The “One More Thing” that everybody was looking forward to at this year’s WWDC keynote was indeed a doozy: Safari on Windows. That’s right. Following in the steps of iTunes, Safari 3 will now available for Mac, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. It’s available in its public beta form today from apple.com/safari.
During the keynote, Steve Jobs announced benchmark tests that suggest Safari to be faster than both Internet Explorer (no surprise there), as well as Firefox (now things are interesting). He also announced that Apple will distribute Safari in the same manner that they distribute iTunes. According to Apple, Firefox is downloaded 500,000 times a day. iTunes, on the other hand, is downloaded 1,000,000 times a day. Apparently they can handle it.
I quickly downloaded Safari for Windows and was happily surprised by the following:
Good news indeed for Windows users, as well as web developers who have to develop for Windows users.
Mac users will have to restart and, if your Mac isn't high-end, be prepared for the some lengthy spinning rainbow wheels during the install and your first load of Safari.
NOTE: Apple must be very sure this beta is stable. When it installed, it replaced my old version of Safari. But if 3.0 fixes the memory leak problem, I won't miss the old version one bit.
One more thing....
Offering Safari for Windows gratis hints at just how dramatically the marketplace has shifted. Not so many years ago, Apple had to agree to ship IE as the default browser on Macs to keep in Microsoft's good graces and ensure that Office would continue to run on Macs.
Now Apple has the muscle to move on to Microsoft's turf, offering an IE replacement for Windows as a come-on to get people to shift to Macs. And there's nothing Microsoft can do about that.
Maybe that little bit of Tolkien-derived poetry about "One OS to Rule Them All" won't come true after all.
--Mike Perry Untangling Tolkien
While a doozy perhaps, certainly this is not a one more thing type of announcement. This has nothing to do with switchers. It has to do with making sure web-apps work on safari...because its the only browser the iPhone has got. And one last thing. Want to develop for the iPhone? Become a Web developer. Hey you can even switch to windows and use safari. WTF?
Ha! Glad someone's got it to boot. After my install/reboot, I can't launch Safari at all. It crashes on launch, even w/ no plug-ins. Hope the Windows users aren't having the same experience!
(MBP 2.33GHZ OSX 10.4.9)
I downloaded Safari 3.0 today. I have a PowerBook G4, 1.5GHz, 1 gig ram. Safari closed unexpectedly 3 times while I was attempting to open my bookmarks. It also would load my shortcut pages, but with a black page. I had to hit my return key in the address bar for the shortcut to load. Fortunately, Apple had the foresight to include an uninstall back to 2.0 which I quickly used. I still look forward to the final release!!
there are really mixed reviews all over the net. some are reporting that it is perfect, while others do not have that same luck. no idea where the true problem actually lies.
Safari 3.0 beta works great on both of my G4 Macs. Compared to the previous version, I have faster webpage loading and more functionality. No crashes. Feels like a 3.0 release, not a beta.
Let's hope that the security issues for Safari on Windows are solved soon.