Deceptive Safari 4 marketing
|
When the Safari 4 beta was released, on February 24, 2009, Apple Inc. published a feature list claiming a long list of innovations, inventions, and browser firsts. While Safari 4 may contain numerous features that are new to current Safari users, many of these have been publicly available to users of other browsers for quite some time, invalidating many of Apple's claims. Falsely Claimed Innovations In Safari Implemented Prior to Safari's Initial Release The first public beta of Safari was released on January 7, 2003. An early version Mozilla Firefox (Phoenix 0.2), which was released on October 1, 2002, contained a similar feature, is ambiguous at best. *CSS 3 Web fonts: Apple claims that "Safari is the first web browser to automatically recognize websites that use custom fonts, downloading them as they’re needed". While this is true in the context of the CSS 3 standard, Internet Explorer 4, released in 1997, had a similar feature , based on Microsoft's proprietary Microsoft Web Embedding Fonts Tool. *Downloads window: Apple asserts that "Safari was the first popular browser with a download management window." However, Opera 3.5, released on November 18, 1998, first introduced a transfer window to the Opera browser. Similarly to the built-in Google search, if Opera is assumed not popular enough to falsify the claim, Firefox (Phoenix 0.1) had this feature nearly half a year prior to Safari on September 23, 2002. *Inline Progress Indicator: While Apple states that "Safari was the first browser to move the progress indicator into the address field," Opera first added this feature in Opera 5.10, released in 2001. *Movable tabs: "Safari was the first browser to let you organize tabs by dragging and dropping. Rearrange tabs by dragging their tab handle left or right. Drag a tab out of a window to create a new window. Or drag a tab from one window to another window to merge their tabs". The first beta of Opera 7, released on November 13, 2002, came with "Extended and vastly improved drag-and-drop support," and this included the ability to "Move bookmarks, tabs, and MDI pages between SDI windows". The same feature was already available as an extension in Firefox and was added as a feature to Firefox 1.5, released on November 29, 2005. Safari did not add movable tabs until Safari 3, which was released on June 11, 2007, later by IBrowse in 1999, Opera in 2000, Mozilla in 2001, Konqueror and Safari in 2003, Internet Explorer 7 in 2006 and Google Chrome in 2008. **Releaseyears of movable tabs: NetCaptor 5.0 in 1998, Opera 7 in 2003, Google Chrome 1 in 2008, Safari 4 in 2009. *Open multiple bookmarks in one click - " was the first browser to offer Auto-Click bookmarks." This feature offers the ability "to open multiple pages in individual tabs with a single click." Opera 4, released in 2000. Implemented Prior to Inclusion in Safari *RSS Aggregator: While Apple claims Safari is the first browser that integrated an RSS reader into the browser - Opera introduced "experimental support" for RSS feeds as part of Opera Mail in 2003 followed by stable support in 2004, before Apple integrated RSS support into Safari 2 in 2005. Not Implemented Exclusively in Safari *Acid 3 Compliance: Apple asserts, "Safari is the first — and only — web browser to pass Acid 3". While it is true that WebKit was the first rendering engine to fully pass the test , Safari is not the only WebKit browser - Lunascape is also capable of using the Webkit rendering engine, and can also pass the Acid 3 test. Other *Apple claims, "Safari supports Accessible Rich Internet Applications," although according to a self-confessed unscientific test, it is only partially implemented.
|
|
|