Why did Apple make Safari?

[iAppleseed]

I'm probably one of the few that completely ignores Safari on my Mac. I think the very first thing I did when I got my Mac was download Chrome. I think that was the only thing I used Safari for, lol. Chrome is what I was used to coming from a PC, as that's all I used. I didn't feel like having to re-learn a new browser on top of having to learn a new OS as well. I knew Chrome, I knew how to use it. So if anything, it was something I was already familiar with while trying to get used to a whole new OS. I just love Chrome's extensions like Adblocker and YouTubeDownloader.

I also have Firefox installed, but I rarely use it. Only for ripping video clips off the internet.

The only time I use Safari is when I'm using my iPhone or iPad. Mainly because I don't have much of a choice.


Here are the latest stats on which browser is getting the most action. Keep in mind though, IE gets a lot of its boost from government computers in the States.

United States: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-US-monthly-201112-201205

Worldwide: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201112-201205

OH, No, No, No. What about the gestures? The pinch and zoom? The swipe?

 

[Sylon]

Can you please check something in your Safari: the cookies. iTunes Store and the App Store require the cookies to be enabled in Safari. As you normally do not use it, it is interesting to know what you see there.

Do you use both stores?

I do use both stores and cookies are enabled. However, when I go to Safari's preferences, it also shows that Chrome is my default browser. I think those preferences are for using the internet, not so much based on what browser you're using. It showed that I have 171 websites-worth of cookies. Damn that's a lot, lol.

OH, No, No, No. What about the gestures? The pinch and zoom? The swipe?

Those work with all the browsers (Chrome, FF, Safari). I think that's more of a Mac thing than a browser thing. I use the 2-finger swipe to go back and forth to pages all the time.

 

[pdjudd]

ActiveX is not an Internet Explorer technology; it is a Windows technology.

It may be, but it is tied heavily with IE on Windows and not on the Mac. I was not attempting to claim that it was purely based in IE.

 

[matrix07]

OH, No, No, No. What about the gestures? The pinch and zoom? The swipe?

The 3-fingers tap for dictionary won't work and all the gestures ain't as smooth as in Safari when I tried.

 

[blackhand1001]

WebKit is based on KHTML, but they are not the same thing. It is appropriate therefore to say that Apple created WebKit.

99.9% of the work was done by KHTML. All apple did was submit a few patches many of them poorly document and have since been reverted. Apple does not know how to work well with the open source communities and caused a big issue which is why it forked.

 

[msandersen]

99.9% of the work was done by KHTML. All apple did was submit a few patches many of them poorly document and have since been reverted. Apple does not know how to work well with the open source communities and caused a big issue which is why it forked.

That's disingenuous, Apple needed to fork KHTML to abstract it, removing any QT and KDE specific code to make it completely platform-agnostic. They also have made substantial code contributions, to the point Konqueror considered adopting Webkit, and has since been been integrated into QT and is now an alternate rendering engine in Konqueror. While Apple's relationship with the opensource community was strained at first, with the forked code being made available in one big lump back to KHTML, which made it difficult to merge, they have since worked out their differences. Numerous opensource projects, as well as commercial ones, have adopted Webkit over KHTML because it is already abstracted and universally adopted and supported by websites. As for opensource in general, remember that Darwin, the OSX core, is opensource and synchronised with FreeBSD. They have developed several opensource projects, mostly under-the-hood Unix tools or protocols, some adapted from previous opensource projects, some new. Clang is a major project which affects numerous Unix variants, it is adopted by FreeBSDs as their new compiler.


As to the original question, while largely answered; Apple didn't want to be reliant on Microsoft or any other company for something as increasingly crucial as a web browser, especially not seeing how Microsoft had been neglecting it, and had plans to axe it altogether; it made for a bad user experience for people considering adopting Macs. Microsoft also used it (as well as Office) as leverage against Apple in the lead-up. It was a sore point for Steve Jobs.
Morever, just as IE's underlying engine supply systemwide services, Webkit
is crucial to providing the same OS-integrated services on Macs which no 3rd party browser can, used in things like Preview and Mail and now iTunes and the Mac App store. It also enables 3rd party software developers like Adium to use it.
As for the Windows port, I believe it had as much to do with providing an implementation for largely Windows-based web developers to test against, versus them simply ignoring it, since at the time lots of websites had various rendering issues. It also brought Webkit to Windows. Now of course Adobe has adopted Webkit in Dreamweaver and Air on both platforms.

 

[thewoz]

Apple made safari so that it would eat your memory and CPU usage and then they can upsell you on RAM when possible or a brand new laptop.

 

[thewoz]

Apple people say Apple computers don't come with bloat ware. I beg to differ. First thing you do when you buy a Mac. Go into Applications - find Safari - right click - select Move to Trash. .

 

[MisterMe]

Apple people say Apple computers don't come with bloat ware. I beg to differ. First thing you do when you buy a Mac. Go into Applications - find Safari - right click - select Move to Trash. .

Dumb move.

 

[hvfsl]

I use Safari on my Mac and Firefox on my PC. While Chrome is the fastest browser on both platforms, the adblocker in Firefox/Safari are much better than the one in Chrome.

 

[soloer]

I love Safari on the Mac. I try Firefox sometimes and something ends up annoying me and I switch back. I use to try Chrome, but I decided using Google was all that I wanted to share with Google.

On my work PC, I mainly use Firefox. However, I've found some sites work better in Safari, so on occasion I'll use that.

 

[thewoz]

I use Safari on my Mac and Firefox on my PC. While Chrome is the fastest browser on both platforms, the adblocker in Firefox/Safari are much better than the one in Chrome.

Safari works best in Windows. .