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11 million Safari downloads? Um. Sort of

Jun. 12, 2009 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Apple is no stranger to hyperbole. In fact, they sort of reinvented it, and regularly take it to new levels. The week of WWDC, you might normally expect the hyperbole to have burned out by the time Bertrand "Grima Wormtongue" Serlet disappeared from the Moscone stage in a swirl of smoke and sulfer. (See how easy that is?) But it didn't. Today, Apple announced the following dubious milestone:

Safari 4 Downloads Top 11 Million in Three Days

Apple today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows.

The rest of the press release is pointless PR fluff, so let's just focus on the central claim. 11 million downloads, of a barely-used browser. In just three days. I mean, my God. Did Apple just do something incredible here?

No. Apple is making lemonade. And that's amply explained by Robert "about to be mail-bombed" Strohmeyer over at PC World.

As someone with three Macs at home, I couldn't help but notice that Apple pushed Safari 4 out as an automatic update to all of its users this week. Yesterday, all three of the Macs in my household received the update, and we don't even use Safari.

An informal poll of my friends and colleagues reveals a whole lot of the same. Got the update dialog, downloaded and installed it, don't intend to use it.

What is at issue is the ridiculously thin claim that the latest Safari is a wild success on the basis that Apple basically pushed it out to everyone it possibly could, whether they wanted it or not.

So there you go. And I count myself among that crowd of 11 million who downloaded it, tried it, and will never go near it again. Why would I? I have real browsers that can, among other basic activities, work in full-screen mode. You know, unlike Safari.

BTW, Apple fanatics, if you're not yet mad enough at Robert for pointing out the painful truth, be sure to read New MacBook Pro Can Boot From an SD Card. (Duh. So Can PCs.). That's another nice bit of obvious reporting that usually escapes the Apple-friendly media.

