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"MacDailyNews Take: Oh, from where, oh, where does this Safari for Windows FUD originate? We wonder."

Answer: Redmond, Washington.

Me?

I downloaded Safari onto my XP machine as soon as the keynote was over and have loved every minute of using it. I really did not enjoy IE7's many quirks.

All those that Redmond has a hook into are coming out from under the carpet.


MW-no kidding; "income" as in what the cockroaches are getting!

I like Safari and it is my default browser on the Mac. I will make it my default browser on Windows, but the reports about it being buggy are true. It crashed on me six times in six minutes--on sites with animated ads, animated content, or ads the covered the content. The bookmark menu displayed the Bonjour icon in front of "Bookmark Bar" instead of "Bonjour." I was also able to close it without closing it--the window was gone but the task bar button was still there.

Depending on what sites you visit, it either appears rock solid or unstable. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle between Kahney and MDN. I like it, and I'm going to use it, but I won't make it my default browser on my Windows machine just yet.

I downloaded Safari for Windows yesterday and installed it in Windows XP Pro on my Mac Pro. Works fine on my end...

If no one uses Safari for Mac, then how does it have a 5% browser share when it was a Mac exclusive?

Hey Kahney...you're the one that sucks....

The real opportunity for Safari for Windows is incremental revenue to AAPL from Google and Yahoo searches performed through the browser.

Consider the financials:

Assume AAPL can earn $100 million in revenue from Google and Yahoo for searches performed through Safari on Windows. This is reasonable, based on the number of users, numbers of searches, and the estimated revenue paid to AAPL for each directed search.

Assume further that the the cost to produce, market, distribute, and support Safari on Windows is contained to, say, $5 million (not unreasonable) or even $10 million (generous).

Then that's still a very significant profit for AAPL shareholders - amounting to roughly $0.10 increase in earnings per share on an annualized basis.

From a financial perspective, increasing your earnings per share by $0.10 is a no-brainer.

But like many of you, I suspect the real reasons Steve Jobs agreed to do this is as a stopgap for not having a developer story for the iPhone.

Perception is everything.

Apple better squash these bugs ASAP.

yes, I know, it is a beta.

Oh I get it, IE doesn't crash incessantly, Safari is the one that crashes. Thanks for clearing that one up.

I got dugg down on Digg for saying it but I'll repeat it here:

"Beta" as defined by Apple: Not ready for production, test software, may contain bugs, use at your own risk.

"Beta" as defined by Microsoft: Golden Master, ready for production.

Well

1: Latest Safari for Mac - pop-unders have returned with a vengance.

2: Does crash more often than earlier versions. But I think it has to do with the DivX plug-in and Quicktime as it happens the most here.

YES, Safari.win 3 is BETA, but what the major compaint from the security community is why hasn't Apple used commonly gotten "futzing" software to uncover several exploits before release.

It took only a few hours to locate several severe vunerabilities by the public, something Apple should have taken the time to do themselves and save the embarassment.

If it took a few weeks to discover vunerabilites, then that's understandable, but a few hours is just plain negligence on Apple's part.

And again, yes I know it's beta, but actually it's more like alpha.

I loaded Safari 3 beta on my Gateway laptop running WinXP. It's awesome! It's much, much faster than IE and Firefox. The scrolling is also the smoothest I've ever seen. I also like how Apple incorporated the "unfurling" dialog boxes and pulsating confirm buttons. It's just like on a Mac! Safari 3 also lets you move tabs around. I forgot to test the new in-line Find box with "highlighting". I'll have to try tonight when I get home.

Once Safari goes gold, I'm deleting Firefox (which I usually use) and making Safari my default. I'll keep IE for backup and just because it's a pain to remove.

Safari 3 for Windows maybe buggy, it may have security issues, I wouldn't be surprised, for all I know so could the Mac version. It is Beta, I use it at my own risk. Perhaps it may not technically be ready to be called a beta, perhaps it would be better called an alpha, it's all semantics. We all know that in the last few years the term beta has become synonymous with software that's basically not finished, isn't officially supported and as a result might crash/not work etc.

