Apple crumble
"Safari 4 Downloads Top 11 Million in Three Days" trumpeted an Apple press release last week, and who can fault Apple for wanting to shout its successes from the rooftops?
However, many commentators, including some browser rivals, have subsequently called into question whether this apparently significant achievement is all it's cracked up to be.
Asa Dotzler, community coordinator at Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, was moved to make the following short blog post last Saturday: "I just read that Apple is reporting 11 million Safari 4 downloads in just three days. That's pretty amazing. I'd like to follow up that report with one of my own. Firefox 3.0.11 was downloaded about 150 million times in the last 24 hours."
He goes on to suggest that most of the downloads were automatic anyway, as part of a mandatory software update. If this is the case, it's disingenuous at least of Apple to report this figure as if it were an indication of how popular Safari is.
Apple stressed in the press release that six million of those downloads were on to Windows PC - inferring it's gaining market share on Windows. Dotzler concludes by pointing out that Safari's market share on Windows is flat at 0.45 percent.
So the question is, if the majority of the downloads were automatic and Safari's share of the market remains both tiny and flat, what was the point of that press release?
