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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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