Apple Announces New "Safari" Browser

In kicking off the Macworld Expo
keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled
a new Macintosh web browser named
Safari. Jobs
said the browser was
"based on standards", "works with any Web site", has much-improved
performance over IE (page-loading speed is "three times faster",
JavaScript performs twice as fast and it launches "40% faster" - comparisons
to Netscape 7.0 shows similar performance gains on the Macintosh platform).
The KDE connection: "[f]or its Web page
rendering engine, Safari draws on software from the Konqueror open source
project. Weighing in at less than one tenth the size of another open
source renderer, Konqueror helps Safari stay lean and responsive.
"
The good news for Konqueror: Apple, which said that it will be
"a good open source citizen [and] share[] its enhancements with
the Konqueror open source community
", has today sent all
changes, along with a detailed changelog
, to the KHTML developers.
Congratulations to the KHTML developers for this recognition of
their outstanding efforts. Update @22:34: Dirk Mueller has
posted
an interesting mail from the Safari engineering manager as well
as his response. Hats off to collaboration!

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Comments

by Gunter Ohrner (not verified)

BTW, what license does khtml have? I guess apple is linking their browser to khtml or at least they are loading/linking khtml dynamically, so if khtml is GPL Safari as a whole would have to be?

Greetings,

Gunter

by Anonymous (not verified)

And that's the reason it's LGPL.

by glenalec (not verified)

But why do we need another OS browser?
Konqueror does well under *nix!

The big thing is the sharing of the rendering engine, where improvemens from both sides helps both sides.

by Gunnar Liljas (not verified)

Exactly!

The parts not being open source are of no interest, unless you're aiming to create a Safari "clone". Sure. it's always nice to look under the hood, but still, this is a magnificent contribution from Apple. It may be a small step for KHTML, but it's definitely a giant leap for the true spirit of open source (without the FSF zealotry)

by Pinghead (not verified)

Maybe that will be the next step for Apple to contribute to the open source community, who knows?

As I see it, one of the largest things missing is the multimedia support, in particular the web-multimeda formats, for making all our prefered OSs available to John Doe.

Even if MPlayer is a fantastic tool and has come a long way, I think they wouldn't mind help directly from Apple. :)

I am hoping that apple announces they have secretly been working on koffice about a year and they've a version that kicks openoffice's arse.

QT does exist for OSX and it uses native cocoa. Only problem is use of KDE libs but then 'quack' does exist.

by Jack Kennedy (not verified)

I'm typing this in Safari on OS X. Very impressive.

Just writing to thank all of you who've worked on KDE, because this would simply not be possible without you.

The great news is that because the majority of web designers are sitting on macs, we'll see more and more pages being tested to work with KDE.

Thanks to everyone again -- this browser rocks.

Now if only Apple would give us some tabs...

Lots of other KDE components will get a closer look from developers now.

Congratulations to the KHTML and all the KDE developers.

Roland

Where did you get your numbers? Most people agree it is currently about 3.25 percent, but that is just of sales. Macs are far closer to 15% if you count all the computers out there, because they last longer. And Apple is on track to get 10 Million OS X users very soon.

by Jeff (not verified)

First I consider myself somewhat OS independent, meaning I love operating systems in general. I wish I had a strong justification to purchase that 17" PowerBook beauty, but I don't. I'm just wondering if the KDE/KHTML folks might find Apple making recipricol guesters by sharing their newly found unix expertise with the open source development of KDE. I use both Gnome and KDE and have likes and dislikes about each. If Apple's statement about being a "good open source citizen" rings true, I hope to see them contributing. The only thing preventing Linux distros from gaining desktop market share is the strength of its presentation to the end user. People will pay money for Linux, I do. But I don't see my father-in-law buying it just yet. Linux is very strong and very capable; It's a "do what I say, don't get in the way" operating system and I would love nothing more than to see linux get a top quality User Interface based on standards that third party application developers will embrace. You folks at Gnome and KDE have come a long way and your efforts are appreciated, I hope Apple finds it within themselves to contribute some of their unix UI expertise to your efforts. Good luck and keep up the great work!

