Safari for Windows… but why?

I was recently discussing the state of computers with a friend, and it occurred to me that there’s no obvious business case for Apple to make their Safari browser available for Windows.

It makes sense for them to have their own browser for the Mac, so that they’re not at the mercy of any other company for one, but what does a free browser for a competing OS get them — especially when essentially all the competition is free too? I don’t see the business sense behind it. They can’t hope to gain enough market share to become a de facto standard, which is the only way I see that they could gain any strategic advantage from it (as Microsoft did after they killed off Netscape).

“Curiouser and curiouser…”

6 Comments

  1. It’s so websites are written to work better with the iPhone, which runs under an embedded version of Darwin (Mac OS X’s underpinnings) and uses a version of Safari. At least, that’s the explanation I’ve read from tech journalists.

  2. That relies on Safari getting enough of a following that web developers consider it worth tweaking for. I’m not sure that’s going to happen. But I’m not complaining, because a diverse software ecosystem is almost always harder for malware to exploit.

  3. Tweaking? Who needs tweaking? Safari comes with its own website distortion field, which will automatically tweak the website remotely. Some people though claim this is yet another Safari exploit. 😉

  4. Pingback: safari for windows

  5. Yes, we wouldn’t want Apple’s Lawyer Legions to descend upon us because we forgot the ™ there. 😉

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