Safari becomes a platform

Out of all the news from Apple’s latest keynote (short version: Leopard shiny, new toys, iPhone not late, Safari moving to windows) the announcement that Apple will release a Windows version of its web browser Safari struck me as an important one (public beta is already available at Apple’s homepage).

At first glance, non-Mac users would be hard pressed to move to Safari - Firefox and Opera works well for most, and those still using IE probably don’t want to move to anything.

However, the following announcement made Apple’s intentions clear: iPhone apps will work in Safari. The idea, obviously, is for Safari to become a platform which would work hand in hand with the iPhone, with the popularity of one driving the other. It will also make it easier for developers, who will now be able to test-drive their apps without actually having the iPhone (many developers might not be rich enough or be in a position to buy one).

How will Safari fare as far as web browsing goes? Well, it’s supposedly a lot faster than IE, although I’d like to see some comparisons with Firefox. I will be testing it out and writing my thoughts on it later today.

*update: Safari is totally unstable for me at this stage. I tried it out, but clicking on anything bookmark-related makes it crash. I’ll try it out on another box tomorrow.

19 Responses to “Safari becomes a platform”

  1. MG Siegler Says:

    Right on Stan, good call. With the 3rd part iPhone apps all to be geared around Safari, they need Safari to be on Windows. Not sure how I missed that, other than the fact I was listening in live on an distorted radio stream :)

  2. Interesting: Safari 3.0 On A MacBook » Webomatica - tech, movies, music blog Says:

    […] And there are strange glitches. For instance, when I switch between code view and visual view here in WordPress, it munges all my formatting, making everything into one paragraph. Okay. I can’t use this version of Safari to update this blog. Back to Firefox…Meanwhile, Frantic Industries says the Windows version of Safari is unstable (and I couldn’t add this link in Safari 3.0, either). Sigh. […]

  3. Safari: Didn’t get it at first, but now I do » mathewingram.com/work Says:

    […] I must admit that when I saw the news about Apple releasing a version of its Safari browser for Windows, I wondered why the hell anyone would care, unless they happened to be Apple devotees who wanted a familiar browser to use on a Windows box. After all, if you want an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Exploder 7 (and who doesn’t), there’s always Firefox, and it does lots of things that Safari doesn’t, such as supporting plugins. And then after reading more about it, I realized — like Stan Schroeder and Scott Karp — that it is a kind of Trojan Horse, designed to enable developers to work on apps for the iPhone, etc. and thereby become a kind of platform for future Apple widgets and software. Smart. […]

  4. Adrian Says:

    I for one was happy to try it out. But alas, it doesn’t work properly at all on my Win XP Pro. All text is invisible - from toolbar to bookmarks to even web pages. We’ll see what happens when beta testing is over.

  5. Stan Schroeder Says:

    Yes, it doesn’t work very well at all. I gave up on making a review simply because it crashes all the time. It probably has to do with me using Blackbox as Windows shell, but it’s unstable even with the standard shell. Apple, more polishing, please.

  6. ok Says:

    Safari always had consistent looking aqua form elements on mac. Now with the new Mac beta if a site has applied styles to certain form elements they override the aqua design. Makes for a terrible looking inconsistent page.

    I am really hoping this is a bug and not the new direction for Safari on a mac.

  7. Paul Thurrott thinks he’s brilliant | #comments Says:

    […] I noticed it (although I don’t think it’s ultimately going to work out to be a big deal since safari itself isn’t currently an overly compelling product), frantic industries sure noted it. I can remember in the furor after the wwdc several other bloggers who noted it with greater or lesser interest. […]

  8. IE7 take a break … Safari isn’t so bad | WinExtra Says:

    […] Along with that smarter folks than me have weighed in on the reasoning of Apple releasing a windows version of Safari and while it can make for an interesting afternoon of reading and speculation I am more interested in how the browser works. So I have spent the last while on and off using Safari as my main browser. […]

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