As many know, Apple released a version of their Safari web browser for Windows yesterday at their WWDC developer conference. An unexpected move for many, including myself, and one that spawned a good amount of discussion and pondering.
Don't confuse pondering with pandering though, which is what many in the tech community love to do so much. The bits had barely hit the web before people were trashing the release. I'll admit, I tried it immediately, and was less than impressed with the usability and visual aspects of this particular build. Guess what? It's beta. Should this be a surprise? So, rather than bitch continuously, I simply closed it and will wait for a later version to do additional evaluation. After all, Apple actually still uses beta to mean pre-release, not perpetual unwillingness to claim completion like other companies.
The worst of these were some of the security exploits supposedly found, as covered by Slashdot. The first of these idiots is the guy who supposedly had found a bug in Apple's Airport, only to be smacked down later. He claims he found a bunch of holes, but he will not be disclosing them to Apple. Fantastic, great plan. Run around, spouting off about how great you are and poking holes in software, rather than attempting to improve something. Specifically, a beta, which is released entirely to attempt to find issues and get them fixed before release. These people need to have their Internet pass revoked.
Personally, I want to see Safari not only succeed, but excel. Mostly, because I want some competition to push my favorite browser, Firefox, a little harder. At this point, I really don't see myself ever moving to Safari. I like some of its features, but I have nearly all of them already courtesy of extensions. Extensions are still the silver bullet of Firefox for me. Also, I find Firefox to still run very snappy, and I have his memory in check on my machine. I look forward to some friendly competition between the two to keep improving them both.
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