Steve asserted Monday that Safari on Windows will overturn history, attract 100M new users, and revert the world to a 2 browser state. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don’t think this 2 party world will really come to be. This world view that Steve gave a glimpse into betrays their thinking: it’s out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented, not-the-web thinking. The web belongs to people, not companies. (Watch for the Linux port Real Soon Now.) We’ve never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource. I’m glad that Safari will be another option for users. So here’s my point, to be clear: another browser being available to more people is good. Remember (or heard about) when you had to get your phone from AT&T? Good times. And, ultimately, it wrecks the quality of the end-user experience, too. It destroys participation, it destroys engagement, it destroys self-determination. Even if we could somehow put that movement back in the bottle - that a world of just Starbucks & Peets, just Wal-mart & Target, just Ford & GM - that a world of tight control from a few companies is good, it’s the wrong thing to do. Second, it isn’t how the world should be. That Apple doesn’t feel this, even within the familiar reality-distortion-field confines of Moscone Center, illustrates much of the problem. Hundreds of millions of users, in every language around the world are now making new choices. The meteoric rise of Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Linux and Firefox, among many other examples, shows that today’s connected world is no longer constrained by the monopolies and duopolies and cartels of yesterday’s distribution - of the publishers, studios, and OS vendors. The second is that, irrespective of Firefox, this isn’t how the world should be.įirst, it isn’t really how the world is. The first is that this isn’t really how the world is.
There are a couple of problems, of course. This is, essentially, the way they’re thinking about the problem, and shows the users they want to pick up. Lots of words describe Steve & his Stevenotes, but “careless” and “accidental” do not. That’s what we’d love.” Aw, shucks.įantastic! Dream big! Imagine a world of…wait for it…access to the web controlled by 2 companies - and why not just go with the 2 dominant operating system vendors in the world.īut make no mistake: this wasn’t a careless presentation, or an accidental omission of all the other browsers out there, or even a crummy marketing trick.
We would love for Safari’s marketshare to grow substantially. Close enough, though.īut here’s the graph that betrays the way that Steve, and by extension Apple, so often looks at the world: It doesn’t give much credit to the large & growing number of other quality browsers that are on the scene today, and certainly doesn’t give any sophisticated understanding of the situation outside the United States, where things vary more. We could quibble with the numbers, but close enough. Here’s a screen capture from the keynote of what Steve thinks the world looks like today (discussion starts at about 1:06 into the preso): I’m quite fond of Firefox, of course, and am very happy that people everywhere in the world continue to adopt our browser in increasing numbers. The big news, of course, is that Apple’s releasing Safari on Windows - and although it’s been a rough first few days for them (and will get rougher), more choices are generally good for users, and so I’m hopeful that they can work to produce a product of quality on Windows eventually. So I’m interested in what he’s got to say.Įvery so often though, as inspired as he is, he says something that betrays at best a blurry view of the real world, at worst an explicit intent to bring more of the world under directed control from Cupertino, and that happened Monday. I’ve always liked Apple’s products, and spend an embarrassing amount of my own money on them. Steve Job’s keynote at WWDC this year inspired some and was disappointing to others - but, as usual, it was interesting & entertaining.