11 million Safari 4 downloads, more than half are Windows users

Chauncey Dupree
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June 12, 2009
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Apple announced today that in the three days since its launch, Safari 4 Final has been downloaded 11 million times.  Interestingly, 6 million of those downloads were on the Windows platform.  Windows iTunes owners do get a reminder that there is a new Safari browser is available, but it is still interesting to see that the browser is more popular on the Windows platform than on Mac.  Obviously, with around 10 times the user base, there are many more seats out there from which to choose.

 If you haven't downloaded yet, what are you waiting for?

Comments (16)

Boon (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 6:41am

But the thing is, i wonder how many of those are people that unsuspectedly downloaded it while updating iTunes...

Canada Chas (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:03am

Well downloads are a little deceaving. My father-in-law is a prime example. A few itunes updates ago it asked him on a go forward basis if he wants all available updates from Apple. It was pre-checked yes. My father-in-law is not too tech savy and just keeps clicking next, next,...... without reading what he is accepting.

He has Safari on his desk top and he asked me one day, what it was. It just showed up after an update one day.

With iPod being the most popular music player on the planet, I am sure there are Millions of people like my father-in law that have downloaded Safari and do not know what the heck it is.

I think browser usage will be the true measure of Safari 4.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:09am

Two things about this article are sort of ironic.

1. The screen shot is for a Windows Download.
2. There have been more (by a million) downloads for Windows than for Mac.

How does Apple explain this?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:47am

They explain it with common sense. There are substantially more Windows users in the world, therefore more downloads. If it was looked at by the % of Mac users vs. the % of windows users, it would look much different.

Batman (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:15am

I expect those who downloaded it for their Mac to download it for their PC(s) too.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:44am

Ding, I agree that accounts for a lot of the numbers. PC at work, Mac at home. Then you have some conscious web designers on PC platform, the curious, the naive, those that use a different browser for different tasks (knowing one works better for different things and one crashing does not take them all out - we hope).

Virtualization people, wanting to keep it similar across platforms...

Numbers are numbers. I wrote an article (not really) telling people if they would vote for me for president, to drive by my parked car on the interstate, and if the would not, to stop and tell me why. Could you guess how many people drove by?

The one thing to take away from this is that Apple has paid to move 130 Terra Bytes of data to windows users so they could have Safari 4 alone (does not include iTunes or Quicktime).

Now, if people truly are not using this application on their computer, then think of the unintended environmental impact of these actions. People clearly need to start reading and thinking more. :p

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:27am

If OSX is so great then why do you need 2 OS's?

By these numbers using that logic. Every Mac ownwer runs both OS's...

And another million PC users downloaded it.

I think these numbers have to be wrong. They make no sense from a Mac or PC point of view.

Gazoobee (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 7:36am

so many people commenting on "how come there are more Windows users than Mac" and making up stories about how it could be so. Read the article. There are many more Windows users than Mac users, get it? There is no mystery about it. There are just more windows PCs in the world than Macs.

Batman (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 8:10am

Of course there are, but many of them stick on what's preinstalled.
Anyway we're just talking :)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 9:36am

This article is freaking pointless.... its such a F'd stat that there really is no reason for this article!

next on 9to5mac..... water is WET!

NapMan (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 12:45pm

I love Safari on my Mac and I think it performs great on my work Windows machine but I keep going back to Firefox there.
I like the extensions and the fact that I can make links open a new tab instead of a new browser window.
I changed this on my Mac with a terminal setting but there is no way on Windows to change it.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 12:56pm

This spells out success for Apple and the Safari browser. Let's see how this affects the browser usage charts

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 5:22pm

The Mac OS has been out for a couple decades now and they have like 2% of the Browser Share.

Chrome and FireFox have been out far less time and have a lot more usage.

Firefox is starting to compete with Explorer.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 12, 2009 - 6:12pm

No. Thats a nice try but what you are saying doesn't even make sense. "Mac OS" isn't a browser so you can't even directly compare it to Firefox or Chrome. Not to mention all the OS X users who use Firefox...

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=124

Currently:
Safari has 8.45% of browser share
Firefox has 22.51%
Chrome has less than 2%

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 13, 2009 - 12:15am

muarrrr, this is very simple :
something like an ad blocker
and a flash stopper.
:)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 13, 2009 - 11:59pm

I STILL DONT' KNOW WHY MY TABS AREN'T ON TOP ANYMORE