Discuss this Article 81

shark47
on Jun 13, 2009
It's one thing to push the update to people who have that software installed on their computers and another to push it to anyone who has any software from that company. Microsoft pushed IE8 to people that had IE on their PCs. Apple is pushing Safari to people like me that have iTunes installed. Wait till the next time your iTunes requires software updates.
DRWAM
on Jun 13, 2009
RJ, One Care found and deleted a Trojan that I installed myself, when McAfee, and AVG did not even detect it [Virtumonde] but was supposed to as per each web site claim. Also, I'm glad you posted that iPhone owners are young, since I own one and I'm not feeling so young these days. My 73 yr old partner and all the other docs would love to hear it too ;) Gorath, I have found that Flash games are dependent on my hardware. They run as fast on my new Mac Pro Tower as my fastest PC. Not that my cheap vid card in my 3.2 GHz P4 rebuilt eMachine [ATI 9600 128MB PCI] runs them slow, compared to my custom build PC with a 3.4GHz P4 with an X800 ATI PRO 256 MB. They are even slower on my 10 yr old G4 tower AGP. Can't remember the vid card but I think it's an ATI 9000 PRO 64MB.
shark47
on Jun 13, 2009
We don't have an argument, so let's bash IE instead, OK? We'll also bring up Vista sales figures and XBox 360 reliability if we get desperate. Yeah, let's do it.
Mum
on Jun 13, 2009
"We don't have an argument, so let's bash IE instead, OK? We'll also bring up Vista sales figures and XBox 360 reliability if we get desperate. Yeah, let's do it." We don't have an argument, so let's start trolling, OK? Just bringing up the hypocricy of Paul's post. Any critique isn't automatically bashing if you don't like it.
gfryesc1
on Jun 13, 2009
pissant paul sure has turned up the nasty meter on safari from his quick take on June 8th. back then he couldn't 'find anything wrong per se' [not that he let that fact keep him from slamming it as a terrible browser, but of course that's how he was always going to rate it]. But now he's shunning it as the worst thing since Lotus Notes. I personally don't mind safari, I like the RSS layouts [especially when viewing Paul's site so I don't get his ads or have to click through the Microsoft advertising they do on his site... which should tell you all you need to know about thurrott being a kept man]. But hey, he 'wont go near it again' because it won't display full screen for him? what a nutcase. but hey, critics are supposed to be cynical aholes... a fine tradition that paul carries forth.
cesjr
on Jun 13, 2009
"Because Microsoft don't push new versions of IE out as an automatic update to all of its users. " Of course they don't. The newer IE versions are "more" standards compliant (while still deliberately being not compliant).
Waethorn
on Jun 13, 2009
To all: If you want to get rid of Apple evilness, just uninstall Apple Software Update. Both iTunes AND Quicktime will tell you if there's a new version on launch. FYI: If you install just the Quicktime package, and uncheck "Check for updates automatically", that IS NOT for Apple Software Update. You should leave that checked. Apple Software Update will STILL be installed, so you have to remove it after installing Quicktime. Quicktime will tell you if there's a new update on launch, and will forward you to the download page to get the update. Again, you'll have to remove the extra garbage (Apple Software Update) after installing the new version of Quicktime.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users. That means they do something like: Write for IE 7 Do a "standards" pass on IE 8 Since "standards" are too vague to actually be interpreted the same way on any two browsers, do a pass on Firefox 3 on Windows Then do a test pass and fix "standards" compliance interpretation changes on Safari on the Mac to get Mac users If there's time, do a pass on the older, remaining browsers popular on their site like IE 6 and Firefox 2 If they have more time, do a compatibility test and tweak for the niche browsers like Safari/Windows, Chrome and Opera. Then, if the site supports it, do a separate version for mobile browsers.
Waethorn
on Jun 13, 2009
@Doc: Flash stuff is almost completely dependent on your CPU. The hardware acceleration that they do right now is pretty weak. It's the equivalent of DirectDraw 2D video acceleration. Video playback and scaling is the only thing that really benefits from it. Complex animations with many sprites don't really benefit from that. That type of acceleration will likely happen when they release the new version which supports acceleration with your GPU.
cesjr
on Jun 13, 2009
"Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users." this is how - at least in the past - MS has been able to thwart web standards. It's getting harder for them though. They keep trying of course - see deliberately dog slow Javascript performance in IE8
DRWAM
on Jun 13, 2009
I kinda figured that Wae, especially since my $399 Vista laptop with a Dual Core P4, but cheapo on board video, seems to play some of the flash games better than the above eMachine. Note that only some games are slow on the eMachines, but all are slow on the 10 yr old G4 Tower, which has an upgraded CPU to a1.25 GHz G4. Still, Safari is running much faster than FF on the Macs. It's against my nature to install Safari on Windows, so I can't comment on speed with Windows. Also of note, IE 7 seems to do everything better on my PC's than does FF. So I'll just keep IE. I would like to upgrade to IE 8, but I'm afraid of GE Centricity having problems, and that these aging computers may not have the horsepower to run it well. What do ya think?
