14 DAY TRIAL // Apple's Safari 3 transitioned onto the Windows platform is going nowhere fast. Praised as an epitome of performance, design, style, security and usability, Safari 3, migrated to the alien Windows operating system for the sake of the iPhone, found that both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Vista are nothing but unfertile soil. Perhaps because the Safari engine is powering iTunes for Windows, Apple was expecting nothing short of the same adoption rate for the browser.
"We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari," stated Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO on June 11, celebrating Safari's move to Windows. "Hundreds of millions of Windows users already use iTunes, and we look forward to turning them on to Safari's superior browsing experience too."
But Windows users saw right through Jobs, and discerned through the propaganda and marketing promises. And the "fastest" browser for both PCs and Macs, is slow in its uptake. This despite a lightening start, with over 1 million downloads in just the first 48 hours. But outside of its limited exposure in the limelight, Safari for Windows faded into the background of anonymous browsers for the Microsoft platform. At the end of its first two months on the market, according to statistics from Market Share by Net Applications, Safari only managed to capture a share of 0.41%.
Of course that the browser is still a product in testing stage. Apple promised to make the final version available concomitantly with the final release of Mac OS X 10.5. In the meantime, Windows users can get a taste of the Leopard operating system on XP and Vista. But it's not an experience designed to take you away from Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Opera. Safari is built for the Mac OS X, and it shows. Neither Windows Vista nor Windows XP do it justice. By comparison, in just the first month of availability IE7 jumped from a share of 3.18% to no less than 8.84%. Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 grew from 0.69% to 3.61%. At the end of July, IE7 accounted for a share of 33.15% while Firefox 2.0 owned 12.38% of the market.