Safari For Windows
I haven't downloaded Safari for Windows yet, but I've been thinking about what Apple is up to. All by itself, Safari for Windows makes little sense. However, as a port test for Cocoa and Apple's libraries, it makes a lot of sense. What if Apple is getting ready for a sideways attack on Windows? Make it easier to develop applications that run on Windows and Mac in a way that is more native to the Mac? I suspect that's the game that is afoot here.
Comments
Cocoa as an alternative to .NET
[ Troy Brumley] June 12, 2007 10:52:45.424
Comment by Troy Brumley
Could be attractive to many. I know it is to me. Check out the WWDC comments I noted, see the ratio of engineers to attendees, etc By making cross platform development easier and possible, Steve lets his stuff run everywhere plus lets other people write code that runs everywhere. Conventional wisdom says this would hurt Mac, but I think given Windows' problems, it would really hurt Windows.
Or possibly...
[Tom K] June 12, 2007 11:11:19.728
My thought was that this was a wedge to help the iPhone along. Given that Safari is the native browser on the iPhone, it becomes important for uptake for sites to be compatible with Safari. How is a Windows development shop going to do this unless they've got a handy Safari-compatible browser? We know they aren't going to do the intelligent thing :{), so making a Windows version of Safari starts to make a lot of sense.
Intriguing Files...
[Ryan W] June 12, 2007 12:19:35.747
I had some trouble setting up Safari on my XP machine yesterday, and when I started poking around in the program directory, I found some interesting things. Included in the installation (unlike iTunes) are CoreFoundation.dll and CoreGraphics.dll.
Could just be coincidental naming, but it certainly could imply that Apple may be porting parts of the Core library to Windows. Given that they secretly maintained an x86 branch of OS X, it doesn't seem implausible that there could be an OS X-independent branch of Cocoa.
Re: Safari For Windows
[ Troy Brumley] June 12, 2007 13:45:49.237
Comment by Troy Brumley
I saw CoreFoundation too, and I'm aware from one of my Objective-C texts that there has been some version of this available on Windows for a while with some Windows port of Objective-C. I don't have the text handy to look up the project.
Cocoa port has been there for a while.
[Joerg] June 12, 2007 14:04:38.145
Apple has had a partial Cocoa port for sometime now. To date it has been used to build iTunes.
I'm interested in what this means for notion of "Native" widgets. iTunes ans Safari don't look native, yet at least in the case of iTunes there has not been much user push back.
Marketshare
[Colin Putney] June 13, 2007 14:50:18.031
There are serveral reasons Safari on Windows makes sense for Apple.
One is that it reinforces the "halo effect." Windows users get introduced to Apple technology via the iPod and iTunes and next time they need to buy a computer, a Mac feels like a viable option. Having Safari on Windows just provides another entry point to the migration path that ends with a Macintosh.
Another is that it lets Safari take a bigger slice of the browser market than it could if it was Mac-only. That would mean more web developers targetting and supporting Safari. That, in turn, leads to a better experience of the web for Mac users. The less marginalized they are, the stronger the platform. The same holds true for the iPhone - the better the web experience there, the better it'll sell.
Finally, Apple makes money from Safari. They get a cut of the adds that Google shows when you do a search. More Safari users means more income for Apple. That probably justifies the port right there.