Jeff, CA

by Karikalan (not verified)

OS X compatible CPUs:

Apple has shipped on the average 700K units each quarter for the past three years. In other words, 3x4x700 K units = 8400 K units or 8.4 Million computers. The overall market has shipped close to 100 Million CPU's on the average each year. So, 8.4/300 = 2.8% of the market.

Opensource + Apple is a potent combination. Apple bringing in its years of experience in human computer interface and usability issues, and the opensource community bringing in the technical knowledge! Sky is the limit...

Great news indeed..

Kari

by ic3man (not verified)

now lets get the snapback feature in konqueror

by Mike (not verified)

The same day as they announced the browser Apple also ( much more quietly ) announced a new version of the X windowing system ,designed by them, for use under OSX.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/
I just tried it with Abiword and it worked much, much better than before. It both launched and ran faster. It runs the app in a window with OSX gumdrops, drop shadow, and it even genies to the dock. Would this make KOffice as viable on OSX as OS9 apps are under Classic? Would a special version need to be made?

BTW, Safari is great. Thanks for all the hard work. Apple licensed a commercial product to develop iTunes out of, based on that they could have used anybodys browser to build on. That they chose to use yours should be a great compliment. Here's hoping they "embrace and extend" some more.

Mike

by Ben Moretti (not verified)

YES! This is excellent. I can now run Xemacs on my iMac. I was wondering when Apple would ship X11 with OSX. So now all of the thousands of Unix applications with windowing interfaces are available to us. Anybody interested should check out http://www.osxgnu.org/ Yum. I also agree with many other posters that there will be a backwards flow to the Linux world from the work Apple are doing. Cheers!

by Andreas Hillberg (not verified)

Hey guys!

I don't belong here really, I'm a hardcore mac addict to the bone.
First time I even heard about KDE was on the MacWorld Expo last tuesday.

I've never used Linux to be honest with you, used MS for a few hours my entire life.
I saw the expo, heard the words "KDE" and "Konqueror" and got really interested in what this was.

What have I found?
Well it really enlightened my view for the x86, which for me before was a dead world filled with ms users and Linux users which I never bothered finding out more about.

I've read alot about KDE, xfree86, Linux (although just the light beginner reading) and maybe it doesn't matter much, but KDE has gotten recognized by Apple, and you got a new user.
I'm definately getting myself a good machine, and Linux!

The big reason why I haven't done this step is first, I will NOT use any ms product!
Second, I agreed with me, myself and I that if I got a x86 it would be for games (game addict too). I've heard Linux doesn't have much games (as mac do).
Once I decided to swallow my pride and go ms, but I did ask a close friend (Hardcore Linux guy) on irc about it, and he showed me to http://www.transgaming.com .
And I promise to Jobs (we mac addicts do that instead of God), I haven't had a bigger smile on my face since I first tested MacOSX. It's christmas all over for me!

So here I am, I'm the new kid on the block!

In conclusion, you gained improved code for Konqueror, and ATLEAST one new member to your community!

Welcome! Remember, Linux + KDE can only get better with time, and it seems to be moving faster all the time.

If you run into trouble, there are lots of helpful mailing lists. Good luck!

by nusuth (not verified)

Well, although I do recommend everyone to switch to an open sourced OS and KDE, I really cannot tell whether someone just heard about it should better switch to linux. I wish you best of luck. I strongly suggest finding a pesterable local guru before proceeding any further :)

Also you'd better check Mac-on-linux project (which enables you to run OS X on machintosh *inside* linux) and install yellow dog linux, gentoo for ppc or something on your Mac. That way, you can experiment with linux and run your OS X apps at the same time on your favorite hardware. When you decide you have learned enough about this linux stuff and its alternative applications you can go use linux on x86 with transgaming.

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

I have to words for any new Linux user who doesnt know much about the OS

those words are:

SuSE LINUX

by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)

Ok, SuSE is nice but I would say:

KNOPPIX

(www.knoppix.org)

by Janne (not verified)

I would say:

Gentoo Linux

After they have used Gentoo for a while, they will know ALOT about their OS ;). Gentoo doesn't leave the user ignorant, it educates them.

by Jesper Juhl (not verified)

Believe it or not, but I'd actually say Slackware (and yes, I'm serious - you'll *learn* a lot more).

