Apple, It's Not A Standard If It Only Works In Your Browser, And On The Mac

From Paul Thurrott's SuperSite Blog for Windows 6-4-2010

Apple today posted an interesting new HTML 5 and Web Standards section to its web site, a counterpoint of sorts to Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive site (and yet another assault on Adobe Flash). There's just one problem: Unlike the Microsoft effort, Apple's site only works properly in its own Safari web browser, which undercuts the point the company is try to make. Safari, after all, is used by less than 5 percent of web browser users worldwide.





There's another issue here, of course. This site also proves my contention that WebKit is a lie. That is, Apple previously explained that WebKit-based browsers were a de facto standard because this rendering engine is used by both Safari and Google Chrome, and that these browsers represented most of all mobile web traffic. My point is that there is no such thing as a single WebKit because each browser implements different WebKit versions and render web pages differently.

If you access the individual demos from Apple's Safari Dev Center with Chrome, instead of via the main site, you can in fact view them. And when you do, you discover that the experience is a subtly different in each browser. In Windows.




As noted above, this is all very subtle. And none of the example here would impact the functionality of a site. Things are just rendered differently.

Look beyond Windows, however, and the experience is even more different. On the video demo for example, Mac users on Safari get a Mask control while Windows users don't, in any browser. And some demos don't work at all on Safari for Windows. When Microsoft talks about "same markup," this is what they mean. The same HTML code should render identically in each browser. It's not enough to "support" various HTML 5 features. It should look and work the same, everywhere.

The thing that's odd about all this is that I do believe that HTML 5 is the future of the web, and that proprietary technologies like Flash will become less and less necessary as we move forward. But these Apple demos simply prove that that future is still a ways off, and certainly isn't here today.

Posted Jun 04 2010, 03:35 PM by pthurrott

What a massive fail on Apple's part. So much for grasping the concept of a web standard.

Wow. To me, Safari is about the worst Web browser out there in terms of performance. I can't believe that Apple would try to get a grasp on the market like that, and anyway if a user like me actually wanted to see that demo, they would just uninstall Safari right after that.

Safari is the sorriest piece of crap of a browser (I'm really restraining my fingers on my keyboard now), I used it for 15 minutes, yes, 15 minutes. Using Safe Search, and was infected with multiple viruses, and the worst thing about it, lost control of my notebook. I could not get MSE, Malwarebytes, or any of my security features to work. Now, I'll admit that I was looking at porn, but I thought this "Safe Search" was supposed to be trusted, and not lead you down a path to destruction. In other words, filter out the bad sites from the good ones.

Ever since this attack happened, my notebook has never ran the same, even after three runs of DBAN (nuking the drive of all that's on it). It constantly overheats and crashes, the disc temp is always at or near the critical point (125 degrees), it usually runs somewhere between 127 and 132 degrees, and something in Windows Explorer is always sending a report. None of this was happening prior to using Safari.

Mr Jobs, thanks a lot for your "superior" product. I hope you understand the meaning of that, you SOB

Cat

Safari is an excellent product on the Mac. Not so much on Windows, but it's ridiculous to conclude that a PC of software could damage or otherwise modify hardware. Drawing that conclusion is akin to saying that a program on television blew up your TV.

My notebook was running perfectly fine, was folding non-stop for nearly two months, doing anything I wanted it to. Until I took Safari for a spin, everything was running fine. Ever since pulling every cat out of the bag to rid my notebook of viruses, and these weren't just any old viruses, these were the kind that attacks and tries to get you to do a scan with a rouge scanner.

You may stand correct, Safari may work on a Mac well. But it doesn't work well on Windows at all. And that's why they will never be a true contender in the browser market. They load up a pile of trash on your computer, just to install a browser, you would think that you have some protection, but you have nothing.

And it's pure fact that my notebook never ran the same again after that attack through Safari. I've spent countless hours trying to get my notebook running right again, but to no avail. This would never have happened with Firefox, No Script would have stopped whatever hit me right in it's tracks.

But, I decided to try out one of those "HTML 5" browsers, so far, I'm unimpressed. If it comes at the expense of security, I don't need it. And I'll never use Safari again, unless it's on someone else's computer.

Again, a big thanks to the folks at Apple for screwing up my notebook.

Apple is all about the good looks. You pay for that by money, or by your computer's performance. Apple software on Mac is ok, but you have to pay for the good looks. There's much better for Windows, which may not look as nice, but does the work better!

Being a Mac and PC owner I can say that whilst Safari ran fine on my XP machine that I don't even use it on my Mac as I just don't like the way it works. It's not buggy in the literal sense just not set up the way I like. So even on my Mac I run FF.

Very well stated Thrax!

Although that one time I watched PLAN B FROM OUTER SPACE on my old B&W TV in the '70s something strange happened... and then I had a triangular scar behind my left ear?

Safari is absolutely not the superior browser. About 90 - 95% of the world's computer users are on PCs, the reason people program viruses for the PC. Apple knows this, and doesn't bother much with their OS's security, or that of Safari. If you're going to look at porn, I'd recommend using Sandboxie with Firefox. Sandboxie is here http://sandboxie.com/