I tried it at work this morning, it seemed stable enough for me, I use Safari on my Mac but am I going to use it on Windows? No. It's not finished. Is it ok for testing your own sites? Maybe, it's your risk. You can't moan about it - not yet anyway.

Apple's Beta should be darn near perfect, especially because of their tactic of sudden announcement and the first impression it makes on the Windows crowd.

Now all I hear is, "is this the legendary Apple security?"

Apple had the perfect opportunity to carve out a substancial chunk of the browser market with the sudden strike opportunity, now people are going to avoid it like the plague.

Remember how Firefox gained such a large share right off the bat? Because it was secure at the time and way better than IE.

People downloaded it like crazy.

So Apple blew it totally.

I've been using Safari on Windows now for a day. It loads much much faster than my work-supplied IE7.

The only glitches I've had is when altering preferences and trying to cancel. Then it's hung on three separate occasions. But I've had no glitches at all and superfast loading while visiting over 30 different web sites. Oh yes, and it blocks popups!!!

I had some issues with the fonts (or lack there of, in some cases) being used to render pages. I poked around a bit and ended up deleting the font.plist from C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari. The file rebuilds itself once you restart Safari, and now I have not experienced any issues at all.

On june 29 - Aaple will get safari as part of an itunes download. Every iPhone user needs to have an iTune account - get it?
by then Safari will be fully tested and bug free!!

I installed Safari 3 for Mac, and then promptly uninstalled it. Not because it was buggy, but because it broke SafariBlock and caused thosed crappy MDN text ads to reappear.

BS and lots of it. iTunes software is a simplified Safari that connects to a WebObjects service. Apple has done this for years. It works. No It Is The Question How To Make Safari To Understand All Of The BS That Makes The IE Womit Without Making The User Sick.

They compared the speed of Safari to IE and Firefox, and Safari is definitely faster then those browsers. What I want to know is how fast it is compared to Opera. Last time I checked Opera was the fastest and most reliable web browser on every platform. The new Safari is probably on par with Opera, but I wonder which one comes out on top.

Id have to say, that safari isnt that higher up on my browser list than IE. Firefox outdoes them all. Ask anyone writing web 2.0 content for Safari.. it just doesnt happen or if it does it doesnt work as good as IE or Firefox.

Anyone else getting the Spinning Beachball of Death on their Mac Safari more often recently ???

"IE7's many quirks." so that's what they are calling sh*t now days?

As a web developer I installed Safari for XP right away and have been using it, yes it has crashed on me twice, still it's far faster then IE and has fewer bugs. It actually makes it easier to build websites that work cross-browser since the win version seems to work the same as the mac version (as far as css/javascript quirks).

The only thing I wish is that Safari had the same developer tools that Firefox has (web developer, firebug, lori, tamper data, and view formatted source), these tools are invaluable for figuring out what is going wrong in a web page, and is really needed on safari.

i'm in ur browzr, takn ur markt shar...

Why is a Mac user posting all over the web that his copy of Safari for Windows crashed "Six times, in six minutes".

Same formulation on every forum, on every website I've read today: "Six times, in six minutes*. All over the web... Quite a coincidence for all different people to all crash "Six times, in six minutes*, no?

Maybe this guy is Six?

No problem here.

Couldn't import booksmarks from Firefox, it's left browser icons on my XP desktop - how they got there I don't know - and there no icon for adding a new tab. The interface is rather bland. Other than that it seems to run well enough.
I prefer using firefox when I'm on the mac however this'll be great for testing web sites on Safari without having to roll over to my old imac.
Would love to buy a mac when leopard comes out but $2800 for the base model is still way to high when I can build a high quality machine for $1,000-1,200 using premium parts and contrary to the FUD that gets dished out here regarding XP, Windows rarely crashes and I never get a virus and very little spyware. Cost: $35/yr for anti-virus software and a little common sense. I can get my work done quite efficiently.
Leopard looks pretty cool though.

Gee, it's a BETA.

