14 DAY TRIAL // At the beginning of this week, Apple Chief Executive Officer unveiled Safari for Windows Vista and Windows XP. The move from Apple comes as a natural extension of the availability of the iPhone, a closed environment to third party developers, with the exception of JavaScript applications running via Safari. Apple's browser got a nasty reception in its first day on the Windows platform. And on June 13, security company Symantec confirmed all the vulnerabilities discovered in Safari 3.0 public beta. But in the end, it will all come down to market share. While being tied to the Mac OS platform, Safari had a limited growth potential, the Windows transition resolves this aspect.
Safari will now go against Internet Explorer with a market share of 78.67% and Firefox with 14.54%. Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla vice president of engineering did not comment on the impact that Safari will deliver to Firefox. Schroepfer even went as far as to welcome the additional competition. "The availability of Safari on Windows reinforces the importance of browsers as critical components of today's Internet experience. Mozilla's mission is to promote an open, interoperable and participatory Internet. We encourage Apple to put their weight behind open standards and the open Web to help ensure all browser users, regardless of operating system or browser, can enjoy the best possible Web experience," Schroepfer revealed as cited by SeattlePI.
Being the dominant presence on the browser market, and intimately connected with Windows, Internet Explorer will also suffer from the introduction of Safari 3. Still, there is the IE5's failure on Mac in the air, and Safari - as an alien browser on Vista and XP - could suffer the same faith, although the previous experience delivered with the iTunes points to a different direction. Kevin Kutz, Windows Client Director welcomed Apple to Windows as a browser developer, downplaying from the start the Cupertino company's relevance on Windows.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing explained that the company is starving for a little more market share and breaking the Mac limit is only natural. Schiller told SeattlePI that: "We've been getting very good market share with Safari. Our Mac users love it. About 5 percent of the Web traffic is Safari as a browser. And to go much beyond that very quickly would take us doing more than just the Mac, and so we chose to bring it to Windows XP and Windows Vista. Now that means everybody practically on the Web can get and use Safari."
Safari 3 Public Beta is available for download here.