The Windows Safari
I’m feeling a little weird right now. I was just reading about the latest (beta) version of Apple’s Safari web browser, which is now available for Windows. Before I go on, it is important that I provide a little background here. For those of you who aren’t aware, my “day job” is at Microsoft (yes, all the other cool stuff you read about at TimGrey.com gets done in my “free time”).
I got to thinking how sometimes things come from the most unlikely sources. A web browser for Windows coming from Apple seems a little weird, right?
As if that weren’t enough, what really caught my attention was the fact that Safari for Windows will actually respected embedded ICC profiles in images on a website, which means you’ll get an accurate view of those images (assuming a properly calibrated and profiled display, of course). This is awesome. Very good news. Thank you, Apple.
Here’s the weirdest part. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still doesn’t respect embedded ICC profiles. This is frustrating, especially as a Microsoft employee. So I’m delighted Apple has taken this step to provide more accurate color for web surfers (that’s been the case for Macintosh users for a while, and is only new to Windows users).
This is the only web browser for Windows I know of that actually respects embedded ICC profiles, so I suspect many photographers will start encouraging visitors to their websites to use Apple Safari for the best browsing experience. Weird. But cool.
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November 28th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
“Safari for Windows will actually respect embedded ICC profiles in images on a website”. Well, I like that idea. My hisitation is how well will an Apple Browser work on a PC with Microsoft Internet Browser already on the PC; my fear is potential conflicts of software. However, I was also fearful years ago about adding Apple’s Firewire to my PC; now I wouldn’t be w/o Firewire and I use both 400 & 800. Firewire is great stuff and I am hoping that Safari for Windows will work without conflicts on a PC. It is Beta right now and I do not know if Apple will charge for its Safari broswer later on but I just may give it a try - after all we photographer live and die by the ICC profiles in our work.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Mr. Grey; I respect the fine work you’ve done with books, lists, website and more, but I’ve always been intrigued by you Mac fear, and now that of Mr. McJimsey.
I’ve been a Mac user since the mid-80’s, and have had to use DOS and Windows machines for work over the same time period. In these days of OS convergence, how can you find it ‘weird’ that an Apple product could possibly be ahead of a Microsoft product? That makes you sound so incredibly out of touch with reality. Each company and their products have strengths and weaknesses, but gads, the Mac has been ahead of Windows in design and user interface and suitability for graphic arts and so on since day one.
Now Apple is ahead again-Intel based Macs can run Windows and Mac OS. Two computers in one. How many Dells or HPs can run either OS? I use Windows XP with multiple browsers simultaneously with Mac with multiple browsers with absolutely no problems. I’ve also seen Safari work fine on a Windows 2000 Pro machine.
Users should not have any hesitation to try out Safari for Windows. This notion of Apple as a back room unkempt teenage hacker has got to go. They make some awesome products! They have their flaws too of course I’m just saying don’t be so surprised that Apple makes something that might be better in some regard than a product from Goliath Microsoft.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
For clarification, I meant it was “weird” that Apple was releasing a product for Windows, not that they were producing a product better than Microsoft. I’m a Microsoft employee, but still a fan of many products. You won’t find me at the gym, on my bike, or running, without my iPod nano. While I’m a longtime Windows user, I like to think I’m pretty balanced in my perspective here. You’re right that Apple creates some great products. Safari for Windows is just one example (note that it is faster than the other top browsers). I totally agree there should be no hesitation to try Safari for Windows.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Yes. Weird.
But the bigger question: are you gaining any momentum up there in Seattle to fix this gross IE omission??! Even Vista ignores ICC’s?! I can’t imagine the code to respect ICC’s is that tricky. Help us Tim, you’re our only hope!
November 30th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Mr. Grey; Got it, sorry about misinterpreting. Thanks for all you do in your ‘free’ time-I’m a serial volunteer myself and end up filling up my days with related tasks, no time for entertainment or much ‘fun’. But I enjoy what I do. Hope you enjoy what you do, I know a couple of talented amateurs who really like your articles, so you really are really helping real people better understand digital photography.
Viva la Photographie!
December 19th, 2007 at 3:02 am
As someone who often speaks about working for a body within Microsoft that looks to support the digital photo community, it is weird to thing that you don’t have any input or influence into getting IE to respect ICC color profiles. What are we to believe by your statement that it’s ‘frustrating’? Are you trying to tell us that because of the crazy politics inside Microsoft they can’t or won’t fix something like this.
