A few weeks ago Amsterdam company, OneStat (who specialize in real-time web analytics) released figures that show Apple's web browser, Safari, has doubled it's market share.
If you're a Macintosh fan, this is fantastic news! That is until you see what 'doubled' means.
As cool as Safari is and as much as you and I love the Mac — the browser we use and love barely shows up on the global radar. A pin prick of brilliant light surrounded by a vast ugly dark cloud that is Internet Explorer.
For the last year I have been trying to argue that I must have a Macintosh for work. There are Mac users who frequent our Internet properties so we're nuts for not having at least one up to date machine in the toolbox.
Yet time after time I am laughed at, mocked, and even given the occasional snuggy. I'm not even allowed to hang with the 'cool guys' at the 'cool wall'.
And now this? This is the last nail in the pine box coffin. Even if Safari were to double it's user-base in six months, it would still be just shy of an entire percentage point. A percentage point!
Ahhhhh!
So if you're one of the lucky ones who get to work with Macs all day, remember those of us who are behind enemy lines, captured and tortured — beaten into Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer submission each and every work day.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Just think of it this way -- if Safari continues to double its market share every year, it will reach 61 percent market share in seven years. Suck on that Internet Explorer!
Then again, there is the problem of that pesky Mozilla and you know, the issue that Safari is only available for the Mac ;-)
A frustrating truth.
I think that things are going to change though. The case here, York University, is that more and more students are getting Macs and the Mac labs here, just recently with the upgrade to Panther, use Safari more aggressively.
And, Internet Explorer for Mac is going away. Bubbye. In a few years there will be no more OS9, no more IE, no more Mac users using anything but Safari, it's only a matter of time. Sure argue that Mac users total are still less than 10%, but there's almost no where to go but up. All that said, developing for Safari can be a pain while more compliant than some browsers it's far from ideal, and has some real rendering problems dealing with certain CSS issues. Sweating the work arounds for the .5% is not cool.
I'm an XP iser, and I just use Firebird. It rocks.
As far as css issues in Safari, at least Apple is addressing these issues, unlike Microsoft, who seem to be giving the developer/designer community the finger as long as they dominate the market.
I'm just happy to see competition that has a chance. Of course, Gates owns a pretty good chunk of Apple too, so he really doesn't care what you use in the way of a browser or an OS as long as it isn't open source.
I'm in a similar situation, Greg. I do have an old beige G3 minitower with a 12" monitor (you read that right - a 12" monitor, at 800x600 no less) that gives me some ability to test for IE5/Mac. But I don't get to test for Safari, and the lack of screen real estate makes it extremely frustrating even to test IE5.
Your best solution, barring getting your own G4 Powerbook and bringing it to work with you (something I plan to do in the next few weeks): BrowserCam (http://www.browsercam.com/). Monthly subscriptions are $39, but you can also do one-offs at $10 for an hour, if memory serves. Best of all, it not only tests for Mac browsers, but almost all PC and a few Linux browsers as well.
BrowserCam is an excellent resource and I'm sure the price is right but I don't do enough web development to spend $39 a month. And I can't remember the last time I was able to fix browser compaitibility issues within an hour.
Maybe it's time I went freelance so I can rationalize a monthly subscription to BrowerCam.
My understanding, Greg, is that Windows runs better (read: more reliably) on a Mac in emulation mode than on Intel... so perhaps your argument should be that you should get a Mac because there's less down time.
Also, I don't know your corporate culture, but I just got permission to bring my Mac to work. IT support shouldn't be a problem, as they already support any graphics folks using the Mac.
Derek: what gives you the idea that Gates owns any Apple? If you're thinking of the much-ballyhoo'd stock swap of a few years back, you should remember that the overall percentage of the stock in question was small... and that Gates sold that stock off within a year, if memory serves.
I use Macs all day, every day and have done so since 1986. As good as Safari is, truth be told, it is not the best overall browser for the Mac. Don't get me wrong, I instantly fell in love with Safari when it came out. But, under the rigors of every day use for both personal and work, some of it's 'issues' became a productivity problem for me. I am now using Mozilla Firebird, and I have to say from a rendering speed standpoint it blows the doors off Safari. And, if you fill out a lot of forms on the web, which I have to do for work, copying and pasting into fields which became a 'buggy' nightmare on Safari that consistently yielded spinning beach balls is not an issue with Firebird. Again, I adore Apple as much as the next die-hard, but the bottom line is that Safari still has growing up to do. Another browser to keep your eye on as well is the OmniWeb browser 5.0 which will be released in public beta February 4th. OmniWeb has always been a great looking browser, but had some shortfalls ie, no tabbed browsing, some flash issues etc. 5.0 appears to be all-dressed and ready to re-stake it's claim as the most beautiful browser available for the Mac. Time will tell. Safari's market share will likely continue to grow, but Mac users tend to be more savvy and technologically hip than their PeeCee counterparts and thus more willing to experiment with other available options. Safari will likely have to be satisfied taking a small piece of a small, fragmented pie.
Silus--I don't think your comment about Windows running better on a Mac in emulation mode (I would assume you mean VirtualPC) is accurate. I think a better way to say it would be that you can save states in VPC, so you can completely screw up your virtual PC and then just bring it back to a saved state. It doesn't necessarily run better, though, just a little slower.
And about AAPL stock--I don't know that Gates himself had anything to do with the swap a bit back... that was MSFT investing $150 million in AAPL in exchange for different things. But as far as I know, that investment ended back in 2002.
On the topic of Safari, let me say, Greg, that I know where you're coming from. I have a G5 at home (and a PC), and I used to work for a company that used all Macs (was primarily a print design place), but the company I'm working for now is all PC. 7 hours a day is death to me. I can't wait to get home and then I hug my Mac.
I'm constantly annoying my boss here at work by telling him I refuse to open IE. I can't do it!
I don't know how they gather these statistics, but some web browsers, Safari included, can report to servers as being different than they are. I'm currently using Safari, but because i have an occasionally-used hotmail account, I have to make Safari pass itself off as IE. I believe this is a problem not with Safari, but with MS' web-design practices.
Anyway, that kind of tweaking could skew results, but probably not enough to bring us past 0.5 %
Hey, wasn't Safari influenced by Konqueror, or another Open-Source browser? I partitioned my old G3 and now run Mac-On-Linux. It's a sweet set-up. I tend to use Mozilla, mostly.
I know that Apple is way cool and stuff, but the last two web pages I've designed both validate as proper XML, and both work correctly in Mozilla, IE,and IE for mac. Neither works in safari.
Apple needs to think differently about they quality of their browser.
Don't worry Greg, they're not laughing at you, they're laughing with you. 8^)
well, today Apple came out with Safari 1.2, I downloaded and installed it und it got even better ;)
Back to the stats issue, I work fr an ISP and I was having a discussion with our support manager about which browsers were dominate on the internet. I told him that IE was still the most dominate browser out there. He agreed, but he made an interesting point. Many non-IE browsers Identify themselves as IE in order to get around websites that do browser detects and won't work for non-IE browsers. Also more people are using personal proxy servers that allow them to adjust the information that thier browsers send out, including what the browser is identified as. So, While I'm still confident in IE's dominence, since it pre-installed on all PC's. There is some hope that it's strangle hold is not nearly as tight as we once thought.