Adam Scheinberg's Blog

Did I Call This or What??

Adam Scheinberg, January 12, 2007 (18 years ago)

You might suggest that I was writing about something that isn't a very far fetched suggestion, but I think I was writing about something I had not seen suggested elsewhere ever when I said that Apple should release Safari for Windows. And then today, Mary Jo Foley, former Microsoft Watch columnist, suggests that the Mozilla Foundation seems to believe that Safari for Windows is coming.
If Apple ports Cocoa to Windows (like they obviously have done with at least a subset of Carbon in order to run Quicktime and iTunes), they can introduce all sorts of Mac software for Windows which could very keenly familiarize Windows users with the Mac experience to help lure potential switchers, people who might be close to considering a new computer and having to face a learning curve with Vista anyway.
In other words, this is great news. I'm firmly on Opera right now, but if Safari for Windows came out, you never know...

Thom Holwerda

2007-01-12 08:25:27

Agreed. I'd die for a decent, maintained khtml/webkit browser on Windows; IE7's UI is a mess, and Gecko is slow and feels very heavy. It's always a relief to be using Konqueror or Safari.

D3M0N

2007-01-17 18:10:04

I don't beleive Apple is goign to release Safari or any other iLife applications unless it would directly benefit them. Releasing Safari for Windows does not seem like something that would when you compare it to Quicktime and iTunes. iTunes introduced the iPod to Windows (yes there were other ways, but they weren't very good) - which resulted in millions more iPods being sold. Quicktime is also a widely used media format online, so it only makes sense to release it.<br />
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I believe if Apple started to port applications such as Safari over, it would hurt their sales significantly. Besides the cool looking hardware, its really the software that makes a Mac "Just Work". Why would anyone fork over money for "expensive" hardware when they can just run the same applications in Windows?