My Thoughts !

Disclaimer: Even on my MacBook I use Firefox rather than Safari because of the wonderful plugins that I need.

I'm using Safari on Windows since the day its announced (and switched back to Firefox today). There are some nice things about Safari (like Find) but I don't like the product as a whole. Here are top 5 reasons why Safari is not going to succeed:

5) Safari installs unwanted apps: The installer of Safari tries to install other unwanted software. (No. I definitely don't want Bonjour)

4) Safari doesn't import your settings from IE/Firefox: When I install Firefox, I remember Firefox giving me options to import my settings from IE. So that I don't have to loose any bookmarks. Safari doesn't do that. So I've to recreate all the bookmarks

3) Safari is NOT a fast browser: I don't know about the benchmark results. But the applications I use like Gmail, Google Reader takes more time to load than Firefox/IE. Googling around I found the real reason. More over, its neither a sleek browser. Even for the modest number of websites, the memory usage shoots up.

2) Safari is not a native Windows application: At least it doesn't looks/behaves like one. For example, its Edit > Preferences not Tools > Options, you can resize only from bottom right corner, ...

1) Safari's font rendering is pathetic: Perhaps besides the other reasons like Security/websites compatibility, if there is a single big reason a user is going to dump Safari on Windows, it could the font rendering. There are reasons why Apple selected this rendering. Honestly I don't give a shit about that. To me it should be easily readable in my screen and its not so.

I was wondering why the hell did Apple enters a game which it can't win? The reason is simple. Steve decided to close iPhone to third party applications and the only way to write apps is Web 2.0 and Safari is the only browser in iPhone. No Firefox/IE/Opera. So why should a developer write web apps for a browser that has a single digit market share? The only way to increase the market share is to let Safari go out of Mac and explore the windows arena. Is it going to work? Who knows? It might!!! Look at what people said when iPod was released.

Related Links:
Safari for Windows announced
Gmail extension for Firefox
Top 10 Firefox extensions I use

OK. Leopard Beta is out. Steve came up to the stage and showed the 10 great features out of 300.

• Finder. Steve heard the FTFF cries. Now the Finder is WOW! Windows Explorer is a history now :-)


• Core Animation. The true power of Mac. As per the demo, it was unbelievable. Movies playing in the screen and doing a search on the tags of those movies - all live!!! We need apps to take this power and deliver it to the user.


• Spaces, Dashboard, Time Machine - nothing much new to mention. Just as we seen earlier.


• Safari. The performance figures are quite impressive. And they are releasing a Windows version to kill IE! No, I'm not going to switch to Safari even on my MacBook. Not until all the Firefox extensions that I use, work in Safari.


• iPhone ships with full fledged Safari. So create web apps. No iPhone SDK. Steve, are you kidding?

Verdict: I'm not going to upgrade to Leopard. Let me wait till the next version with more compelling features. Ah, for that matter, not going to purchase an iPhone on Jun 29th.

Did you notice that the Google Reader now offers offline mode? It can download and save your files so that you can read them even when you are not connected to the internet. It is powered by Google Gears. I tried to create an application by going thru the steps in the Developer Guide Tutorial. It was not that easy to follow it. It could have be a bit more simpler. If you are looking for a simpler version, its available here.