Apple pushing Safari for Windows

with Apple iTunes updater reminders

[timster]

Apple is now including option to download Safari along with reminders to update iTunes. Defaults to "yes download" I believe.

Article [informationweek.com]

[tedster]

We've got a thread in our Mac forum discussing the push on Safari for Windows:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[dataguy]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/html/3608265.htm [webmasterworld.com] by tedster - 10:24 pm on Mar. 22, 2008 (EDT -4)

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Hey, every PC I own and have iTunes on has now asked me if I wanted to install Safari for Windows automatically. I assume this is happening to all the millions of other iTunes users as well.

Any bets on how this will change the browser market share for Safari?

[g1smd]

Safari 3.1 pushed on auto-update tonight.

Whenever I update Safari, it tries to push Quicktime and I-tunes as well.

[BillyS]

>>Any bets on how this will change the browser market share for Safari?

Near zero affect. Most users won't even know it's there.

[g1smd]

Interesting effect using Safari to view sites that are using Google Analytics.

If I browse a site with Firefox or Opera all of the user data appears in Analytics.

If I browse with Safari, then Analytics fails to pick up the screen resolution, colours, flash version, and so on, that I was using.

They are all marked as (not set).

[Little_G]

And now it's putting users at risk, Safari Address Bar Spoofing and Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities [secunia.com].

[tedster]

Yes, but every browser has vulnerabilities and needs regular security upgrades. See this thread [webmasterworld.com] for the latest news on Firefox issues.

Safari for Windows is still OK by me - in fact I use it a lot for testing. But I agree that this current more aggressive marketing move will not make too much of a dent in the market.

[BillyS]

Here are my current browser stats:

1. Internet Explorer 75.58%
2. Firefox 19.17%
3. Safari 4.04%
4. Mozilla 0.45%
5. Opera 0.40%

Like I said earlier, I don't think a lot of users will even notice they've got another browser - even if they mistakenly download it.