Safari Beta Takeup Tops Firefox, IE and Chrome

nk497 writes "The release of the beta for the next version of Apple's Safari browser last week helped drive Apple's market share above ten per cent. The Safari beta has gained users at a rate of about 0.5 per cent a day since its release, topping one per cent by day four. For comparison, Microsoft's beta of IE took six months to hit one percent, Chrome needed almost a month, and Firefox 3 took a week."

I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Math

[Alsee]

about 0.5 per cent a day... topping one per cent by day four

-

Not Meaningful

[Nemyst]

I don't think that kind of thing is actually meaningful at all. Sure, they are gaining more people to try out their beta. The issue is with whether they'll be able to keep them.

Look at Google Chrome; the browser's first few weeks were all rosy as people flocked to the browser. After a few months, though, things got back to "normal" and users went back to their usual browser after the hype machine had died down and the novelty wore off. If they can get that percentage and KEEP it, then we can say they've achieved something.

Why? Trust.

[Lord Grey]

I think the reason behind this is due to trust. Specifically, trust in the "it just works" history that Apple currently enjoys. Mac users are used to that, expect it, and believe that something like a new Safari will actually work and may even perform as advertised. They're willing to give it a try at an early stage. I did: I'm typing this reply now in the Safari beta. And hey, it does Just Work, at least so far.

Now, I'm not saying that Apple always deserves that level of trust. They've made mistakes in the past, some of them real doozies. But in general, the average Mac user has a fairly high regard for Apple products. More so than Microsoft users for Windows products, certainly.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[August26]

Maybe it's Hotmail that is broken.

This would be good news for KDE only if...

[bogaboga]

...the KDE folks would "dump" KHTML for Webkit. I just mean "default to Webkit in Konqueror." Such a move would raise Konqueror's profile which cannot be a bad thing.

Right now, Konqueror is a non issue when it comes to browser statistics on the internet. In some statistics, it is lumped like other browsers into the "other" category like here [sirsidynix.com]. And over here [hitslink.com], Konqueror is missing all together! Sad indeed.

While I say this, I know egos are high in the Open Source world, so what I am suggesting has little chance of being adopted.

Now, before I get modded a troll, I would like to know whether what I am suggesting is a very bad thing.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[outZider]

SquirrelFish Extreme was unveiled about a week after Google unveiled Chrome and V8. If you're going to whine about Safari putting tabs on top like Chrome, you could say that Google stole Opera's UI.

Re:Are they still sneaking it in via iTunes update

[Assmasher]

Yep. To see if they're still doing it I asked iTunes to update and lo and behold, the Apple Software Updater comes up and lists Bonjour and iTunes in the top half of the dialog, and near the bottom, off on its own, is 'Safari' 23MB (iirc) download, already pre-checked for me. Hmmm... I wonder if I had automatic updating configured if it would simply show up on my machine? LOL.

No add-ons

[morgan_greywolf]

The problem with both Chrome and Safari is a lack of an add-on community [cnet.com]. One of the things that continues to make Firefox a success is that the user community has added all the niche functionality anyone would ever want and more.

That's not the Safari 4 Beta

[danaris]

If you actually paid attention, you'd be able to tell that that wasn't the Safari 4 Beta, but just an update to Safari 3.

As several others have noted in this thread (whom you apparently ignored), you have to deliberately go out and download the Safari 4 Beta from Apple's website.

Dan Aris

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yeah it's really fucking hard to gain share when the browser comes bundled with your OS...

...except the beta we're talking about doesn't come bundled with the OS.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I create shortcuts to Firefox that use the IE image.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[A12m0v]

CSS Animation! and other CSS and HTML5 goodies!
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/ [webkit.org]

Hate Apple all you want, at least when it comes to the web they care about standards.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Yes and nope.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

f nothing else, the wisdom of keeping a hand on the source code for urgent security fixes, rather than wait that it goes through the whole chain of Apple - WebKit - Qt - KDE.

I don't understand. How is it harder to make urgent security fixes to the open source code of KHTML rather than the open source code of Webkit? You write your patch, release the changes and compile. Now maybe Apple and Google and Nokia and other contributors to Webkit won't like your fix or implement it or pull those changes in, but I don't see why you'd have to wait for Apple to do anything in an emergency.

Re:Why? Trust.

[Syrente]

While it's fair enough to say that, I've found that "Just Works" principle applies to all major OS distributions (well, except my first few Gentoo installs). Apple's marketing compaign for "It Just Works" generally works by the principle of "Anything that Might Not Work We Disabled." That said, the Safari 4 beta seems interesting, and I've heard good things about it, but I, for one, shall not buy into this "It Just Works" ethos when I download it. Which I shall do subsequent to this post.