So Apple released Safari for Windows is a really funny effort to... I'm not sure what, exactly. The general consensus is that since the iPhone uses Safari as a sort of driver for applications, that releasing Safari to the largest market share operating system would be the only smart thing. "The World's Best Browser", as good ol' Steve Jobs referred it to, had a horrible launch with bugs to rival Internet Explorer. Betas aren't supposed to be this terrible, and Digg, one of the most rabid cesspools of Apple fanatics there are, was thoroughly humbled.

But oh, boy! A million downloads in 48 hours! That means people are using Safari all over the place right?! Yeah! A million downloads! It has to be! Well, you know... This is like Sony saying "we shipped 800 bajillion PSPs this week! We've got a great user base!" We all know Sony likes to twist "ship numbers" with actual "sale numbers". When independent sources do the research, it's only a tiny fraction of actual people buying/using the thing.

Saying Safari has a million downloads? I'm sure that's accurate. (I mean, that's probably all the Apple users there are, right?) But honestly, that's equivalent to shipping PSPs to Walmart. They're out there and they have exposure, but are people actually using it? I've personally been hearing lots of reports of people installing and then uninstalling because of bugs, rendering errors and the fact that Firefox (and even Internet Explorer 7) have more useful addons than Safari does. I saw a joke comment that said "Only 1,000,000 downloads in 48 hours and only 990,000 uninstalls in the same amount of time!"

I'm not really bashing Apple here. (No, seriously, I'm not.) I have to be honest, though, I think Safari is quite possibly the worst browser to ever grace this planet. I wouldn't even use it if I was a Mac fan. I would use Firefox or Opera, sorry. What I AM bashing, more or less, are the people who are taking this the extra mile and saying "there are a million users for Safari on Windows!!" No, I'm afraid there isn't. I'm willing to bet at least half of the downloads are people who are curious what makes Safari different than anything else, and then uninstalling/not using it after the first few minutes.

Personally, I will be downloading it sometime (after they get a little grasp on security) to use in testing my web sites for Safari compatibility. (Like IE, it's nice to have other browsers to see how they screw things up!)

If you're an open-minded Apple user, I suggest reading some of the comments on that Digg article I posted. A lot of it is just random "haha, sweet justice" comments that can be skipped over, but some of it is pretty interesting like how Apple uses their operating system to cover up some security holes in their other applications. While not necessarily bad, Apple really doesn't seem to be very prepared to release stuff like this to the Windows world. You can't blame Windows... Not at all. Just, cut the crap there for a minute. You have to admit that Windows is pretty darn secure with 95% of the computer market share thrashing it around for security holes. Apple just simply doesn't have that kind of exposure yet. I guarentee you that any program with a user base the size of Windows will have just as many bugs.

Oh well... The point is: A million downloads does not equal a million users. Remember that, okaaaaay? I think my friends realize that, and I'm glad they're not batty enough to buy into the general hype and junk about anything, Apple or otherwise. (Except maybe Pixar! They're pretty much the most awesome CG studio on the face of the planet and have done nothing but equally awesome movies for the entire lifetime of the company, and they can pretty much just do no wrong right now.)