Don - you had several plugins available from launch - Flash, etc. How'd you do that without tipping your hand?
Safari implements NPAPI [1] and could probably reuse any NPAPI plugin that existed on OS X at the time right off the bat.
Safari is released to the world
81–90 of 127 posts
Re: Safari is released to the world
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprise, I would hope. :) And lack of recognition, I suppose.
Don, i am trying to understand why you (not you in person but Apple) went the open source route for safari but not for itunes etc. Can it be that, at that moment when you made the decision, web sites 'made for internet explorer', were too many. And you wanted the rendering engine on Mac to be widespread by getting from and giving to an open source project.
iTunes started out as a third-party playlist manager whose name escapes me (I even owned a copy). It's perfectly possible that it included licensed code that couldn't be open-sourced even if Apple wanted to do so.
Next, Apple was only able to negotiate licensing deals for music (and later video) content from the various rights holders after agreeing to various strictures including sufficently restrictive DRM and functional restrictions such as allowing music to be copied only from computer to iPod and not from multiple computers to a single iPod.
Apple didn't try to stop third parties from working around some of these restrictions but it couldn't be seen to be allowing them to be circumvented willy-nilly and open-sourcing iTunes would immediately lead to a "rip everything to MP3" and "grab everything from all attached devices" features.
Re: Safari is released to the world
#83Why are there so few insider stories from Apple? Is it forever NDAs? Not many people retiring yet? Loyalty? These blog posts are really standing out as actually giving a view inside the company.
http://folklore.org/index.py
Since those are all about original Mac from 30 years ago, that makes the "people only talk when they retire" seem more plausible.
Re: Safari is released to the world
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
WebKit core gets commits from nearly every major hardware manufacturer and OS vendor that isn't Microsoft. Unless Apple's stripping all those commits out of spite, iOS WebKit contains code from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, HPalm, Google, and many others that might be seen as competitors otherwise.
You notably left out Adobe who use it for Adobe AIR.
Adobe is more or less neutral, though (they just want you to buy their tools). Apple, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, etc. all would very much like the others to cease existing; yet they're all contributing to a project that keeps each other on a level playing field (in the context of HTML/JS engines, anyway).
Re: Safari is released to the world
#85Why are there so few insider stories from Apple? Is it forever NDAs? Not many people retiring yet? Loyalty? These blog posts are really standing out as actually giving a view inside the company.
There is a strong sense, even among ex-Apple employees, that the company's secrets are not for sharing. As one person's fascinating anecdote is another's secret, most tend to keep circumspect. Too, it's fairly common for ex-Apple employees to come back to the mothership, so there's also a "don't burn your bridges" aspect to the whole thing.
Re: Safari is released to the world
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don, i am trying to understand why you (not you in person but Apple) went the open source route for safari but not for itunes etc. Can it be that, at that moment when you made the decision, web sites 'made for internet explorer', were too many. And you wanted the rendering engine on Mac to be widespread by getting from and giving to an open source project.
iTunes started out as a third-party playlist manager whose name escapes me (I even owned a copy). It's perfectly possible that it included licensed code that couldn't be open-sourced even if Apple wanted to do so. Next, Apple was only able to negotiate licensing deals for music (and later video) content from the various rights holders after agreeing to various strictures including sufficently restrictive DRM and func…
SoundJam.
Re: Safari is released to the world
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe because a major component of iTunes is a DRM platform.
1. iTunes started out as a music player. The iTunes Music Store came later. You can debate whether or not Steve was planning the iTunes Music Store from the beginning, but that's neither here nor there. 2. iTunes, at least in the beginning, was just a wrapper around the QuickTime framework.
"2. iTunes, at least in the beginning, was just a wrapper around the QuickTime framework."
There's more to it than that, but this touches on something; I really wish that something akin to QuickTime was available cross-platform. Yeah, it's crufty and strange warts that reveal Ugly Things are all over the place, but man, having a good AV API would make a lot of things better.
ffmpeg is a very impressive achievement, but it's not the same thing.
Re: Safari is released to the world
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprise, I would hope. :) And lack of recognition, I suppose.
Don, i am trying to understand why you (not you in person but Apple) went the open source route for safari but not for itunes etc. Can it be that, at that moment when you made the decision, web sites 'made for internet explorer', were too many. And you wanted the rendering engine on Mac to be widespread by getting from and giving to an open source project.
Here's a great story from Cabel at Panic about how Apple approached them to purchase Panic so they could turn Audion into iTunes. Instead, they went with SoundJam:
Re: Safari is released to the world
#89Why are there so few insider stories from Apple? Is it forever NDAs? Not many people retiring yet? Loyalty? These blog posts are really standing out as actually giving a view inside the company.
http://folklore.org/index.py
I hold hope that one day we'll have a folklore.org equivalent for the period where Steve returned to Apple up to the iPhone or thereabouts. Even a "Soul of a New Machine"-type book about the development of some products (iPod, iPhone, OSX) would be interesting.
In either case, Don, thanks for these stories. Any insight at all into how the sausage gets made is a great read.
Re: Safari is released to the world
#90Why did Apple feel the need to make a web browser?
Apple had been dependent on Microsoft and Netscape for good browser options. Microsoft released IE5.5 for Mac which was neither IE5 nor IE6 compatible, and then nothing. Netscape gradually turned into a gigantic steaming pile of crap. I might add that Chimera -> Camino was the beacon of hope before Safari came out, and once it got going on Mac OS X, other folks got so excited they demanded a cross-platform version wh…
"I might add that Chimera -> Camino was the beacon of hope before Safari came out, and once it got going on Mac OS X, other folks got so excited they demanded a cross-platform version which eventually became Firefox."
I'd never heard this and I can't seem to find any references to it. Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?