Safari 4 tops 11 million downloads in 3 days (6 million from Windows users) | Hacker News Reader

Safari 4 tops 11 million downloads in 3 days (6 million from Windows users)

news.cnet.com

8 pointsbarredo13 comments

I Tweeted this but I'll repeat it here; I would imagine a high percentage of these downloads (50%?) were users who 'unwittingly' downloaded Safari 4 while downloading updates to other Apple software like iTunes and Quicktime.

Apple's attempt at 'bundling' Safari with every iTunes update is quite annoying personally but it sure helps to inflate those download numbers.

Also does this number count 'upgrades' from Safari 3?

.. off to RTFA

I'm not sure this is the case, because yesterday I did all of the updates that Apple advised, but I didn't get Safari 4 with that. Today I manually downloaded it.

For what it's worth, it is significantly faster than Safari 3.

I'm not a big fan of these statistics that get publicized about how many downloads a product gets during it's opening days. I downloaded Safari 4, but just to try it out. I download a lot of things just so that I can base my opinion of them off of first-hand experience. Once I'm satisifed, I return to my product of choice - in this case Firefox. I keep tabs on all the browsers to see the new features, etc... but that download doesn't mean I'm actually interested in using it.

Yes, but the number of downloads still measures a level of interest. I don't think anyone thinks that those downloads represent switchers or full time Safari users, but it's still a significant number.

I'm using it as my main browser, but it has issues:

* can't tell easily whether current page is bookmarked

* address bar only supports url completion (i.e., no search by url/title keyword, but you can use Google Quick Search Box for that); Chrome has the best address bar IMO

* the preview screenshots are cool, but the title of the page should be displayed below each screenshot (many screenshots tend to look the same)

* no way to force new windows to appear as new tabs

Regarding your point #3: mousing over a screenshot does give you both Title and URL of a given page

My biggest usability issue (at least since the 4 beta) is the tab behavior. It just doesn't work like I expect it to.

The tab thing is a hidden pref.

http://www.switchingtomac.com/tutorials/how-to-force-safari-...

I tried, but I couldn't use more than a few minutes:

* no refresh button

* the stop button is not where I think it should be

* middle click doesn't open a new tab

* command + 1, 2, 3 doesn't change tabs, instead it goes to the 1st, 2nd bookmark, which is very annoying

to give something a fair trial you need to look up and try using the hotkeys it does have. cmd-click opens a new tab. cmd-shift [] or left/right arrow changes tabs.

Agree, but cmd-shift forces me to change the tabs in order, and I like the random access from cmd-1/2/3 ..

There is a refresh button. And if your mouse is properly configured, middle click does open a new tab.

you can make new windows open in a tab instead by holding command, or by using google and quickly finding something like this

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Reply on news.ycombinator.com