Dive into OS X
Apple said today that it would make its Safari Web browser available for Windows-based PCs. Jobs also claimed that “Safari performs twice as fast as its competitors”. Safari, which was released a few years ago for Apple’s Macintosh computers, has captured about 5 percent of the world’s browser market share with more than 18 million users, Jobs said. Internet Explorer, which is built into Windows, has a 78 percent share, while Firefox has climbed to 15 percent of the market, he said. Jobs continued by saying that allowing Windows users to download the browser will help boost market share the same way that making iTunes available for Windows users helped that application. But the most important point is the fact that Apple’s upcoming iPhone will run Safari. That means, Jobs said, that any application designed to run on the Safari browser for Macs also would be fully compatible with the iPhone — Apple’s highly anticipated combination cell phone, iPod and wireless Web browser. The iPhone will be available in the U.S. on June 29. The move to make Safari available to non-Mac users is not unprecedented: Apple also makes its iPod media players and iTunes Store for Windows. The strategy is aimed in part at drawing more people to its Macintosh computers. “It will create a much more significant consumer platform for the iPhone,” said Mike McGuire, a research analyst at Gartner, an industry research firm based in San Jose, Calif. This move indicates that Apple is increasingly confident in its ability to compete against Microsoft’s desktop computing monopoly. The Safari news was unexpected; A test version of the program will be available beginning today for downloading from Apple’s Web site. Much of the rest of the presentation focused on showing of 10 new features of the company’s Leopard version of the OS X operating system. You must be logged in to post a comment. |
|
||||||
