[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Apple Releasing a Windows Browser

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

See article below.  Another thing related to Macs that I've been reading 
about lately:  The primary author of Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier 
Hansson, is a Mac user and his pal and fellow Dane, Allan Odgaard, is the 
author of TextMate, an editor for the Mac.  Hansson has been promoting 
TextMate relentlessly and it has become very popular, especially among RoR 
developers, so much so that some people are buying Macs just so that they 
can use TextMate!  TextMate was written in Cocoa and cannot be ported to 
other OSs, at least not easily, or so I'm told.  --Mike

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/technology/12apple.html

N.Y. Times
June 12, 2007

Apple Releasing a Windows Browser

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, June 11 -- Apple said Monday that it would make its Safari 
Web browser available for Windows-based PCs, opening a new front in its 
rivalry with Microsoft.

The announcement came at the end of a presentation made by Steven P. Jobs, 
Apple's co-founder and chief executive, at the company's annual World Wide 
Developers Conference. It indicates that Apple is increasingly confident 
in its ability to compete against Microsoft's desktop computing monopoly.

Shares of Apple dropped sharply after the announcement, falling $4.30, to 
$120.19. Several Wall Street analysts said the decline proved that Mr. 
Jobs was, after all, mortal. In recent years, Apple's chief executive has 
refined product announcements into an art form that leaves his audience 
cheering and then rushing to a store. Wall Street has come to hope that 
each new event will create a new iPod-style billion-dollar market.

"This was pretty underwhelming," said Gene Munster, a financial analyst at 
Piper Jaffray. "He hit a double instead of a homer."

With his usual showmanship, Mr. Jobs said that Safari would have twice the 
performance capability of Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer. He also 
expressed confidence that Apple would be able to increase its market share 
against the dominant software company, pointing to half a billion 
downloads of Apple's iTunes software, most of them by Windows users.

A test version of the program was available Monday for downloading from 
Apple's Web site.

In an interview after his presentation, Mr. Jobs said he had no concerns 
that the new competition might anger Microsoft or lead to retaliation, 
such as slowing the development of the version of Office for the 
Macintosh. "After all, we are developing for Windows," he said.

Like many of Apple's strategic moves, the implication of an Apple browser 
for Windows was not immediately clear. It is likely that Mr.  Jobs is now 
plotting a broader business strategy that will allow Apple to grow beyond 
its niche position in the computer market of about a 5 percent share.

"Who knows? Maybe we can grow our Safari share in the future," Mr. Jobs 
said. "We're going to try."

Apple's move is significant, industry executives said, because it 
indicates that despite the end of the browser wars of the late 1990s, 
Microsoft's continued ability to retain more than 80 percent market share 
is a continuing threat to its competitors. Mr. Jobs said that Safari's 
market share was currently about 5 percent and the share of Firefox, the 
open source browser, was about 15 percent. There has been a persistent 
fear that Microsoft would be able to create new standards that would force 
computer users to adopt its software to reach certain Web sites and 
Internet services.

The broader appeal of the browser might have implications for Apple's 
iPhone. In his presentation, Mr. Jobs said that the company was 
encouraging Apple software developers to use modern Internet software 
standards to make applications compatible with Apple's iPhone, which will 
go on sale June 29. The announcement is likely to touch off a frenzy of 
activity because Mr. Jobs said that applications that are written to 
Internet standards like AJAX and designed to work with Web browsers would 
work from the first day the iPhone is available.

"It will create a much more significant consumer platform for the iPhone," 
said Mike McGuire, a research analyst at Gartner, an industry research 
firm in San Jose, Calif.

By moving software development away from personal computers and cellular 
phones and toward the Internet, Apple is attempting to persuade its 
developers that they can achieve new economies of scale while permitting 
the computer and consumer electronics firm to build more secure devices 
and computers.

"There is something very clever going on here with Apple releasing Safari 
for Windows," said Scott Love, president of Aquaminds Software, a 
Macintosh developer based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Don't ever underestimate 
S. J.'s motives." Some developers said they were disappointed that Apple 
would continue to restrict software development for the iPhone. However, a 
number of them said that they were intrigued by the company's new 
Windows-oriented Web browser strategy.

Much of the rest of the presentation focused on showing 10 new features of 
the company's Leopard version of the OS X operating system. Mr. Jobs had 
shown many of the features, such as a new backup system called Time 
Machine and a new more powerful version of the Apple instant messaging 
system called iChat. On Monday, Mr. Jobs showed several refinements to the 
company's operating system appearance and graphical user interface.

At previous events announcing the Leopard version of Apple's Mac OS X 
operating system, Mr. Jobs has hinted at important new features. 
However, Monday's event indicated that Leopard, which was originally 
supposed to be commercially available by now and then was delayed until 
October when the company shifted resources toward its iPhone, had no major 
surprises.

Mr. Jobs teased the audience of about 5,000 software developers, saying 
the company would have multiple versions of Leopard, all priced at $129.

"I'm sure most of you will want the Ultimate version," he said. The 
reference was a not-so-subtle jab at Microsoft, which offers Windows Vista 
at a variety of price points with different features. Apple, of course, 
will sell just one version.

Electronic Arts and Id announced that they would begin releasing popular 
games for the Macintosh simultaneously with Windows versions.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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