Apple moves in mysterious ways

Wow Safari is coming to the world of Windows.  Steve, what took you so long? This will drive Bill crazy.

As I mentioned in the posts, The promise and heartbreak of Apple technology & Great Apple tools should matter, a large federal site once asked for Safari and Mail on Windows in an executive briefing long ago. 

It was in 2003, and many of us at Apple thought it was a great idea.  The Apple executives thought it was giving away the crown jewels.  Maybe there are so many jewels now that there are some extras.

I think Safari on Windows will make a difference if Apple will work to make Safari very compatible. 

I would love to ditch IE on those sites which require it, but my guess is that the ActiveX controls will likely keep IE firmly entrenched in many spots.

I just downloaded the new Safari and installed it on both my Windows XP box and my Dual G5. I tried Typepad, and the same problem of missing tools on Safari compared to Firefox is still there, both in the Windows version and the Mac version.

Good thing I have Camino and Firefox.

I did try one of the more annoying sites which requires IE on Windows.  It didn't work, but there is hope in  the air that we might get a few converted to be Safari compatible.

My question is, if this is a good idea now why was it such a bad idea when enterprise accounts were begging for Safari to keep them from being wedded to IE?

Now if we can just get the Mail app moved over, Apple might start really converting some Windows folks.

iTunes demonstrated long ago that Apple could write great software for Windows.  Making Safari a choice in the Windows world is a good next step.

The scary thing is about 59% of Windows users still use some version of IE. 

My guess is that those folks might be the Windows base who will never be shaken from IE.

Their faith in IE reminds me of those folks who keep supporting the current batch of politicians no matter how much they ignore what Americans want.

But I don't plan to get very bent out of shape on IE or politicians.  A walk on the beach when things start to look ridiculous is the perfect medicine.  Come for a visit and you will see what I mean.

Comments

[Scott]

I'd guess that a fair number of the 59% of Windows users still using IE are made up of folks who haven't a clue there are other browsers available let alone where to find them or how to install them. I know many folks in that camp.

Otherwise, keep up the good commentary.

Back to lurking.......

[Joshua Ochs]

Please explain why Safari and Mail will have any traction whatsoever over Firefox and Thunderbird.

Seriously - they're no more secure or feature complete. If anything, Mozilla has far more features, and just as good an interface, and is just as secure. The main advantage of Safari and Mail on the Mac is the integration - something that is completely lost on Windows.

There is zero reason to use these on Windows, other than as a development or testing platform.

[ocracokewaves]

Well I disagree. First choice is always good, and as I said in the post there were some enterprise customers that wanted to standardize on Safari and Mail.

Some organizations would prefer to not use Microsoft and to have a company they can hold accountable instead of products like Mozilla and Thunderbird.

Also one of the more popular themes for Thunderbird is the one that makes it look like Mail so I would assume that there are people who would rather have something more like Mail.

I use Thunderbird on Windows and I would argue it still doesn't have the ease of use of Mail when it comes to setup.

That doesn't make it a bad product and in fact it is my preferred mail client on Windows, but if I could switch to Apple Mail I would.

Apple has a history of innovation and doing a good job on user interface. I think they should be welcomed to the Windows world.

I am not exactly a big Safari fan since I haven't been able to get it to work properly with Typepad, but there are people who love Safari.

[RCC]

Reporting Safari 3 beta: not working properly under non-english localized versions of windows or osX

[Geniver]

Apple is releasing Safari for Windows for Windows-using iPhone owners.

iPhone developers that don't own Macs can test their iPhone apps using Safari for Windows.

iPhone owners can manage their Safari bookmarks, cookies, and other lists on their PC using Safari for Windows, and then sync with their iPhone.

Safari on the iPhone makes Safari on a PC a must have for iPhone owners. That's why releasing Safari for Windows is a good idea NOW, even if it wasn't a good idea before.

[peterr]

One reason people might continue to use MSIEry is that you can't delete it. if you want to be able to update your windows software esp.. to enhance it's security, you have to keep it around. I's not like Apple's Software update, which doesn't require using Safari.

[Nick]

"I did try one of the more annoying sites which requires IE on Windows. It didn't work, but there is hope in the air that we might get a few converted to be Safari compatible."

It would be interesting to see whether any site that actually *refuses* service--as some do--works if you spoof the user agent string.

There's an option to do that on the debug menu in Safari, which is easily enabled by entering a command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/faq.html#anchor14

(The same thing can be done for Safari for Windows by manually editing the .plist file.)

It's a fact that some sites check for whether you're using IE or not by looking at the browser headers and throw out anyone who isn't--because they can't be bothered to test their site in anything else. Opera added user-agent spoofing to its browser years ago for that very reason.

I've tried Safari on Windows as well as Mac now. It's not a good citizen on Windows insofar as it doesn't follow the UI for the platform much at all. (Imagine the outcry if MS came out with a Windows-looking version of Office for the Mac.) But, of course, that's intended.

But it is very fast and very slick. We already knew it was far better than Firefox at text-rendering:

http://www.zeldman.com/2006/11/27/safari-beats-firefox/

But it's welcome to get its rendering on Windows --very good, provided you turn down the anti-aliasing. And installing it also makes Lucida Grande available (to it, but also to the platform generally if you find the fonts in its support files and copy them to the font manager).

[Scott]

I can't really see Windoze users going for Safari; most of the ones I know like having all those sinister plug-ins that add weather reports or search bars to IE, no matter what damage they do behind the scenes.

On the plus side, Apple will be forced to make Safari compatible with non-standards conforming, IE only web sites if it really wants to compete on Windoze. So us Mac users will get some benefits from the side effects.

Still a weird move though.

[PGE]

Aargh, not more bloatware from Apple... Sigh... Well, I've been trying out this beta of Safari on Windows, and it will not replace my Firefox. I love Firefox, and the addons that the community surrounding Firefox have created. These addons makes surfing the net safer, by enabling the user of Firefox to "lockdown" the websurfing with NoScript, Flashblock, Adblock, Adblock filterset.G update and Blocksite... No such addons will be available for Safari, which will make it much more of an unsafe browser.