So Firefox did not swallow #2, #3, #4, etc.?

@anonymous, when you see someone from the Mozilla Foundation with a chart like the Safari chart, worry. (I don't worry.)

I understand how that second chart could upset a lot of people. But I doubt that there was any malicious intent behind showing that chart. I would certainly like to believe that it was an oversight and what was really intended was a displaying of how Safari could double it's market share, or triple it. There is a huge chunk of cake out there left for grabs. That chunk better come out of IE's share of the market, rather than eat away into the share currently owned by all other browsers.

I still believe the REAL reason for porting Safari to Windows is to give that many more Windows web developers a chance to build and test web applications for the iPhone. Only time will tell what SJ was really thinking and whether people like me are wrong.

Hey. I was thinking how that second chart could actually be made to look right. I found a simple fix. SJ should have labeled the larger section as "Other Browsers", instead of "Internet Explorer". That would have been absolutely, politically correct. Otherwise, how do you predict the future with Safari's share growing but not being able show that FF's (and maybe other browsers) share also having grown witthin the same time frame.

But no questions about this. It would be really sweet of SJ to send a public appology and correct this really big oversight. FF is an awesome browser and they deserve to thrive.

I don't know what to think about the second chart. I would want to give Jobs the benefit of the doubt, however, he is a very intelligent man, especially when it comes to presentation (see the introduction of the iPod, iPhone, etc.) and not one given to oversight.

Frankly I think John is intelligent enough to know that Steve isn't, at least intentionally, trying to create a duopoly. In fact I would read the second slide as a declaration of war on Microsoft not as a declaration of the insignificance of Firefox. But being who John is he has to insure the Firefox is in the public eye and also remind the rest of us, ( many of whom are focused on Apple this week ) that the game isn't about companies it's about ideology.

Frankly I think the FireFox community needs a good kick in the rump. They're awfully full of themselves the last year or so. Hopefully things like this and Adobe choosing WebKit for it's AIR product and Safari moving onto Windows will get them back to innovating again.

Lastly anything that reduces Microsoft's Market share is good for everybody. I don't care who gets more market share, Apple, Opera, Mozilla, whoever, so long as they support standards, contribute the to the coummunity and aren't Microsoft. We can fight over the spoils once we've killed the king.

Vance- it won't be so terrible if Microsoft went on to produce a standards compliant browser that retained a large amount of market share. The only bad thing is if they try to use proprietary extensions. IE7 was a good improvement over IE6, for example; it didn't fix everything but there was nothing evil about it. Between the non-free software browsers (IE, Opera, Safari, etc) all that matters to me is quality of the application and standards-compliance. If MS can make a superior product then I'd use it just as much as I'd use any of the other proprietary browsers. That said, I'll support Firefox and Mozilla until the end, because I believe their approach will ultimately lead to the most benefit for consumers (e.g., IE7 wouldn't have happened until much later if it weren't for Firefox, Democracy player and Songbird are built on XUL, etc) I feel the approach of free software is much healthier for the market, at least in the long term, even if SJ does find a way to dazzle us with Safari goodies in the short term).

Though people label me a MacFanBoi I think John is right - Jobs is implying a duopoly. That duopoly comes at the expense of users, users lose the chance to chose which browser to use and lose the opportunity to view the web with their own standards, not the standards set by big corporations. While I think it is good that Safari exists for Windows, I think a healthy browser war, with lots of competition, is good for everyone.

Can anyone explain the possible advantages/disadvantages of Safari? I never got around to trying it, though it's on my Mac. Is there a reason why I should? Is there a reason why IE would switch to it?

I love my Mac, but I'm still not sure I'd trust a closed-source browser. Who knows what it's really doing? Then again, lately I've been suspicious of Firefox, with all its funding from Google (now owner of DoubleClick!!!) and its elimination of the ability to disable 3rd party cookies (which even IE has) and allow only session cookies (also in IE).

You're kidding Michael, right ? Cookies are still disallowable in the latest version of Firefox (it's in the Privacy tab, where it belongs) and you can add exception as you want as well as modify when they're deleted.

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Jedaï

is there any (serious) browser war anymore? firefox rulez and IE ... no comment :) after the dead of netscape there are not many good browser out there (safari, opera,..?) but i agree with you there is something wrong with steve, he allways is a little bit kind of crazy (his formular of success maybe)...

Jana Ina from BeneWiki - the only wiki dedicated for helping children