Safari's market share rises to 4.03 percent

.Mac for mail? Safari can't do Flash? Wait a sec, I thought Macs couldn't connect to the internet? No, scratch that, Macs have black and white displays! Whoops, wrong again. A "mac" is a type of apple! You eat them, not do work on them! (The only evidence against this theory is that I am typing this comment [which will posted on the internet] on a 24" iMac with color display and I'm not eating it.)

As a relatively recent switcher (about 6 months or so) I started out with the familiar Firefox, because Safari seemed far too basic, and I kenw Firefox like the back of my hand. Since then I've tried Camino and Safari, and of the three, I find Safari most usable on a Mac. Integration with the OS and its associated services, scripts, etc. won me over in the end. I think many switchers (the ones who care anyway) will eventually find their way to Safari, the way I did. Maybe if Apple included some kind of "For IE users" or "For Firefox users" guides or wizards the way Firebird used to, they'd see a faster increase in market share.

Part of why Safari seems so basic is because most of its functionality isn't obvious, and often not actually part of Safari at all, but built into OS X. Apple would do well to point this out to new switchers...

Meh.. I still like FF better. Always seems to load pages faster than Safari, but i think this may be system or perception specfic as ive heard the same claim about safari over FF. I also do some web design/dev. and the tools in Firefox are invaluable - not to say there isnt something comprable to safari but why switch... Safari has yet to do anything that would "wow" me away.

My hypothesis is that Firefox users on XP are more likely to switch to OS X. If Safari share is at 4% and OS X share at 5.3%, one could conclude that the share of Firefox on OS X is roughly 20%, higher than it's share on Windows. I think this may be due to the switchers. Switchers from Windows have already shown to be willing to let go of IE and seem to be more computer savvy then the average Windows user. I wonder what the share of FF users among switchers is.

BTW you don't have a theory, you have a hypothesis; an educated guess.

camino all the way

I use this to block my ads
http://www.floppymoose.com/

And that Larry Bodine is a complete idiot who doesn't know hoe to use any computer correctly y the sound of his article. Perhaps somebody should erase Windows on his PC with Linux and watch him squirm. Luckily someone on that site has good things to say about Macs

http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1158829528257

It's so embarrassing when Mac users don't know about the most basic add-ons that are available for Safari. For example, Dave says:
"Firefox has:
1. Adblock. I love it. No ads on TUAW for me.
2. Web Developers Toolbar.

I will continue to use Firefox until Safari has "add ons"."

Dave, pay a visit to www.pimpmysafari.com some time. It'll blow your mind to learn how many great add-ons there are for Safari. Instead of Adblock, I use SafariBlock, which is even easier to use and blocks Flash as well. For web developers, Safari has the WebDevelopersAddition add-on, which does most of what the Firefox thingy does.
There are still valid reasons to use Firefox, but don't do so under the mistaken impression that Safari is limited to the functions it ships with. Another add-on I highly recommend is SafariStand, which adds a sidebar, rearrangeable tabs, a much better Page Info window, and more. And don't forget Safaritidy if you're a developer... it's essential for quickly seeing page errors and helping you fix them.
Last word of the night; Inquisitor, which is now free.

Cheers,
Leland

I emailed Larry to notify him how hard he was making it to simply use a Mac. Some highlights include:
"I really missed the little scrolling wheel in the center of the mouse." Hey, Maybe buy any USB mouse and plug it in? Works fine for me on my Mac.

"Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore." Really? If I press Shift+command+3 on my Mac's keyboard, it gives me a screenshot picture and saves it to the desktop. This is built into Os X. No "downloaded" program required.

"I didn't even bother with the Mac's iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address." Wrong. I use my Mail program with my (100% free) Gmail account every single day. I even use iCal to sync up with my (also 100% free) google calendar. I never was forced to buy a @mac.com address. Mail works with POP, IMAP or exchange accounts, as well as an @mac.com address.

"For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash." Okay, what did you expect if you didn't INSTALL FLASH? You need to install flash if you want flash to work. Can I complain if my Windows computer won't open up a Word document when I haven't installed Office yet? Of course not! Adobe Flash Player is a fast and free download at Adobe's flash website. It just seems weird to me that you wouldn't even try going to flash.com when flash "simply didn't work."

Mac users that are currently using Firefox, I have one word:

CAMINO.

www.caminobrowser.org