I won’t ramble on but to me it sounds a bit contradictory and hypocritical to say you work for a company which is thinking about the needs of the digital photo community, yet still can’t produce a web browser - still used by more than 75% of the world - that will support proper color management.
I understand your requirement as an employee of the No. 1 OS provider in the world, and the last think you want to be doing is bad mouthing them, but tell us to us straight. Either you work for a body in Microsoft which support us or you don’t OR there’s nothing you can about issues such as this one.
Regards
Disappointed
December 19th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Will Boon raises a fair question. A big part of my job is to advocate for professional and advanced amateur photographers. That means doing things like applying pressure to the Internet Explorer team to support ICC profiles, which I’ve been doing since I joined Microsoft three years ago. I’ve failed (so far). Not because I haven’t been trying, or because I’m not good at my job (I hope!), or because Microsoft isn’t thinking about this audience. Rather, I’ve failed because with any software product there are always conflicting priorities and compromise. Despite my efforts (and those of others inside and outside the company) this feature simply hasn’t made it high enough up on the list to actually get into the product. But I’m not giving up. I’m going to continue advocating for the importance of this feature. In the meantime, be assured I’m also working on many other things that will ultimately improve Windows and other Microsoft products from the perspective of photographers
December 19th, 2007 at 8:33 am
Thanks for the reply, Tim. Your response does help me understand things a lot better, which is all I was trying to do. I understand the complexities - or should that be politics - or working for such a large organization. It’s just that as a ordinary user and from discussions with similar minded individuals, it beggars believe that we still haven’t got ICC profile support in IE.
I don’t think it’s just a few of us who think this. This has to be something the wide - world wide - digital photo community would like to see. You seem to interact and engage with lots of high profile people in the digital photo community(photographers, designers, etc). Perhaps you could get these people to support some kind of petition which you could use to leverage you argument with the higher powers in Microsoft that ICC profile support in IE needs to move higher up the list of requirements for the next forthcoming release.
December 21st, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Having worked for large software organizations, I know all too well the predicament that Tim is in. There are many groups that are advocating for new features in Internet explorer. The web developers want them to be standards compliant (ACID2 etc.) The security people are hammering them to make sure they fix all the bugs, the application developers want new interactive and offline features (so you can do thing like use web email while offline), and photography users are another group. No doubt the internet explorer team has this on their list and would probably even like to do it, but with a limited budget and a limited number of developers (though large compared to some of us — it’s small compared to the number of feature requests I’m sure) they have to draw the line of what is in and what is out somewhere. In my view of software it’s never a matter of *should* they do this, it’s always a matter of what else would they not do if they were doing this.
Of course, I speak from my own personal perspective and have no clue as to the internal politics at microsoft that Tim faces so I may be completely wrong.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:22 am
I’ve just spent some time with uSoft’s HD Photo sites (Bill Crow) and I really dont understand this teams focus. Could you shed a little light, no pun intended, on this subject? IMO it looks as though their reinventing the wheel with their HD software and Photoshop plug in.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I have three browsers on my PC: IE, Firefox, and Safari. Safari is the one I use day in and day out. The look and feel are very good, as one would expect from Apple (even IE7 still looks a bit clunky). There are zero coexistence issues between the three; or, rather, Firefox and Safari do a better job of coexistence than IE does, importing bookmarks etc.
I keep the others around because once in a while I run into a site that will not render on one browser but will on another. I have also had inexplicable page reference errors in Safari (that can sometimes be corrected by emptying Safari’s cache) which I can get around in IE or Firefox.
Why would Apple produce a browser for Windows? Even Microsoft understands that more and more digital activity is out in the cloud somewhere: on a device or a server. The browser is the window to much of that world.
IE maintains its market share out of inertia. Microsoft had completly back-burnered its browser work until it started getting its butt kicked by Firefox.
I am no anti-MSFT zealot. However, I have to ask: if the browser did not come packaged with the OS, and you had to go get one (assume they are all free, easy to obtain, and without onerous licensing and security issues); which one would you choose?
June 27th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Hey Tim, did you see that the new version of Firefox 3 will also now respect icc profiles if you set it up to?