Reading over Om’s recent post and Russ’s recent post about Safari for Windows, I was compelled by the point they both agree on: Apple has ported Safari to Windows in order to ease the switch from Windows to Mac. The theory being, Windows users, having already used Safari, will therefore be comfortable with a piece of Mac software and have an easier time making the jump. But the more I thought about it, the less it made sense.
It sounds good, but it’s not practical thinking. Here’s why.

Safari, in terms of features, is no longer a standout piece of software. Before Firefox was out of beta, and before IE got tabs, then it was. But it isn’t any more. About the only thing Safari does that really blows the lids off of its competition is the parental control feature. Easy, simple, sufficient. But this is hardly a compelling reason for a Windows user to sit through a 5 minute download in order to install “yet another browser” on their XP machine.

If Apple really wanted to compel people in the direction of Mac, they’d release a piece of free software for Windows that actually is a market-leading, excellent piece of free software. For example, iMovie. Or perhaps iPhoto. Both do a specific task with more elegance than Queen Elizabeth, and they do it faster, better, and cheaper than Paris Hilton.� Safari–not so much.
Point is, if the idea were to get people to have a comfort level with Mac software, Safari would seem an odd choice. After all, 95% of what you do with a web browser–clicking, scrolling, and typing into forms–is exactly the same on any browser, and on any OS for that matter.

If I were a Mac cultist, I’d be screaming for Apple to get one or two pieces of iLife ported over to Windows–iPhoto would be perfect. Bundle it with digital cameras instead of that garbagy Microsoft photo editor crap they give you. Get people used to the� “Mac way” and then they might want to make the big leap to the Mac platform. But Safari–sorry, guys, it’s really no different from Firefox or IE any more.

That’s why I say Steve is up to something more. Think about the release of Safari on Windows and on the iPhone–what does it mean? Well, it means they obviously are slinging Windows Cocoa around like crazy over at Apple HQ. It also means that (Rosetta anybody?) there might be a new form of universal binary coming–a single executable that runs on OS X and Windows. In the very least, we’re looking at a pending embrace of Windows developers to start using Cocoa frameworks. Safari is a big part of that, since it’s filled with chocolaty Cocoa goodness. Windows is a big part of Apple’s strategy, people. If you can’t bring the users to you, then you go to the users.