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iBrowser

Foocha

Foocha

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 10, 2001
588
0
London
Check out this story on the Register. It sounds almost plausible, but a little daring. I hope Apple know what they are doing, and can handle the potential reaction from Microsoft.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25451.html

It seems consistant with the direction they're going with OS X. OS X is all about taking the best open source standards around and applying Apple's glossy user interface to them. Why not an Apple distribution of Mozilla, I guess.
 
I would love to see an apple browser, and this article is just more proof.

I like the part about Jobs flipping Microsoft the bird. If I'm not mistaken, we'd have 10.1.5 out already if it weren't for M$ slow fat asses
 
if this is true...I am wondering how this is going to affect their relationship with Microsoft...

I know many of u will say "screw them...let it happen"....but I cannot see being at complete odds with them will be the best choice...

but aside from that...and I've said this already....seeing a browser from Apple would only make sense considering what they have been doing as of late...

iTools is becoming a big staple in their line...and this would add more icing to the cake...;)
 
Now, I am sure that many of us have heard about Apple making a web browser and dumping IE. However, many of us have also established that Microcoughed has provided Apple with an application many of us need, Office v.X, and if Apple makes their own broswer, they might break the chain of support (was there ever any?) by Microcoughed.

And I would like to bring up this Q again: If Apple brings this browser to life, what happens to Office? Will Apple ever plan on making an application to support the features of Office if Microcoughed is put down by Apple?
__________________

Fear the King.
 
Microsoft makes no money out of developing IE for Mac.

They make plenty of money out of developing Office for Mac.

There is no legitimate commercial reason for them to end development of Office for Mac.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for them to end development of IE for Mac.

Microsoft can't afford to be seen as returning to their old anti-competative ways - ending a successful business like Office for Mac just to punish Apple could do them plenty of harm in terms of public perception, and would result in a lost revenue stream. I think in the current climate they're unlikely to do it.

However, Microsoft would have every justification in ending IE development for Mac in the event that Apple develops its own competative product bundled (or commingled?) with the OS.

Personally, I would be very sorry to see IE leave the Mac platform.
 
I think this would be bad move, not because Microsoft wouldn't like it, but because mozilla can't view as many web pages as IE can, I know this is Microsoft's little Monopolisation thing. But if Apple started giving browsers on their machines where someone could go to a site and have it not work would confuse people, in essence" making it harder to browse the web.

I hate IE so don't flame me for what I said
I use Omniweb, Chimera is to immature right now.

Also, Microsoft does make money by IE for mac. It keeps their monopoly going, but almost hidden from the public, because now gozilla is the most common browser on the earth, all windows users use it and all mac users use it, so y would web developers make web pages that support mozilla if they can do more with gozilla?

If you don't know gozilla is the engine in IE, hmm, back to the roots of IE, netscape?

If I am wrong about the gozilla thing, just replace all of the gozillas with IE's
 
Let's face facts, the Mac's market share is an insignificant factor in the browser war now that IE has 90% of desktops.

Microsoft only develops IE for Mac because of contractual commitments to Apple and general good will, not because of some evil master plan, or even out of normal commercial interest!
 
In order for this to be a success, iBrowser will have to do two things:

1) Be faster than IE. I'm not happy with ANY of the browsers on the Mac right now. IE and Opera on the PC are blazingly fast. If Apple can take Mozilla or Chimera and really tweak the code, we might see some speed improvements.

2) Support standards better. As a web developer, nothing is more frustrating than trying to code for and around the idiosyncracies of all the different browsers out there. IE has become the default standard since it has the largest market share, but even it is not 100% compliant with the W3C standards. If Apple gives us a standards compliant browser, I will be VERY happy.
 
I'm also a Web developer, and whilst in principle I'm all in favour of supporting standards, in practice, in my view IE has become the defacto standard. As such, it is very significant that we have IE on the Mac platform (and a significant advantage that OS X has over other non-Windows desktops). I was looking forward to seeing IE 6 on Mac - I hope these rumors are not the first harbinger of the end of IE on Mac!
 
I agree that IE has become the standard due to the attrition of other browsers...but it's sad that the most prevalently used browser out there is still not 100% standards compliant.

I do a lot of work with CSS, and it's SOOOOOOOO frustrating trying to decide which classes to use and how they can be applied without them breaking in a particular browser.
 
I'm with you on CSS.

Also JavaScript - if you could do half the things on IE for OS X that you can on IE for Windows, I'd be a happy man.

This Messageboard, vBulletin is a case in point - the formatting options are much better on a PC, because you have access to the insertion point & highlighted text in JavaScript.... although that functionality seems to be disable now on the macrumors board - I wonder why?!
 