Sometimes is buggy. Crashes. Has a few possible security hole?

Repeat after me: It's a BETA!
That's why betas are released. To find and REPAIR bugs.

Sheeeeesh!

> Kahney continues, "On my Mac, Safari is buggy and unreliable. It's always crashing..."

Always crashing... on mine it sometimes crashes. Pages that are heavy on content - even ESPN's home page - have a tendency to crash Safari.

I usually have a bunch of other tabs (like Craigslist, MDN, Sherdog, and some news sites) open and loading in the background. So I guess I push Safari a little bit, but that's the whole point of tabbed browsing. To be fair, I've crashed Camino and Firefox quite a bit when surfing like this as well.

So YES... Safari is far from perfect. But it works good enough.

Well, I actually disagree with MDN's take, mostly. I still think Safari sucks, at least 2.0. I haven't given 3.0 beta a good enough try yet, but will (on both OS X and Windows). Still, from what I've seen, Firefox is still the best browser available, overall. Apple has a long way to go on Safari. I haven't yet seen much improvement over 2.0 .

I downloaded Safari onto my XP machine and it's fast as lightning. But it crashes everytime I try to import my bookmarks from Firefox..

Safari is buggy on the Mac. I use Firefox.

http://www.MittensRomney.com/

sorry, also the beta copy for OS X is quite buggy.

yeah yeah, don't scream 'BETA' at me, this is unfortunately quite an under-par experience for Apple.

If it's not ready, *DO NOT* send out a BETA copy

pretty simple

I hate Firefox, I hate IE, I dislike Opera, the only browser I use is Safari.

Some of you may remember I was complaining a couple of weeks ago about daily Safari crashes on two of my Macs.

I took some advice here, zapped Realplayer, updated all my my plug ins and zapped the .plst.

I happily haven't had a single Safari crash since.

sorry, heck, check the Apple support site.... Windows *AND* OS X versions are quite buggy.....

I won't be 'testing' it for Apple

three people had it crash 6 times in six minutes...

666

The devil is in the detail.

sorry for the dumb ?

I installed 3.0, did not like, and Zapped it

now how do I get the version 2 back?? can't seem to find where I can DL from

For all to see...

I upgraded last night and to my delight I founded the following Safari 3 is a whole lot faster than Safari ever was and it feels a little more secure too. Plus everything just looks better and runs better.

Granted I'm running on an older Mac but the whole experience has been a favorable one!

I'm set up on a Power PC, QuickSilver 733 MH with 1.5GB of Ram...

This upgrade came at just the right time, as I was thinking about drop Safari 2 in favor or another but after experiencing Safari 3 I might just drop the whole idea and stick with Safari 3

I posted "six times in six minutes" on two sites. It really happened. Someone must have run away with that. I made it clear in both posts that I don't really think it was a big deal. All browsers crash now and then, and this is a beta.

I think quite a lot of crashes are caused by bad code on web sites, and the developer's headache is to anticipate and compensate for that.

If you have more than one monitor, try this. Right click on the desktop. Go to Display Properties | Settings. Rearrange your monitors. Launch Safari 3 in Windows on the primary monitor. Double click on what would be the title bar. Do that several times. (Normal behavior.) Then drag Safari to the second monitor. Double click on what would be the title bar. On my machine, Safari disappears but the start bar button is still there. Where is it? Did it go to imaginary coordinates?

Right click on the task bar button to close Safari. Launch it again: all's well.

Reminds me of Dreamweaver some versions ago. It launched to imaginary coordinates. I had to delete a registry entry to get it back! This is a Windows problem, but the application can check the coordinates to make sure they exist.

It's not usable, for example, check out http://www.lundsnation.se in firefox/ie/(safari on os x) and then compare to safari on xp

I don't use Safari on my Mac (I'm a Firefox guy), but was curious to try it on my PC at home. It really does suck as much as it does on the Mac. It can't open yahoo mail, crashes when trying to open g-mail, and I hate the way it won't allow you to access programs in the taskbar unless you shrink the window.

