Jobs wasn't making a grand anti-Firefox statement. He was making a joke. I can't wait for people to get upset about the fact that they hijacked Steve Ballmer's mouth.

Safari is a good browser and the changes in 3.0 make it even better. By increasing its marketshare and therefore the share for WebKit, the entire Macintosh community benefits by encouraging fewer IE only sites. And an additional cross platform browser can only be a good thing.

First, I'm laughing because you are complaining over two browsers that support Google. Really, how funny. It doesn't matter which one you use, they both point you to the same search engine ;). In reality though...

Sometimes you have to read between the lines. Go back and watch the video if you want. Steve does not say he wants to eliminate firefox and other browsers. He just says he wants that amount of market share. Granted, the graphic makes it appear that safari eats them and a better graphic would have just shown the safari pie piece without IE or the others, i didn't read it the way you did.

Here's how I took it, reading between the lines. Apple has 5% market share. They are shooting for 22% market share. Some of that will come from firefox and others, some of that will come from IE... and some will come from iPhone and apple's increased market share. i've posted on a blog at macdailynews and later saw that the guy at daringfireball agrees with me. My take on safari

Compatibility. Mac users, iPhone need compatible sites. here's one site that worked on release, immediately quit working several days after, did not work as of the day of the keynote, and works now, as i was testing it before i posted it. http://www.zillow.com - things like this need to work, or people end up using camino, firefox, etc. If Apple just gets websites that work right, then more mac buyers will stick with Safari. Hopefully this will get people testing for compatibility and not browser name. Either way, Safari will at least be known from the publicity.

Webkit developers will be happy with the increased support for Safari/webkit

Future ability to share bookmarks etc between safari platforms. ie, you use bootcamp/vmware/parallels and want the same bookmarks available to you on the mac side and windows.

$$$ Google Search Revenue. Look at the numbers. I'm sure there are variances in them, making it hard to pin down a certain number. but let's assume that firefox/mozilla is getting ~ $60 million for 15% browser share. that equates to $4 million / 1% increase in market share. If Apple accomplishes it's goal, then it will move from $20 million in google revenue to $88 million in google revenue a year. Apple is a for profit company, unlike firefox/mozilla who can not decide.
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

brief transcript log of where things are in the video you and i referenced.
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/d7625zs/event/
occurs just after the ultimate version of mac os x leopard
starts ~ 1:06:37
18.6 million users
1:07:04 5% market share now
1:07:19 pie graph: IE: 78%, firefox 15%, Safari 5%, other 2%.
1:07:22 pie graph: IE and Safari. Jobs says 'We would love for safari's market share to grow substantially.'
1:12:00 - 1:12:35 downloads of firefox and itunes per day.
1:13:11 - who knows, maybe we can grow our safari share in the future.... we're going to try.

Anyhow, all that said, i use safari as my main browser. it just feels better. Been using the beta version for a while now and love it. There are several things i wish it had, but to my knowledge, no browser has them. Will someone please add them? In the end, it just depends on what you need, and there are times when i fire up several browsers at once. In those rare times, i am looking for browsers that do not use any of the same libraries.

I could rant the rest of the day about things I do not like about browsers etc, but that's not going to get my work done for me.

Good luck, enjoy firefox. hope this gives you a different spin on things. You will benefit if you get an iPhone. When Apple has too much of the iPhone share, maybe they will have to open it up to firefox. Then again, maybe firefox can make a web 2.0 page that's a browser in and of itself. Recursion.

Safari is not about the browser market but a long term play to convert Windows users to the Apple's orchard of products and services now and in the future. It's not about market share. It's about mind share.

What a silly diatribe. The point that Jobs and Apple are making is that between Safari and IE, the former will gain market share.

The writer makes himself sound like a spoiled brat. Get over it.

As it happens Safari is a great browser and 3 has improved it again. Safari rendering is just fine for me, and over the last 12 months I have had no need for any other browser.

But, having said that, may there always be choices.

I hated all versions of safari up until this latest beta version... Now, I actually use safari and firefox each about 50% of the time.

-Jud

Not sure what this guy is talking about - I have websites with embedded PDF files that I have to visit almost daily ... and they have never once worked correctly with Firefox. If it wasn't for Safari showing these PDF files clearly and flawlessly, I'd have been forced to switch to a PC at work.

My name is Cleve Nettles. The real one.

Someone alerted me to the fact that someone has appropriated my name and is posting to this site as such.

Why are you doing this? Why not post in your OWN name?