Exactly. This is why I think Apple needs to develop, or help develop an OS X browser.

MS seems to be doing its best to cripple the Mac platform from within.

The consumer market is the largest market out there. Surfing the 'Net is the primary task that people use a computer for. If a customer tries using IE on a PC, they will enjoy the responsiveness of the app. If they try IE on a Mac, they will think the computer is slower. Which computer would you buy if you were just going to be surfing?

What really gets me, though, is that it seems like all of the browsers we have for OS X are either slow, buggy, incomplete or a combination of the three. I realize that OS X is relatively young in terms of development time, but come on, this is starting to get ridiculous.
 
If Apple could develop a browser that delivered a better experience for Mac users, was faster, and kept up with IE on PC feature-wise, I'd be all for it. That's more than Microsoft has ever done.

It would involve a significant contribution to the ongoing development of Mozilla itself. I guess that might earn Apple some appreciation from the open source community.
 
I don't think Apple will inverst the R&D time to make a web browser. Steve Jobs said it in 1993, there's no money to be made with a web browser, because they're free. Back then, eeven before the proliferation of the internet, he said Netscape had a very limited life expectancy as a stand alone company. And it doesn't really seem like a selling point for the mac. Web browsing is expected. It's not as "revolutionary" as iPhoto, or iMovie, or iDVD, or iTunes.

The only reason that they would produce a browser is to make it faster than IE. But even so, that's a lot to invest.

And OMNIWeb kicks @ss. It's quite incomplete, though.
 
Originally posted by iH8Quark
I don't think Apple will inverst the R&D time to make a web browser. Steve Jobs said it in 1993, there's no money to be made with a web browser, because they're free. Back then, eeven before the proliferation of the internet, he said Netscape had a very limited life expectancy as a stand alone company. And it doesn't really seem like a selling point for the mac. Web browsing is expected. It's not as "revolutionary" as iPhoto, or iMovie, or iDVD, or iTunes.

The only reason that they would produce a browser is to make it faster than IE. But even so, that's a lot to invest.

And OMNIWeb kicks @ss. It's quite incomplete, though.
Click to expand...

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??
If Apple makes a nice/fast web browser they will be able to sell more macs because I have seen people be turned away from MacOS X because they say "Oh, The internet is SLOW on this machine! Who would buy one on these things?" and they go look at the Windows XP machines with IE 6 and buy one of those. There, Apple just lost $1,399-4000+... :mad:

Anyway iPhoto is FREE! And I think iTunes and iMovie (well maybe not iMovie) are also FREE! WoW! I better go tell Apple to stop wasting their time and money developing these applications.:rolleyes:
 
i agree, the whole computer doesnt revolve around a web browser (although it seems like it), if the internets too slow, get a diff isp, or use a diff browser, simple as that :D, as for IE 6, its the buggiest piece of junk m$ made since windows ME, i cant wait till SR-1 or SP-1 or whatever they call it comes out to allow me to fully remove IE6 from windows n not come back :D, i'm staying with mozilla for a longgggggggggggg time, since 1x is 3x the stability IE for windows is....and ive tried mozilla on os 8.6 n it seems pretty good too, but i didnt like the spot where moz kept putting the profile :S, as for "same features as windows users when ie 6 for mac comes out", there arent that many new features for ie6 for windows, the ORIGINAL preview of IE was alot better than the current one, it had local hard drive mp3 support, customizable side bars, msn messenger integration..the works, etc, n they removed all those features just for some stupid security features that i dont think even work (atleast for me), but then again half the ppl i know who have win 98+ machines, use IE6 (including one of my cousins who doesnt know a damn bout computers)

thats just my .0002c
 
Originally posted by SilvorX
i agree, the whole computer doesnt revolve around a web browser (although it seems like it), if the internets too slow, get a diff isp, or use a diff browser, simple as that :D, as for IE 6, its the buggiest piece of junk m$ made since windows ME, i cant wait till SR-1 or SP-1 or whatever they call it comes out to allow me to fully remove IE6 from windows n not come back :D, i'm staying with mozilla for a longgggggggggggg time, since 1x is 3x the stability IE for windows is....and ive tried mozilla on os 8.6 n it seems pretty good too, but i didnt like the spot where moz kept putting the profile :S, as for "same features as windows users when ie 6 for mac comes out", there arent that many new features for ie6 for windows, the ORIGINAL preview of IE was alot better than the current one, it had local hard drive mp3 support, customizable side bars, msn messenger integration..the works, etc, n they removed all those features just for some stupid security features that i dont think even work (atleast for me), but then again half the ppl i know who have win 98+ machines, use IE6 (including one of my cousins who doesnt know a damn bout computers)

thats just my .0002c
Click to expand...