WebGuy3000
on Jun 13, 2009
"Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users. That means they do something like: Write for IE 7 Do a "standards" pass on IE 8" Speaking as a "real commercial web developer," who is regularly in touch with many more "real commercial web developers" on a daily basis, I can attest that this is pure hogwash. I don't honestly know what "Write for IE 7" means.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
shark "We don't have an argument, so let's bash IE instead, OK? We'll also bring up Vista sales figures [...] if we get desperate. " The last thing they'll want to bring up to distract people from the lunacy of bragging about a less than 1% download rate is sales figures. I mean, if you look at real numbers, they really look pathetic. Hence the "wow, we got 6M Windows downloads for our browser (but please don't notice that means way less than 1% and a lot of those were for compatibility testing by developers to see if we broke their sites)" and "the OS X installed base grew from 25M to 75M (but ignore that most of that growth was in iPod sales and that it really means that no matter what we do or how we lie our computers still can't get even 4% of the market)" that these guys not only brag about but defend. Seriously, even Apple themselves aren't stupid enough to bash Vista on actual sales figures, after all, Windows Vista outsold the entire Mac OS X installed base in its first week of general availablity.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
Webguy As a real commercial web developer you really talk to lots of developers who develop first for browsers their site's users don't use? Every real commercial site I know picks their targets based on current browser usage from their logs, writes for the browser most commonly used by their users and then tweaks for the remainder. If your friends do anything else I'd be amazed (as would their boss) And, by far, the most popular browser on mainstream sites is IE 7, followed by IE 8, probably followed by IE 6 then Firefox followed by Safari/Mac and everybody else is noise you tweak for if you have the time.
Mum
on Jun 13, 2009
"Actually, most real commercial web developers - you know, people who do big sites and not just tweak their blog to show off the latest tweak the found somewhere - develop for the browsers most used by their users. That means they do something like: Write for IE 7 [...]" I can confirm this is baloney. No professional web developer wants to restrict their user base to just over half of all visitors. The only way that makes any kind of a sense is to write to standards, then apply workarounds to broken browsers. "Seriously, even Apple themselves aren't stupid enough to bash Vista on actual sales figures, after all, Windows Vista outsold the entire Mac OS X installed base in its first week of general availablity." This doesn't really change the fact that Vista launch was a massive failure. This is relative, of course, but it is the fact. Vista sales are driven by hardware sales, businesses wait for Windows 7 or are sticking with XP, a lot of people downgrade to XP when buying new computers, and even computer salesmen at stores recommend you do. How could it have been any worse? And by all this I mean that Vista is probably a much better operating system than what the poor public perception of it suggests.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
Mum " No professional web developer wants to restrict their user base to just over half of all visitors. " So, you're saying that they want to restrict their user base to UNDER half of all vistors?
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
Mum "The only way that makes any kind of a sense is to write to standards, then apply workarounds to broken browsers." Which would make sense if the "standards" were written well enough that everybody reading them interpreted them the same way or if the "standards" didn't contradict themselves. But that's not the case. And anybody who actually codes to multiple "standards compliant" browsers will tell you that. Ask any web developer out there if they can get by with only two meta tags for browser compatibility (Standards and IE) or even 3 (Standards, IE6, IE7) and they'll tell you they have to tweak for every "standards" based browser because they all interpret the amazingly vaguely written "standards" differently. Sorry to answer your troll with actual facts but some people might have read it and thought it made sense if they didn't understand how web standards really work.
WebGuy3000
on Jun 13, 2009
mikegalos@msn.com Nobody's talking about restricting anybody from anything. I'm just saying that I don't "build to" a specific model of browser. Like I said, I don't really know what that means. (Unless of course you're doing a web application that uses specific ActiveX controls that are only supported in Explorer, in which case, yes. But I don't know of anyone actively doing that these days on public-facing sites.THAT would be restricting your user base.)
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
webguy, If you are writing generic enough code you can absolute write a very good web page that will work with all the common browsers. At which point all the "we're more compliant" stuff is moot since you're not using the more esoteric stuff that causes the big interpretation errors. Still, even with generic code there are some interpretation issues caused by philosophy. Where I've seen a difference is when a section of the "standard" is vague and doesn't specify what to do in a specific case. What I've typically seen is: Microsoft interprets the "standard" so that it works in as many cases as possible (the widest interpretation of the spec) because that benefits the user. Mozilla Foundation interprets it so that it works only in the narrowest case possible to pressure the site developer into writing code that fits the strictest interpretation of the spec. A case can be made for either method. One's better for the user at the cost of not putting pressure on the "standard" , one's better for improving the quality of the "standards" at a cost to the user.
