From Apple’s PR group:
“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”
11 million downloads sounds real, real impressive. And without a doubt, Safari 4 is one of - if not the best - browser out there, for either platform. But is the download count misleading? MacWorld’s Robert Strohmeyer thinks it may be:
Now, I’m not doubting Apple’s numbers. Why would I? But as someone with three Macs at home, I couldn’t help but notice that Apple pushed Safari 4 out as an automatic update to all of its users this week. Yesterday, all three of the Macs in my household received the update, and we don’t even use Safari. (We prefer Firefox.)
An informal poll of my friends and colleagues reveals a whole lot of the same. Got the update dialog, downloaded and installed it, don’t intend to use it.
It may well be that Safari 4 is a fantastic browser, and that’s not what’s at issue here. What is at issue is the ridiculously thin claim that the latest Safari is a wild success on the basis that Apple basically pushed it out to everyone it possibly could, whether they wanted it or not. This very clearly echoes the last big Safari update, which Apple also pushed to unsuspecting users through its update tool.
I think he nails it.
What would be more telling is if Apple broke up their numbers into copies of the application downloaded from Apple’s Software Update vs. Apple’s website.