Apple's Updated Safari Browser: Hedging The App Store Bet

Posted by: Peter Burrows on February 24

As Arik just reported, Apple just released a major makeover of the Safari browser, called Safari 4. The company says the new version, now available as a beta release, will run JavaScript “3.2 times” (that’s pretty precise, no?) faster than its predecessor. And it offers new features including a new visual “Top Sites” metaphor for finding your most-used sites, as well as slick new graphics.

I’m just trying it out now, but it looks terrific. The default first page shows thumbnails of your Top Sites (similar to Google’s approach with its Chrome browser). Other than being simply a great idea that will surely eliminate gazillion of clicks by letting people more quickly get to where they want to go, it’s also a brilliant way to emphasize the integrated nature of the broader Apple platform. Now, the browsing experience will look and feel an awful lot like the experience of playing your music in iTunes, or playing apps on your iPhone. Most browsing experiences scream computer. Safari 4, with its movie-poster like icons, screams entertainment and media.

Strategically, the announcement brings to mind an interesting paradox about Apple. On the one hand, Apple has created a massive competitive advantage by pioneering the proprietary App Store concept. Each time one of those 10,000-plus apps is downloaded, the company attracts or locks in customers who become immediately less likely to try a smart-phone from one of the slew of rivals that are now opening their own app stores. But at the same time, Apple is also the company most responsible for making the Web (the real Web, not a dumbed down version like WAP) run well on cell-phones. That’s because Apple created the Webkit browser that was the first to make this feat possible—and which also happens to be an open source project. As a result, a technology from famously controlling Apple is now a critical reason why Apple’s smart phone rivals can even be in the game. Webkit is used by Google in its Android phones (and in Chrome, by the way), in Nokia phones based on the Symbian operating system, and will be used by Palm in its upcoming Pre.

Indeed, as dominant as the App Store model seems to be these days, many people think it is just a transitional phase to a far more functional mobile Web. Rather than download apps designed specifically for Apple, Android or Palm’s WebOS, we’ll oneday be able to get just as good an experience on the Web itself, the argument goes. “I think the App Store is a powerful innovation. It’s about reducing friction to the consumer. But people will look back and say that webkit was the really revolutionary thing,” Google engineering vice president Vic Gundotra told me a few weeks ago. While he thinks the app store model will always have a role to play, he says Google and others will continue to enhance webkit-based browsing so that developers won’t have to create versions of their apps for each hardware platform. “I think you’ll see innovation from Google that will surprise you. While we are thankful for the leadership of Apple, we will build on what they’ve accomplished.”

At the same time, however, he thinks Apple is smartly preparing to play in this future mobile Web, while currently cashing in on the App Store. He marvels that Apple made it possible for iPhone users to add their favorite websites on the home page of the device, next to all the apps they’ve downloaded from the App Store. “That showed great leadership,” he says. “For them to say that web apps are equal to App store apps—that was very early thinking. The idea that you could bypass the carrier, bypass the App Store—nobody had ever done that. It shows the deep undersanding Apple has of the role of the browser.”

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