Mum
on Jun 13, 2009
"So, you're saying that they want to restrict their user base to UNDER half of all vistors?" No. I see you don't really understand how web development works. If you develop for IE7 you're in danger of effectively and irreversibly restricting your site to work in IE only, as then fixing to standards-compliant browsers is often impossible without a complete rewrite. No customer would want that (or should pay for shoddy work like that). Then again, if you write your web apps to standards, which most of the time ensures they'll work in FF and Safari, you can then apply fixes to IE6's various bugs. This usually, if not always, makes it compatible with IE7 as well. Writing exclusively for IE7 is absolutely idiotic, not to mention expensive. "And, by far, the most popular browser on mainstream sites is IE 7, followed by IE 8, probably followed by IE 6 then Firefox followed by Safari/Mac and everybody else is noise you tweak for if you have the time." IE8 share compared to previous versions is still relatively small unfortunately, mostly seems to be on par with Safari, according to the user data of some sites which I have an access to. IE6 is mostly below or at most on par with FF, although that seems to depend on the time of the year. But that's what the situation is at the moment. Sites are developed for future use. If the current trend continues, IE will not be the most popular browser in a just two years.
shark47
on Jun 13, 2009
"We don't have an argument, so let's start trolling, OK?" I can't help it if robertsjoe trolls. Sorry, but I can't stop him.
Mum
on Jun 13, 2009
"Sorry to answer your troll with actual facts but some people might have read it and thought it made sense if they didn't understand how web standards really work." Wow, now you're calling me a troll. (What irony.) Please put the personal attacks aside and show where your facts are, as what I read seems to have nothing to do with actual web development.
SPiotr
on Jun 13, 2009
@galos ""the OS X installed base grew from 25M to 75M (but ignore that most of that growth was in iPod sales and that it really means that no matter what we do or how we lie our computers still can't get even 4% of the market)" In the previous thread I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. You might have simply made a mistake.. or Schiller's keynote might have been open to different interpretations. But this, Mike, is an out and out lie. Schller quite clearly and inequitably states that the iPhone and iTouch was responsible for tripling the number of OS X users. There is no doubt. No room for an other interpretation. He just... said it. I thought that you liked to deal in facts? Yet here you are fabricating truths to push your own (slightly pathetic) anti-Apple agenda. You lied Mike. Deal with it.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
SPiotr 25M (Old number) 75M (New number) 50M (Total growth in OS X licenses) 10M (New Mac OS X licenses) 40M (iPod and iPhone [iPhoneOS variant of OS X] share of that growth) 80% of the growth was sales of iPods (iPhone and iPod Touch versions specifically). I'd say that 80% is most. You'd say that's "an out and out lie" Odd math you work with where either 20% is "most" or 20% = 80% and they're tied.
WebGuy3000
on Jun 13, 2009
mikegalos@msn.com, I have no interest in engaging in another cut-and-paste discussion about "standards." I defer. You're 100% right.
mikegalos@msn.com
on Jun 13, 2009
WebGuy3000 " I defer. You're 100% right." Well, that save some time.
SPiotr
on Jun 13, 2009
@galos This is not about the numbers! You are NOT lying about the figures. It's about this: "but ignore that most of that growth was in iPod sales" They (Apple) did not ignore that.. They appeared to be reveling in that fact. You are the one that invented the notion that Apple was trying to deceive with their OS usage figures.
shark47
on Jun 13, 2009
"If you want to get rid of Apple evilness, just uninstall Apple Software Update. Both iTunes AND Quicktime will tell you if there's a new version on launch." Whether it's evilness or not, they are using their monopoly in the digital music player space to increase their web browser marketshare, while a gloating tech press cheers them on.
Waethorn
on Jun 13, 2009
@Doc: You should give IE8 a shot on a non-production computer. If your GE Centricity is run from within your own intranet, it'll run in IE7 compatibility mode automatically, because Microsoft respects that intranet sites are usually some of the last to be updated. That setting is set that way be default in the Compatibility View Settings in IE8. You can also add sites to the Compatibility View whitelist.
DRWAM
on Jun 13, 2009
Thanks Wae, maybe I'll grow a pair and give it a shot. It sounds like MS went through a lot of trouble to make users like me happy.
anonymous
on Jun 13, 2009
As I mentioned yesterday, Apple's PR team announced that Safari 4 had been downloaded 11 million times!!! just three days after the release. Even more exciting, they suggested, 6 million !!! of those downloads came from Windows users. I'm not the first

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