11 Million Downloads in Three Days

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/12/apple_sees_11_million_downloads_of_safari_4_in_three_days.html' target='_blank'>http://www.appleinsider.com/article...three_days.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Apple said Friday that more than 11 million copies of its new Safari 4 web browser have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads by users of Microsoft's Windows operating systems."<span><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1245132679.usr105634.jpg" /></span></em></p><p>I'm really looking forward to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release in September so I can use this to it's potential. But until then, the speed increase is going to have to satisfy me now that I've downloaded the official version. It is supposed to load HTML web pages at least three times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3, and it sure seems a lot snappier. Your copy is waiting at <a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/" target="_blank">Apple</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span></span></p>

[encece]

11 Million Downloads - 6 Million Windows Downloads =

More Windows users downloaded Safari than did Mac users???

[ptyork]

11 Million Downloads - 6 Million Windows Downloads =

More Windows users downloaded Safari than did Mac users???

More Windows users have iTunes and/or Quicktime which automatically install Apple Software Update which (by default) automatically downloads this completely unwanted browser to tens of millions of desktops around the world. There are probably less than 60,000 regular Safari USERS on Windows, making this 100:1 concentration of flubber.

[griph]

More Windows users have iTunes and/or Quicktime which automatically install Apple Software Update which (by default) automatically downloads this completely unwanted browser to tens of millions of desktops around the world. There are probably less than 60,000 regular Safari USERS on Windows, making this 100:1 concentration of flubber.
That's not strictly true - when downloading iTunes or using Apple Software Update you always have the option to untick Safari before it is downloaded if you dont want it installed. Intertestingly if Windows users are using so many copies of iTunes - I wonder how that compares with the number of users for WMP11?
As for your 'probable' number of regular users - is that a figure you pulled out of the ether - or is it based on some facts?

[ptyork]

griph, no I pulled that number out of my rear, but I actually think it is probably high. Between IE, Firefox, and Chrome (and Opera in Europe), the Windows browser marketplace is quite saturated. Safari is a decent browser and offers some neat bling, but I know of no-one who actually uses it outside of a Mac environment. Even on my Mac I use Firefox. I honestly never understood why Apple decided to enter the PC market with their browser--just doesn't seem much of a fit. I use it only for compatibility testing.

And I did say "by default." Users have to actively uncheck the box to prevent the download. Apple does "remember" this selection, but I'm still not a fan of this policy. Give me updates, yes, but not new software. It's as bad as those worthless toolbars from Ask, Yahoo, and Google that seem to want to be installed by default with every downloaded software package.

As for WMP11, I'd have to guess a near 1:1 correspondence with iPod ownership. WMP is fine for a built-in media player, just as iTunes is for Mac. I'd probably use neither if it weren't for my iPod ownership, but I'm sure I'm in the minority. Most probably just stick with the default unless otherwise motivated.

[jdmichal]

That's not strictly true - when downloading iTunes or using Apple Software Update you always have the option to untick Safari before it is downloaded if you dont want it installed.


Users don't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't read it.
In fact, users can't read anything, and if they could, they wouldn't want to.

~ Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html)

This only becomes more true when the window pops up every (x) (timeunit) with one thing, then that thing suddenly changes. My old XP machine has Safari installed on it, simply because what I thought was the normal iTunes/Quicktime update coming through suddenly had Safari tacked on. By the time it registered in my head, I had already clicked the OK button, like I had the 20 other times that window popped up.

[iPhone Fan]

That's good that there is no strong dependence between the OS and browser. I use 3 browsers in my everyday life. Firefox for working, Opera & Safari for the rest. Because it's suitable to me. Everybody should have a choice.

[doogald]

More Windows users have iTunes and/or Quicktime which automatically install Apple Software Update which (by default) automatically downloads this completely unwanted browser to tens of millions of desktops around the world.

This is no longer true. Just the other day I was updating iTunes on my daughter's XP laptop (we just bought her a new MBP so I was making sure that the database was updated to the same version that was on the Mac) and Safari was unticked by default in Apple Software Update (probably because she did not have Safari on XP already.)

I will agree that there are a lot of Windows installs from when they did install it by deafult who are not using Safari at all. I did some digging when this story came out and it looked like there was about one Windows Safari user for every four or five Mac users actively using Safari, so the number of Windows installs can probably be divided by about that much to get a proper total - so, about six or seven million in three days. Still not bad. I updated four of our Macs well after the first three days, too.