Comments for Has Apple tripped up with Safari?

Stegosaurus: "Considering the Mac version, surely you'd consider the close button to be a feature?"
What is the problem with the close button? Do you refer to the close window button in the window frame? Works fine on my Mac.

Oli: "To those that remember the days of everybody going hysteric over Java for desktop app development (late 90s, I guess), remember the reason it failed: it didn't fit in! It had a whole collection of it's own UI elements that were just different from the OS's and people just refused it."

That's not why Java failed. I was one of the original developers of Borland JBuilder, I saw the whole saga unfold in front of me. Java is an exercise in bad decisions. The JVM tries to be a "OS inside an OS". Too much stuff, too much replication of features that were not needed, too demanding, too slow, too inadequate. The JVM is pre-installed on any Mac but I stay away from any Java app because they inevitably bring down the system to its knees. I can edit a full-feature length movie while running Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Safari and email and everything is fine. Launch one Java app and time stands still.
The way the app looks is not that important, as long as the UI is well designed. Look at how many Flash applications are out there and they all look different. Flash has won the rich internet content market because it made sense, in the same way that Perl and PHP make sense. They address the every day needs of the real-world developer. Java, last time I checked, could not deal even with the basic read/write attribute of a file, not in a proper and useful way, and it could not interface the access rights of the file system. It sticks to the minimum common denominator while offering esoteric features that nobody uses (speech API anyone, anyone?)

The Java File IO system is one of the most cumbersome I ever used, the DB interface is byzantine etc etc. To equal Safari to Java is a like comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended). Safari needs some polish but it will integrate in the Windows world no more no less than many other apps. There are lots of programs that sport their own unique UI and still enjoy a great audience in the Windows world. I don't think that Safari has any big problem in adapting to the Windows way of working. After all iTunes is not doing bad at all so Apple knows a thing or two about Windows development :)

hannibal said: 'm writing this with Safari on MacIntel, I've been using 3.0 beta since it was released and I use it for 14 hours a day with multiple tabs open, flash, QT and php development and it's working much more smoothly than Firefox. I used to use Firefox only but the smoothness and speed of Safari has impressed me enough to switch to it as my default browser.

Well, I haven't had the chance to use Mac OS X yet. I've pushed Safari on my Windows all the way to 24/7, and it CRASHES HARD. However, I'm typing this on Firefox. I haven't turned off my comp for a few WEEKS, and it seems to be going very smoothly. On Safari, I can barely run it for say 10hrs before it crashes or seriously slows down.

Also, Safari starts slowing down a lot as soon as I have around 10 tabs open. Compared to Firefox {which slows down when I have around 5 tabs of YouTube videos playing} it's quite unacceptable to users who want the efficient browsing that only Firefox provides at current.

Safari also has a problem Maximizing and Minimizing. The graphics seem to get stuck halfway through. It could freeze up for around 2 mins before I get it working again!

The only good thing about Safari is its resizable text-boxes at the moment. I'm positive that on OS X, it'd run way faster, being its native application. But having Safari on Windows, it's a totally different thing.

Especially for people like me who have their browser open 24/7, Safari in its current state just isn't stable enough.

Hugo, don't mean to argue with you, you're results are what they are and Safari might never be the browser for you but again, we are comparing apples and oranges. Firefox, which was my main browser till last week, is a very mature product which has gone through a lot of revision. Safari is in beta. It's supposed to crash, it's supposed to be un-optimized, optimization being the last thing that you do to software. We have to wait until the beta cycle is over in order to make comparisons at the stability and efficiency level. If anything, I would say that sending the beta out is in fact a move for the developer to collect data about the crash situations.