Safari is the new IE

Re:Safari is the new IE by josefresco on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:08AM (#9805284)

I built websites during that entire period. I saw the rise and fall of Netscape, the "dark ages" of browser development when Microsoft let IE rot - I witnessed the birth of Firefox and the re-ignition of the "browser wars" when Google launched Chrome, and Apple got serious with Safari by moving to WebKit.

The author is right, the details aren't the same but the same attitude exists. The author is simply speaking up before the differences become extreme.

Microsoft didn't "break the web" they created their own web and then let it twist in the wind because they were pissed about the government beat down.

Apple didn't get their hand slapped, but they did build something so lucrative that evolving Safari became a smaller priority, which some would argue aligns well with their push to the App/closed ecosystem model.

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Re:Safari is the new IE by Someone on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:23AM (#9805399)

"the re-ignition of the "browser wars" when Google launched Chrome, and Apple got serious with Safari by moving to WebKit"

Moving to WebKit? Only if you count CyberDog, I guess. Safari was always WebKit based.

Also, your phrasing could be read as if Chrome came before Safari, but Safari is from 2003 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_version_history), Chrome from 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_release_history).

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Re:Safari is the new IE by philwelch on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:28AM (#9805437)

Not only was Safari always WebKit based, WebKit is Apple's browser engine (forked from KHTML and open sourced) that Chrome used to use until they forked it.

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Re:Safari is the new IE by riquito on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:44AM (#9805586)

And it's a fork of the KHTML engine used by the Konqueror web browser for the KDE project

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Re:Safari is the new IE by ttflee on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:55AM (#9805691)

Back in 1995, Internet Explorer then was licensed after Mosaic, and for Mozilla the name was coined as 'Mosaic Killer'.

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Re:Safari is the new IE by andrewvc on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:42AM (#9805566)

And WebKit was actually forked from KHTML which was KDE's engine.

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Re:Safari is the new IE by gnufied on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:04PM (#9807230)

Apple had little choice other than to Open Source Webkit unless they wanted to violate LGPL licence which forces - source code of any derivative work to be released back to the user.

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Re:Safari is the new IE by josefresco on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @11:12AM (#9805830)

My mistake, my comment was penned rather quickly and emotionally (typical). I should have verified my memory with actual homework, the revised timeline does not change my opinion ;)

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Re:Safari is the new IE by gmfawcett on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:40AM (#9805537)

Offtopic, but your first paragraph sounds like Roy Batty's final monologue in Blade Runner. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate! :)

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Re:Safari is the new IE by mateuszf on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:43AM (#9805577)

Safari will pass like tears in the rain.

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Re:Safari is the new IE by braythwayt on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @11:08AM (#9805797)

  > Microsoft didn't "break the web" they created their own web
  > and then let it twist in the wind because they were pissed
  > about the government beat down.

I was around as well. My recollection is that they let it twist in the wind because SaaS competed with their two interdependent quasi-monopolies: Windows and Office.

Which is another instance of the Innovator's Dilemma: How can a successful company embrace technology that disrupts themselves?

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Re:Safari is the new IE by toyg on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @11:36AM (#9806030)

> they let it twist in the wind because SaaS competed with their two interdependent quasi-monopolies

It wasn't called SaaS back then, but in any case -- they let it "twist in the wind" because their market had become the enterprise, and that's a market that wants stability, predictability and no updates if they can be avoided. By then they had killed all competition, so their incentives were to keep businesses locked-in through backward compatibility and security fixes. Add to that the big move to .Net and an effort to replace Flash...

IMHO it wasn't about the antitrust or platform control (they could have broken all the SaaS apps they wanted with each update, they had 95%+ of the market and were n.1 target for every website out there). They just had other priorities: the browser war had been won and attention was now on the enterprise market. Around that time, IIRC, Gates also retired, leaving Ballmer in charge; Ballmer was not the sort of technologist to lose much sleep over "the future of the web"...

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