource/) details some of their open source efforts in osx. Whether directed by apple or otherwise. Apple have also been disproportionately light on litigious affairs with open source vendors. Particularly important when you consider that the expose feature in OS X is actually patented by Apple. (Despite this many enjoy it in ubuntu and other xgl implementations.)

Turning a blind eye and only engaging in litigation where contracts with partners (usually the music industry) require them to do so is an often unrecognised merit to the company's management.

http://www.macosforge.org/ lists many of the bigger apple led open source projects.

Also including all the standards compliant browsers on the slide isn't a good idea for a whole world of obvious reasons. (It's not got much to do with a need for being in the limelight.. it was an apple developer conference, apple -is- in the limelight there.)

Re:Um... what?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Apple's introducing a superior browser to Windows

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Not about market share

[bunratty (545641)]

If they really want the market share, make Firefox 3 worth going back to, and I, for one, will start using FF again.

RTFA. They don't want the market share. They want to keep the web open, as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto [mozilla.org].

Anyway, they do have the market share. Apple releasing Safari for Windows will increase consumer choice and the competition will help all browsers improve. It will also help web developers realize they can't develop for only one or two browsers, but instead should develop according to standards unless they want to turn away significant fractions of visitors. I see only good coming out of the release, regardless of what Jobs' intentions are.

Re:Not about market share

[omeomi (675045)]

Anyway, they do have the market share.

I don't have the exact numbers, but I'm reasonably certain that there are more Firefox users on Windows than there are Apple OSX users, period. That's not meant as a slam against Apple, but I don't think Firefox has too much to worry about. I think Safari on Windows will likely be used mainly by developers looking who want to be able to test web pages on Safari without using a Mac...

Re:Not about market share

[bunratty (545641)]

Right. In my post and the one I was responding to, "they" refers to Mozilla. Mozilla has a 15 [hitslink.com] to 25 [w3counter.com]% share depending on which web stats you believe. In comparison, the share of OSX users is only about 4 to 5% of desktop computers. Safari will have to become very popular on Windows before it's even the #2 browser. If they come out with such a superior browser that so many users want to switch, that can only be a good thing, as John Lilly has said.

Then what are they crying about?

[hotsauce (514237)]

RTFA. They don't want the market share. They want to keep the web open, as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto.

Safari rigorously follows the standards, helping keep the web open for all standards-based browsers. Mozilla should be thanking them.

Re:Not about market share

[DogDude (805747)]

Apple releasing Safari for Windows will increase consumer choice and the competition will help all browsers improve.

Not if Safari doesn't improve *significantly*. Right now, Safari has been widely reviewed as crap-ola on Windows. Just releasing a browser doesn't mean that it's going to become a standard. If nobody ends up using it, then Safari won't have any impact at all.

Re:Um... what?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Exactly. Safari 3 on Mac is the nicest browser I've used for a long time. Safari 3 on Windows seems to be making all of the UI mistakes that FireFox does on Mac. On the plus side, now WebKit works on Windows (thanks to Adobe), it's possible for someone other than Apple to make a WebKit-based browser that does conform to the Windows UI guidelines, such as they are.

Re:Um... what?

[ak3ldama (554026)]

So you're not Apple's target audience for Safari on Windows anyway.
what part of this picture [flickr.com] and this picture [flickr.com] is everyone having such a hard time comprehending? Apple's target audience, is all the users that don't use IE. Steve Jobs has clearly shown this.

Here's what I'm referencing. [jubjubs.net] Jobs says: "Well we dream big. We would love for Safari's marketshare to grow substantially. That's what we'd love." Steve Jobs doesn't just want Safari available so people can test their websites quickly at their same Windows box, he want's all of the market share from Opera/Firefox/etc. If his graph would've shown market share eaten up from IE there wouldn't even be these discussions going on, but instead what we see is an inside look into Steve's view on how he wants the market to change.

Re:Um... what?

[Haeleth (414428)]

Yes, Firefox has a search bar that supports more browsers, but it doesn't have a drop down list with my previous searches.

What? Of course it does. Click in search bar, and press down arrow. Drop-down list full of previous searches appears.

It's not terribly useful, though, because auto-complete is faster -- and Firefox's autocomplete also takes advantage of Google's suggestions feature to show me a list of searches I haven't even made yet. (Maybe Safari's does too... I haven't tried it, because Apple hasn't released a version that will work on any of the operating systems I use.)

Close buttons for each tab in each tab

What's the point? If I want to close a tab, I middle-click on it, which is the default behaviour in Firefox. It's more convenient, because I don't have to hit a tiny close button, I can aim for anywhere on the tab. It's safer, because when I just want to select a tab, I can click anywhere on it with the left button, and not risk accidentally closing it. And it leaves more room on the tab for the name of the site.

Hey, it's not my fault if you bought a computer that only came with a one or two button mouse. :P

Safari is better at resuming stalled downloads.

Quite possibly. I don't use Firefox for big downloads - that's what dedicated download programs like wget are for.

That said, I'd use Safari as well if I could - some sites don't work properly in Firefox, and Konqueror is painful to use. Sadly, Apple haven't released a Linux Safari, so I don't have that option.

Re:Um... what?

[ScienceofSpock (637158)]

They're already TRYING to do this (at least with iTunes anyway).
I specifically downloaded Quicktime *without* iTunes, because quite frankly, I don't want iTunes. When there's an update for Quicktime, the updater pre-checks iTunes for download and installation. The same thing happened when I updated Safari.
I suspect that in the future, any updates for iTunes or Quicktime for Windows users will also contain the pre-checked box for Safari as well.

It's just a checkbox, but the default action of most users is to just keep clicking next until the funny little window is gone.
To me, it's underhanded.

Re:Um... what?

[Volante3192 (953645)]

I've got a nastly little anarchist streak in me. I think it'd be hilarious for the browser wars to play out like this. Download Windows update? IE takes control. Song off iTunes? Safari grabs control back.

Knock down drag out no holds barred browser war, np.

Re:what Apple/Jobs should do is:

[Bootle (816136)]

webkit has been open source for years. It was adobe who really did all the work getting safari to run in windows

So apple spends no time/money, opens a new source of google search bar revenue, AND gets a wider iphone "sdk"

Safari on windows was a success before Jobs announced it

In more ways than one...

[msauve (701917)]

Lilly claims that Jobs' recent discussion of Safari on Windows is an attempt to create a duopoly of browsers (IE and Safari), with Firefox and the rest on the outside looking in.

I feel that Mozilla is trying to do the same thing to Lynx [browser.org].