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

You cannot put new people on distributions where you hav to configure everything yourself, Newbies do better with Automatic configuration and learning from that, you guys want linux to be more adopted yet you reccommend the hardest distros out there.

Get serious

by Jesper Juhl (not verified)

> You cannot put new people on distributions where you hav to configure everything yourself,

Why not? I was a newbie myself once (back in '93) and I started out with Slackware (ok, there wasn't much choice back then). And I managed just fine - had to work hard to figure out how the system fit together and reading a lot of man pages and HOWTO's etc. but I learned a huge amount of stuff in the process that I don't think I would have learned (at least not as fast) if I had started out with one of the "handholding" distributions.

> Newbies do better with Automatic configuration and learning from that,

Personally I don't agree with that.
If all you want is to install the system, get a desktop, browse the net, read email and write a few letters etc. then maybe that's the way to go. But if you want to learn how the whole thing works then jump into the deep end at once and learn it the hard way (trust me, the knowledge will stick better that way, and you'll be able to handle most other distributions without much trouble afterwards).

> you guys want linux to be more adopted yet you reccommend the hardest distros out there.

The hardest distro? I don't agree - maybe it's just me, but I find the simplicity of distributions like Slackware, Debian to be a lot easier to work with than having to navigate a lot of GUI tools in RedHat, Mandrake etc.
And I think you generalize a bit. I've helped a few people over the years get started with Linux, and most of them I got started on Slackware (some have moved to other dists and some have stayed with Slack) - in almost all cases I experienced, that after some initial frustration and the need for me to explain a lot of stuff, these users quite quickly picked up stuff like the how the directory tree fits together, where config files are kept (and how to manipulate them), how to compile programs, build custom kernels, how to fix problems with X from the commandline when X wouldn't start etc. After a few weeks most of these people were quite selfsufficient and able to troubleshoot and fix most issues they came across by themselves. On the other hand I've seen many people struggle with Mandrake, SuSE etc. for months without getting past the stage where they needed handholding while installing RPM packages and configuring network connections etc...
I don't think any given distribution is harder than any other. It's more a matter of some distributions appealing more to some peoples way of learning than others. People learn new stuff in different ways, and what's hard for some people seems quite easy to others. Some people learn better by the 'gentle introduction' and then move on to the 'more complicated' stuff later, while other people (myself included) learn easier by diving into the complicated stuff at once and then experiment and learn from my mistakes (and learn a lot of secondary stuff while searching for the solutions to hard problems).

> Get serious

I'm completely serious.

by Roberto J Dohnert (not verified)

I started out with RH 4 back in the day but the thing is that those days are over, most new linux users are desktop users, the GUI tools exist so as to make the install as friendly as possible. Its not a matter of helping anyone set up their box they want to do it themselves. The installation of Slackware and Debian is intimidating to desktop users who are a non technical, they dont care what IRQ their sound card, modem and network card use. They dont care about refresh syncs for their monitors, Desktop users and especially those that are getting into Linux from the Mac are mostly non-geeks they need a friendly install, if they feel intimidated and are forced to try to understand something they know absolutely nothing about they will either go back to the Mac or they will stay with Windows. If they want to stay with the PowerPC chip go Yellowdog Linux, if they want an x86 box go with Suse. I am in no way flaming Slack or Deb, I have used both of them myself and I find them to be good distros, but some people do not have a geek they can call at 3 am. Of all the destop distros I have tried, Lycoris, Xandros, Lindows, RH 8 and Suse Suse is by far the easiest and most user friendly distro I have seen and since migrating my customers to Suse I have had waaaaaaaaaaaaaay less service calls.

by threenorns (not verified)

i was a newbie the same time as my mother.

i went DOS, she went GUI (IBMs PC-DOS).

it is now ten years later and i *still* have to
fix her computer every two days -- she hasn't the
foggiest idea how to do anything except surf the
net, read email, chat on IM or message boards, and
play music. if she can't double-click, she's lost.

oh -- and call me when something goes blooey.

the system i have now, i know inside out and backward
because i put it together myself and spent a lot of
time saying "NOW wtf did i do!???".

