Is Apple aiming at Firefox?

Well, Apple Has Reported Bugs On Safari For Windows And One Of Them Is, People Can Look AT Your E-Mail When You Are Using Safari.

I think the only way to get Firefox users to switch in any significant way is to open Safari up and support extension like functionality; otherwise, what's the point? Safari is a bit quicker, but it lacks ingenious and outright brilliant extensions which provide Firefox a real hold on users. But Apple won't even allow you to resize the Safari window in more than one way (using the single lower right control).

Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take my FF with Greasemonkey and AdBlocker Plus, et-c.

Sorry Simon, YodaMac is right, that IS how it works. (Possibly a little over-simplified) How do you think Firefox can exist in the first place?

Safari isn't going convert Firefox users who use tons of extensions. And that's OK. That's because some IE and Firefox users don't have a clue what extensions are or why they would want to use them. They just want a simple, secure browser that works well.

This is the market that Apple is targeting.

And it's a huge win for Apple because it allows Windows users to test their sites for compatibility on Safari for Mac OS X and the iPhone.

@#41-RC-You may be right that Safari was realeased for the iPhone. But first, when you put out a buggy unstable product do you explect average joe computer user who downloaded Safari had it crash to decide they want to spend $600 on a phone that has the same browser? Think about it this way, say you rent a car, a nice new Toyota Camry, and the engige blows out in the middle of the desert, are you going to buy a Toyata Camry when you get home? No, so why should that be any different with Safari?

Your second point about market share going up with the iPhone, first 20 million phones is awfully high, that is about how many Razrs there are, getting that number is going to be tough considering the Razr is now a $50 phone at most available on all 4 major carriers. Lets give you the benefit of the doubt though. Right now there are about 300 million PCs in the US, with 236 million(78.7%) using IE, 43.6 million using(14.5%) using FF, and 14.5 million(4.8%) using Safai, if you introduce 20 million new browsers into the market you will now have 320 million and if FF and IE don't gain any new customers, (in other words no families by extra PCs or nobody switches to FF). You will have 73.8% IE, 13.6% FF and 10.8% Safari. That isn't a huge spike, a 6% gain, of course that is nice, but not a spike. When you are at the bottom every little gain will have a much larger impact on the market share.

A good example is OS market share. Microsoft has to sell 19 out of every 20 computers to keep their current market share, if they sell only 18 out of every 20 they will lose markey share. While as long as Apple can sell 1 out of every 12 they will increase market share. Would you rather sell 18 out of 20 or 1 out of 12?

In conclusion, Safari shouldn't have been released, it is not a beta, it is more of a late alpha release, or atleast a closed beta release. This could turn inexperienced computer users off on Apple and the iPhone. While this may increase their market share, thats not hard when you currently have less that 5%.

If Steve Jobs has the desire to take his share of the pie where Web browsers are concerned, more power to him. Firefox is a great browser, I use it both on my Windows and Fedora 7 installs, but I tried Safari and liked it as well.

I want the browser that works for me, whether it is Safari, Firefox, or even God forbid IE 7.0. If the Mozilla people are worried about losing their share of the market then that means they will work even harder to make an already excellent browser even better.

As far as the worry that Steve Jobs is going to "stiffle" competition, if Firefox is shot down just because Safari is now on Windows, then it would be indicative that Firefox's popularity was due more to it not being IE than it being the best browser.

I was hoping for something hot with Safari crossing the border, but from what I have seen so far, Fire Fox doesn't have much to worry about. It isn't faster, the UI looks out of place in the Windows GUI. Apple needs to offer skins.

maybe FF are victimizing themselves by portraying themselves as the underdog again (for the record I use FF both on my G5 and a Winbox I have). But if one looks closer it seems things are not run purely by logic thinking. By being a better product has made FF chop off some percentage from IE but it's tiny compared to how much surfing experience will improve when switching from IE to FF. Enter Apple with Safari, a large company with a cult following, its own hardware, OS, (soon) mobile phone and a tradition of innovation and it does look bad for FF. Although FF users have no reason to switch and IE users don't care much ("what is a browser?") FF is worried by the marketing/advertising power Apple has to influence the market...

I noticed this too, but honestly I think it just made the slide look clearer...