So whats a good browser for OS X? For features AND speed? You can go with NO features at all but with some good speed and get Chimera that crashes at the Apple Netscape startup page.

OR....

You can get Omniweb with a lot of nice features with horrible speed.

OR....

Get IE that has enough features and it a little faster then omniweb but not fast enough.
 
Actually, I don't know if you've tried the new release, but Omniweb is now noticeably faster than IE. (especially for CNN) Like I said, though, it still has issues.
 
Doesn't this make you wanna believe that a browser is coming!

If you look closely...it seems obvious. If Apple was really concerned about Microsofts abandonment why tempt fate with a swell new mail app or the new address book even. Aren't we to believe that these new apps or tweaks that are to come with jag-WIRE are superior enough to make us rethink Entourage. Maybe they are supposed to be just plain easier to use than Entourage...you can be certain that the Mac BU was at the WWDC and knows up to the minute what Apple's OS development is shaping up to be.
Maybe Microsoft doesn't give a snot as long as they have easy access to rip off the apps and ideas later.

This banner sure makes me feel like I am looking into a sparkly blue crystal ball...a brower should be in our future. Should be...but who knows.

Look here and you will know what I mean....

http://store6.yimg.com/I/redlightrunner_1688_1439911
 
iBrowse - suuuuure thats a great name.


i dont think we will see an apple browser, but ie is on its way out.

seems pretty clear netscape will make its grand return to the mac.

iChat was our first clue that apple was getting into bed with AOL/TW — and netscape is their baby. easy to imagine a deal where AOL opens the AIM network to Apple for iChat and apple agrees to bundle Netscape on new macs.

Also the M$-Apple deal ends in August, right about the time Jaguar is suppsed to debut. I dont think this is an accident.

IE holding back the release of 10.1.5 for 4 weeks is also likely something apple is not happy about.

M$ has committed to the mac platform and has reaffirms that they will continue to make mac software (including .net tech and office), they have done this because they make money developing on the mac, and with all the antitrust lawsuits they are not likley to do something so blatant as pull a profitable piece of software like office, simply to hurt apple.

apple is not in the same dire straits it was in back in 1997(?) when the signed the deal with M$. apple is doing very well know, and can afford to shake things up a little.

a mozilla based browser is the perfect choice. it is stable, fast, and capable of rendering anything ie can. no other browser can make the same claims.

we might all despise aol alomst as much as ms, and we might despise the bloatware bundled with netscape, but it works well. educated users will always seek something better out, but for the common user netscape will serve quite well.

anyone who thinks netscape/mozilla cant do everything ie can do has never used it.

and one more thing... iBrowse? hahaha!
 
The sad fact is that currently Mozilla can't do half the things that IE for Windows can do. There's still a wide, wide gap between the two of them.

I would say the first evidence of the growing relationship between AOL & Apple was AOL support in Airport, followed swiftly afterwards by a u-turn by AOL in the UK, who had said that they would not produce an OS X client. Then Apple made the default home page Netscape. Most recently we have iChat on the slate.

All of these events point to the same thing - something bigger going on behind the scenes. I hope & prey it doesn't involve AOLs cheque-book!

BTW - I agree that iBrowser as a name completely sucks, and this was probably made up by The Register, so that they would have something obvious to refer to it. I doubt Apple would regard a Web browser as part of their suite of iApps, since its features would not be unique or remarkable in any way - more like Mail, or Address Book, which do not have an "i". Apple may also use this as an opportunity to integrate the Web browser further into the OS, Windows style, in which case it might not need a name in its own right at all...
 
Originally posted by icetraxxg5
Anyway iPhoto is FREE! And I think iTunes...
Click to expand...

sure they're "free". :rolleyes: try running one of those "free" apps on a wintel or linux box. they're not "free". you have to own apple hardware to use them. They're useful tools to keep previous Apple customers loyal to the brand. A browser wouldn't affect anyone's loyalty.

cool the flames, girlfriend. :eek:
 
Originally posted by iH8Quark


sure they're "free". :rolleyes: try running one of those "free" apps on a wintel or linux box. they're not "free". you have to own apple hardware to use them. They're useful tools to keep previous Apple customers loyal to the brand. A browser wouldn't affect anyone's loyalty.

cool the flames, girlfriend. :eek:
Click to expand...

It wouldn't affect anyone's loyalty but it sure would make MacOS X look better and seem MUCH faster to PC users! ;)

P.S. What flames? Who's girlfriend?
 
HELLO!!!
Think about what Jobs said all of the iTools are for, the digital hub. Seems to me like a browser wouldnt have anything to do with that. So it doesnt sound worthy of the "i"
 
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