now i'm checking out knoppix -- looks very, very
interesting... if i could only work out the friggin'
modem...

threenorns

by Anonymous Monkey (not verified)

If you want to try Linux out before buying a new machine, you can get Linux for the Mac from Suse, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, and others. You could dual boot your machine and give Linux a test spin. Of course more software for Linux can be had on x86, but Linux on PPC/Mac would be a cheaper way for you to try KDE.

by Bryan Feeney (not verified)

I'm pretty sure KDE 2.2 is working on OS X, look up Fink on Google to see how things are getting along.

by Ari Ukkonen (not verified)

You are going to be disapointed with some of the missing features/bugs/glitches when running games under XWine. You would be better off either looking at the mac ports at aspire.com or geting a console like the XBOX (I know, it's an MS product boo hiss) or a PS2 which btw has a linux distro officially supported by Sony.

by Andreas Hillberg (not verified)

Me again. =)

Thanks for all the feedback. I've checked out SuSE and Debian and will decide from one of those two which I'll pick.

The note about me trying Linux on my Mac it's out of the question, first, I'll not leaving MacOSX, I'm adding Linux. Second, I'm a professional web designer/ coder, for which I can't afford messing to much with this machine.

I assumed XWine would have missing features/bugs/glitches, but I don't really care. I'm mostly in it for the experience of Linux (game second, maybe I didn't write that so clear, my fault), and from what I've heard Linux developers are pretty awesome in creating/fixing software so it will be ok. =)
As for mac ports of games, well some are ok, mostly it's a joke. I did play RtCW once, was pretty good, gaming clan and all... 1.41 came out for Win/Linux... a month later I had to leave the clan, haven't played it since 1.4 first came out, and still to this day no sign of 1.4/1.41 patch on mac.
For which I've lost all hope on good, up to date games on mac, it's dead on that end.

I already have a PS2, love it, won't touch XBOX.
And the hardware (the linux box) isn't that expensive, for the unlikely reason I don't like Linux, I'll sell it further... easy =)

But my guess is that I'll love it!

by Jesper Juhl (not verified)

> And the hardware (the linux box) isn't that expensive, for the unlikely reason I don't like Linux,
> I'll sell it further... easy =)

Just make sure the hardware you buy is actually Linux compatible. Linux' support for various hardware is constantly improving, but some stuff is still not (som some will probably never be) supported.

> But my guess is that I'll love it!

Many do, some don't. I wish you the best of luck.
Enjoy Linux. :-)

by chris (not verified)

i have heard you can play ps2 games on your xbox with wine but how

LOL

whats wine and how do i get it?????

by Andrew (not verified)

I would like to thank you to all the developers for starting this project. I am using Safari under OSX and it is fantastic! I got to your site following a thread on a Mac forum, and all I would like to tell you guys...is that without you I wouln't have a web browser like I do now.
I hope that the changes Apple has made will help you guys out too, and that you can maintain a good relationship to benefit everyone. Good job once again!

Andrew

by ac (not verified)

Does anyone have an idea of how much faster the KDE Konqueror will be after the apple changes are merged in?

"First introduced during Steve Jobs Macworld keynote yesterday, Apple's new Web browser, Safari, broke the single day download record previously held by iTunes, according to Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

Safari has been downloaded 300,000 times in the last 24 hours -- the previous download record for Apple was for iTunes, which had two days of 100,000 downloads.

In fact, Schiller said that 20 percent of all Mac downloads from Apple.com in the last 24 hours came from a Safari browser."

It seems that KHTML just got ALOT of new users ;)

No suprise, really. It's a fantastic browser! It blows me away!

I, too, am a Mac-head and I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but a huge thanks to all the KDE developers and KDE community for making such great technology! Cheers also to the OSS community as I'm starting to learn more about and use all this wonderful technology -- Apache, PHP, mySQL, Gecko, and now KDE!

by James7609 (not verified)

Great day for Apple and Open Source in general. This could be the kick in the teeth M$ needed to start a chain reaction of awareness and change.

