Safari on Mac and Windows
I was going to wait a little while to write this post about Apple’s port of their Safari browser to Windows but after Joel’s rant about Safari I thought I would write a few words now.
As many people will now be aware Apple have released a new version of their Safari browser for both Windows and Mac (I am using it now to write this post). It has some nice new features and is incredible fast when compared to Firefox. I have even installed it on my Windows partition on my mac and had non of the problems described by Joel.
Now I have never been a big fan of Safari - I have always used Firefox on my Mac (and up until last night was running the latest alpha release of Mine Field) and it was the only non-Apple piece of software that I used. With this new release though the increase in page rendering times is visible quicker and has certainly been enough to switch me back to it in the short term - as I start to use it with more earnest I will report back my findings.
Now to Safari on Windows
This is one area where I am not sure what will happen - Apple has done well bringing its iTunes software to Windows but I am still not convinced that Safari will work. I am not going to make the mistake of saying it will flop as Apple will quite often succeed with this sort of things - I’m just not sure how they will wrestle Microsoft’s IE grip away when it there by default and faster page loads is perhaps not enough to get everyone to switch. However, Firefox have succeeded in denting IE’s market share, so good luck Apple.
One thing that I do think is useful is that web developers can now easily do initial site testing on IE, Firefox and Safari on the same OS without the need to keep dashing around to different computers.
Only time will tell if this will be a success on Windows - I hope it is, it would be nice to see more of a choice on the browser front and Apple’s brand [awareness] may just be enough for it to work. Who knows, if it all goes well, Steve may be announcing Safari on Linux at next years WWDC!