I'll try it again when it's actually ready for public consumption, but it's back to Firefox for me on my Mac and PC.

Safari is my primary browser at home on the Mac, but at work I have to use Windows, and I've already given up on the Safari 3 beta for Windows until they send out some bug fixes. It crashes too often (causing me to lose my tabs and my train of thought) to be used as a primary browser, and it has some bizarre rendering bugs as well.

Use safari on Mac, Firefox on PC. Had a look at Safari on PC. It crashed on the second site I visited, which was http://www.apple.com. I gave up after that, figuring that other people can try it instead.

Not putting v3 on my macs until it's released. I know a couple of people who have tried it and then asked for help re-installing version 2.

Anyone with a Safari that crashes needs someone who knows what they are doing to undo some of the things they have done to their Mac - like downloading all and sundry apps and add-ons.

I have not had a Safari crash since I bought this MacBook Pro over a year ago.

EFF U DEE if you ask me...

And here is something, Safari on Windows is the ONLY browser that color manages images...

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-8740-9003

And test your browser here:

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html

This whole episode is looking like another example of how Microsoft Windows - and the nutters who champion it - stifle progress.

Idiots.

Safari on the Mac does suck compared to Firefox. I had to give up on it after too many slowdowns and freezeups. I was happy, however to hear about Safari for Windows thinking it HAD to be better than IE. But sadly, almost every time I have opened it since I installed in yesterday afternoon, it has crashed. I have a fairly new Windoze XP PC that has not give me any other trouble.

I can't still use javascript, windows media player(aol music only works on IE7), I keep updating the plugins with no luck. Hopefully one of these days. It is my default browser right now... I'm a firefox user and I definitely miss my extensions. I had Opera as a backup...most probably will delete it.

Man, this is kinda weird. Safari in the foreground and Windows XP desktop in the background.

I'm running this on a Macbook C2D, obviously booted into the Windows side. I've been to most of my usual places, even my bank, and have noticed nothing unusual at all. It's just the same as Safari on my Macs (no real surprise). I haven't compared its speed to anything else since I wouldn't know where to start -- everything loads in a flash so timing comparisons might be difficult.

Yeah, funny thing that Steve Jobs announces a beta version of a browser at a developer's conference and all these (non-developers?) are btiching about using Safari 3.0 beta. You know, if it weren't for the iPhone, most of the world probably wouldn't have heard about Safari for Windows. Let it go and let it grow.

I agree with Macaday. I've been using Safari for years and I too have found it to be very stable. I stop it caching favicons, because that used to slow it a bit. Otherwise, it very rarely gives me problems.

There are a few sites it won't work with--fewer now with Safari 3. However, it also has some nice capabilities you won't find anywhere else--except in other WebKit-based browsers.

And, FWIW, I've used Safari on Windows as well as Mac a fair bit now. I have yet to see it crash on Windows, and I have yet to come across any very glaring problems. I'm sure I've been lucky, but I'm damn sure there's a lot of FUD being spread around, too.

As for the poster who put this above:

"Remember how Firefox gained such a large share right off the bat? Because it was secure at the time and way better than IE.

"People downloaded it like crazy.

"So Apple blew it totally."

Well, the mind boggles. The original version of the browser that became Firefox--Netscape 6--was terrible. and it took _years_ for Netscape, and Mozilla when they spun that off, to get it into shape, and years for it to build market share. "Right off the bat" is the complete reverse of the truth.

And as for vulnerabilities, it has had plenty. Currently Secunia lists 9 and 5 of those (56%) are unpatched:

http://secunia.com/product/12434/

Jeez, just do a Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=firefox vulnerabilities&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Software has bugs, and internet-facing applications, like browsers, have vulnerabilities from time-to-time.

Just because a few people hurried to find some in Safari to catch the headlines, because it had just been released, just because David Maynor looked at it, and not some other browser, because he's juvenile and thinks he has a score to settle with Apple ... all this does not mean that Safari is more vulnerable than anything else. Vulnerabilities will continue to be found in IE, Firefox, Opera, and everything else, too.