I was just so sure that Apple would use the Gecko engine, since they used to favour Chimera ( a Moz-based OS X browser ) for various keynote demos... mind you I had never heard of KDE or the Konqueror browser until Tuesday and now I use one as default ; ) )

A great day!

by Cynic (not verified)

Cheerleaders, please wake up and smell the coffee. The ONLY reasons this stuff came back is because Apple is required to do so under the GPL. Apple are the leeches of the open source movement. Any why not? It's good business strategy. They must have some smart managers somewhere over at Apple, because I just can't believe Steve Jobs could come up with this brilliant strategy.

by AC (not verified)

> because I just can't believe Steve Jobs could
> come up with this brilliant strategy.

Never underestimate Steve Jobs or the zeal and loyalty
of Mac users. Open Source advocates should know better.

Sure we'd like Apple do to more, but as long as they're
compliant with the KHTML license, what's the problem?
I'm glad Apple has done this to counter all the anti-OSS
moves by Microsoft.

by Steff-X (not verified)

Of course it's business strategy. Apple wants to make money and more marketshares and that's perfectly natural for a company. However, note that having to follow GPL rules does not mean Apple has to do it like it actually did. The Safari team could have posted messy and almost-unusable changelog and it didn't, so I have no doubt about their commitment with the open-source community.

by rlr (not verified)

That's it? Your justification for Apple doing this is that it's natural for a company to do so and that it could have done worse? How does that fact that something is natural for someone make that something right? How does the possibility of a worse case make something acceptable?

by Stefan Schustereit (not verified)

> The ONLY reasons this stuff came back is because Apple
> is required to do so under the GPL.

OK, where's the beef? Apple knew about the GPL before they started to play around with open source rendering machines. So what? They decided to take KHTML, and this decision was directly fitted to return the sources.

Have a look to the list of Safari programmers - they're all open source minded.

Stefan

by notCynic (not verified)

Cynic, wake up and take the Prozac. The GPL is not anti-profit. Apple could have developed a completely closed sourced browser or could have purchased one. Apple complies with the GPL, and you whine. Would you have been happier if Apple took the code and challenged the GPL in court? By the ranting in your post, it appears that you'd rather Apple ask like Microsoft. Good call...

Do you think the GPL is a horrible idea? Should software be left in the public domain? Was Stallman a fool? No. The GPL is needed. If releasing code werent required, Microsoft would have destroyed the movement long ago with hundreds of incompatible libraries and corrupted protocols. The GPL does not require large corporations with deep pockets and R&D departments use open source software only. Apple's actions have helped both projects. The "cheerleaders" are happy because they see this helped the movement they care so much about. You have confused the open source movement with hatred.

Why is using open source such a brilliant idea that Steve Jobs couldn't have thought of it on his own? He co-founded Apple, building his own hardware and software (including an OS) in his mothers garage with the help of Steve Wozniak, but using open source software is far too complex for him to grasp??? I guess Open Source is doomed then. If people as smart as Jobs cannot comprehend the movement, how will it ever succeed?

by laird popkin (not verified)

This comment is just goofy -- Apple has released tons of code to the development community that wasn't required to be released. Look at all their work on BSD -- they aren't required by a license to release any of it, and they did. And their QT compatability layer between KHTML and Aqua. They developed the Rendezvous (ZeroConf) spec as an open standard when they could have done it (and faster/cheaper) as a proprietary effort, and released a reference implementation of it. I think that Apple is doing exactly what it should -- it's benefitting from open source projects, and it's contributing like crazy back to those projects.

by PG (not verified)

WHAT SHOULD STEVE JOBS DO WITH APPLE MAC TODAY? ANY SUGGESTIONS??

by kartoffelsalat (not verified)

I heard (read) some rumors that LiveConnect was implemented in Konqueror. Did not find anything on that topic doing a site search in www.konqueror.org and my Konqueror 3.0.3 is NOT able to liveConnect.

Does anyone know more about that? Did Apple do something with LiveConnect? Does Safari support it?

Java <=> JavaScript communication would be really neat!

by Sad Eagle (not verified)

That was implemented for 3.1, IIRC.

by Hamish Rodda (not verified)

I remember that this was discussed in depth during 3.1 development... take a look, it's probably there in 3.1.

by Patrik (not verified)

So, did Apple make Safari support LiveConnect? Would be really neat...
Anyone know more about that?

Rgds,

/Patrik