Light Fiction

OK, i’m a geek, i admit it. But yeah, apple finally released safari for windows. Only took them four years.

But brandon, you ask, why do you care? After all, you run firefox on linux. Well, yeah. And i do that because of the community(ies, really) and the fact that these companies exist primarily as promotions of social good. Heck, firefox even has a manifesto. (Thorough explanation here) And remember i said something about community? The web is their community: everyone, and that means you, can contribute to the conversation surrounding what their manifesto should be. Take that Mr. Marx.

So why even talk about safari? Apple is, after all, a radically closed organization. That’s why their products are so expensive, why they work so well, and why they have a less than 6% market share. In america; never mind the rest of the world. And they seem to be wholely driven by His Steveness’ drive for beauty and total world domination. Allow me to illustrate with pictures from the recent WWDC unveiling of safari.
This is the world right now:

And this is what the world will look like in two months, after safari gets a fair chance to in the fight:

What do you notice? Is it the fact that Ie is pretty much unchanged? How about the complete dissappearance of Firefox and “Other”? (Which, i assume, includes the wonderful flock and opera browsers.) Is this the future that Steve would have, one without choice? Last time that happened we got five years of Ie6. How innovative do you think the web will continue to be if there is a duopoly instead of a monopoly? Will it be any different at all?

Steve’s charisma is well documented. But at this years WWDC, with the introduction of safari to windows, he plunged himself into the harsh light of the windowed world. First off, he claimed that safari for windows is faster than IE7 (not hard), Firefox (unlikely), and Opera (Even more unlikely). Well, just like the rest of the world, Wired said “Wuh?” and went out and tested the three big ones (Opera has a less than 1% marketshare in any market) in a couple google applications. (Which are all very heavy in the html and javascript departments.) Their results? Well, they didn’t match apple’s. They also weren’t very comprehensive; pretty much all that they really say is don’t trust apple’s benchmarks blindly, your results may vary, etc. etc. But you already knew not to trust the vendor’s statistics, right?

People have also always thought of safari as one of the most secure options in existence. Well, a large part of that comes from the fact that it has always run exclusively on OSX. But, well, now it’s on windows. Guess how long it took to find a remote code execution exploit? That’s a browser weakness that means that someone can run any command on your computer if you even just visit their website. No downloads, no nothing, just all of a sudden “hey why is my computer not booting and someone’s charging stuff to my credit card in lithuania?” Go on, guess how long it took. Less than two hours.

And, last but not least, let’s talk about features. The new safari is going to come with a few fairly cool features. (Items 7-11 on the left. Just, ignore number 12 :-) And heck, some of them might even be enough to convince you to switch. Or, if they’re not quite cool enough to make you willing to ignore the massive security vulnerabities so far discovered (yes, there are more) they are maybe cool enough for you to say  “Hey that would be neat if i had that.” Well, don’t worry, firefox has got you covered. Lifehacker’s got you covered with a round-up of extensions that provide features that are equivalent to those provided by safari. One could (but wouldn’t) say that apple was inspired by one of the browsers it seems to want to crush? And don’t forget that there are over 2,500 add-ons available at AMO, to make your firefox behave exactly like you want it to, not exactly the way His Steveness wants it to. Although, if you wanted to, you could.