Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Apple, .Mac
Safari's market share rises to 4.03 percent
In a post cleverly titled The same thing we do every night, Pinky (an Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain reference), the WebKit blog Surfing Safari links a Switch to a Mac article which notes that Safari's market share has risen once again. Continuing its upward stride from October's 3.53 percent, Market Share now finds Safari at 4.03 percent, though data suggests that Safari's growth, while still on the up and up, has actually slowed in the past month.Since the overall Mac OS market share is still progressing quite nicely - up to 5.39 percent now - this slow in Safari's growth could be attributed to any number of factors, one of which I'm willing to bet could be all those switchers coming over and bringing Firefox with them (note: that's just my theory; I can't find numbers right now to back it up). Still, this is good news for the spread of Apple either way, as it can probably be safe to bet that the company won't be stopping the development of Safari anytime soon.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jonathan said 4:26PM on 12-03-2006
I have indeed brought Firefox along as a switcher.
The only thing that really bothers me about safari (and why I use Firefox instead) is a simple sidebar for my bookmarks. I know it's silly, but I really can't live withouth it. At least for the moment.
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Paul said 4:51PM on 12-03-2006
I just hope Apple will change that icon at some point!
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thomas said 4:53PM on 12-03-2006
Wow Larry Bodine may possibly be the most incompetent computer user ever.
Sounds like he's never heard of Boot Camp or Parallels. Why he would buy a G5 when Apple had already started switching to Intel Processors is beyond my comprehension.
As for screen captures, special programs? Uhh... Cmd+Shift+3? What the hell did he learn then when he "had to buy a "Dummies" book on how to operate (the Mac)"?
He follows up with "I'm smart; I shouldn't need this." What a joke. Complaining about Word files taking up disk space? What kind of drive is he using? An Imation USB floppy disk drive? The funny thing is I bet he's one of those Windows users that think they've deleted the file just by dragging it into the Recycling Bin anyway so it wouldn't make a difference either way.
My conclusion is that either Bush has competition for someone who is even more inept at his job or he purposely wrote an incendiary article to increase traffic to his blog (not unlike Laurie Duncan and her post on Muslims).
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ChrisM70 said 5:23PM on 12-03-2006
Wow...you are right...that Larry Bodine is D-U-M-B.
I can't believe they let him write a story involving technology. Perhaps with his level of "smartness" he should probably "stay the course" with a Dell. They belong together.
As for Safari, is anyone else a little annoyed at how long it has been since Apple has really updated Safari? It seems like there are more and more sites that do not support Safari. Do other people run into this?
I like Safari, but I think it needs some updating for performance, and some new features would be nice too.
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Leonard Nimrod said 6:10PM on 12-03-2006
I find Safari far superior to Firefox when rendering pages and slightly faster, too. The only thing I like in Firefox is the bookmark syncing with my work PC using Foxmarks.
As for the increased marketshare, of course it's going to increase. As half of all new Mac purchases are new to the Mac platform and IE still has a dominate reign on Windows, most people are going to use what ever app came with their OS. At least with OS X's Safari they are using a secure, compliant, and robust app. For the most part, the only "switchers" that will be using Firefox are the ones who were using it on their PC before the switch.
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ADAM said 6:43PM on 12-03-2006
"I dreamed of going fearlessly to all the sheet music and game sites that are rife with Trojans, spyware and other dangerous bugs."
those damned sheet music sites...
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Twin2k5 said 10:15PM on 12-03-2006
I agree with the switchers bringing firefox theory. I am not a switcher, but my father, mother, 2 of three sisters (the other works for a little company in redmond) and a slew of cousins are in fact switchers. They all love firefox and have probably only ever opened up Safari in order to download firefox from Mozilla.
Also, there are traditional mac users who are switching to Firefox as well. Cheers.
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Chris L said 7:24PM on 12-03-2006
That Larry Bodine article is positively bizarre! Did he just make the whole thing up?
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Mike said 7:35PM on 12-03-2006
I agree that Bodine article is totally ridiculous. It sounds like the kind of arguments that people used to make pre-OSX -- many of which were valid, but a lot of which were preposterous.
One button mouse? How long has it been since that was a non-issue? Safari not playing Flash? How high do you have to be to think that anyone would come out with a browser that couldn't use Flash?
And I'd have to say, Firefox made my switch very easy, and as a developer, it's still the best. But for basic browsing, Safari has exactly what you want in a Mac -- nice text rendering, ease of use, and total simplicity.
I'm really looking forward to new versions -- and for an average user, it's far superior to IE on Windows as your default browser.
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Leonard Nimrod said 7:45PM on 12-03-2006
"Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore. On a PC you just press Alt and tap PrtScr. [Open Paint, Edit then Paste, File then Save, and finally rename and save again to the desired location.] With the Mac I had to download and launch special programs to accomplish this simple task."
I added the full extent of doing a screenshot with Windows. This is one task that really showcases how much better OS X is over Windows. I guess he didn't read his "Dummies" book well enough.
"I didn't even bother with the Mac's iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address."
Was he paid off my MS to write this slanderous stuff. I have no use for iCal but use Mail with several Gmail and Hotmail accounts.
"For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash."
This is the same as with any PC: YOU HAVE TO INSTALL FLASH FOR FLASH TO WORK.
It's amazing that this guy considers himself "smart" and manages websites but can't even figure out how to use the simplest functions of OS X. Even to the level of pointing out drawn out functions on WIndows as being "simpler and easier".
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Dave Barnes said 9:40PM on 12-03-2006
Safari is better at rendering pages.
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
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Paul said 11:09PM on 12-03-2006
Larry Bodine is technologically inept. I would not give any credence to someone merely because they can run a few web sites in Typepad, which is pretty damn bonehead easy--in fact, one of my blogs runs on Typepad (so it's easy enough for my wife), and it works just as well in Safari as any other browser. And WTF is this about .Mac required?
When I read this (BTW, why did you link to this obscene article, to get us all riled up?) my immediate reaction was to leave a scathing comment telling him what a jackass he is, but then there were no comments (nice blog dude! no comments? no comment is more like it.) Then I thought I would email him to tell him he's got a furball stuck in his brain somewhere. And then...
Then it occurred to me that maybe Nimrod is right, this guy has been paid off by MS because he's got the ear of a bunch of filthy rich lawyers (and if I'm not mistaken, this is one of the business niches where Apple has a healthy business.)
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jason said 11:29PM on 12-03-2006
Mac users that are currently using Firefox, I have one word:
CAMINO.
www.caminobrowser.org
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Raz 4 life said 11:39PM on 12-03-2006
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."
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Leland Scott said 12:30AM on 12-04-2006
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
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Maddles said 12:45AM on 12-04-2006
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
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Justin said 3:53AM on 12-04-2006
camino all the way
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Tyler said 4:20AM on 12-04-2006
BTW you don't have a theory, you have a hypothesis; an educated guess.
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Chris said 7:56AM on 12-04-2006
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.
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pixelslut said 8:41AM on 12-04-2006
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.
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