Due to both personal interest and professional requirements, I run several Windows PCs alongside my Macs, and I use Windows just about every day. These days, the version of Windows I spend the most time with is Windows 10, and a recent update to a beta "Insider" build of the operating system brought Google Chrome crashing down.
I don't blame Google or Microsoft for this -- this is pre-release software, after all, and I understand and accept the risk of things like this happening -- but, as I searched for a temporary Chrome replacement, it got me thinking about just how much I dislike Google's browser. Chrome for OS X has of course been notoriously bad in recent versions, but the Windows version doesn't fare much better. From huge memory issues, to frequent rendering crashes, to bugs with basic features like full screen mode, Chrome is often quite a mess in Windows.
But what other choices do I have? Internet Explorer is a dying browser, included by Microsoft in Windows 10 only for compatibility with the online business apps that require it. Firefox is relatively slow in some tasks and I personally don't like its design. And I've found that Opera, while interesting in some respects, doesn't play nice from a cross-platform perspective, with trouble syncing bookmarks and settings.
One solution that might be the eventual answer is Microsoft Edge. I really like the idea of Edge, and I can see where Microsoft is taking this new browser, but it's nowhere near ready for prime time, with an appalling lack of features and some frustrating rendering and performance bugs.
So all of this got me thinking, which is usually a pretty dangerous activity, about Safari. I use Safari as my primary browser on all of my Macs, and despite its occasionally controversial history, I generally find it to be fast, secure, and able to handle all of my Web browsing needs. If only, I pondered, had Apple not abandoned Safari for Windows...
Those relatively new to Apple may be a bit confused: "Safari for Windows? Say what now?" But, yes, it's true. Apple for several years developed and distributed a version of its Safari Web Browser for the Windows platform. Steve Jobs unveiled the new browser version at WWDC 2007, telling the somewhat shocked crowd that since Apple already made one of the most popular Windows apps of all time (iTunes), they might as well try to make browsing the Web a better experience for Windows users, too.
Safari for Windows launched as a public beta of version 3.0 alongside the OS X version. It was then updated quite frequently over the next few years, mostly in line with its OS X-based counterpart.
But things slowed down in early 2012, and when Apple released Safari 6.0 for Mac alongside the launch of OS X Mountain Lion in July 2012, the Safari for Windows download page remained suspiciously quiet. Initial speculation was that Apple obviously wanted to focus on the launch of OS X and needed to have Safari 6 ready for their own platform first, while the Windows version faced no such deadline and could wait. But as the days, weeks, and months rolled by, it became clear that Safari for Windows was likely dead.
So why kill the product? Apple hasn't officially explained its reasoning, nor is it likely to, but as we've seen from the evolution of Safari since that split in 2012, it's likely that Apple's broader ambitions for unique features like iCloud Tabs and Keychain Password Syncing probably weren't worth the effort to implement in an operating system the company didn't control. That is if, considering how deep some of these features burrow into the OS, they could be implemented at all.
It's also important to note that the Windows browser landscape changed significantly between 2007 and 2012, thanks in large part to the late-2008 launch and subsequent rapid development of Chrome. In justifying Safari's port to Windows, Steve Jobs and Apple made a big deal of just how slow and clunky Windows browsers at the time were. That was, for the most part, no longer true by 2012, with vast improvements in speed, security, and extensibility introduced in virtually all of Safari for Windows' competitors.
Therefore, rather than maintain two browsers with different feature sets (something that would only confuse consumers), and in the face of increasingly competent rivals, Apple chose to abandon Windows. It wasn't a terrible decision from a numbers perspective; Safari, across all desktop platforms, enjoyed only about 5 percent usage share in July 2012 -- not much higher than Safari's market share percentage in 2007 -- and once again making Safari exclusive to Apple devices could only serve to entice additional customers to join the fold.


Comments
Great Article!
I used to use the heck out of that browser for my job and miss seeing on the Windows task bar as well.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane!
Cheers!
Pete
I used Safari for Windows on my work Windows machine. However, by 2014, I gave it up because it crashed too often and could not handle new Web material that had been developed post-Safari 5. While Safari was current on Windows, it was the best.
same here. At the time, it was a stunningly good alternative to explorer, and I used it exclusively at my job, it was even better than Firefox then. Oh, those were the days.
I’m glad to know that I was not the only one in the world to use still Safari Windows and there are people esteems and uses it. I do also count Safari the best browser and use it in portable version. I have noticed that Safari works better on my Windows 8.1, compared to Windows 7. I must say that this old browser now 4 years aged, still does its job very well. Not or very few crash. Only problem, it doesn’t hold well opening many tabs at once, often automatically refreshes all them.
Web developer here. I just wanted to note that I use Safari for Windows but only for testing… Until today.
I work for a very large Community College District and we are just this week abandoning support for Safari for Windows. We cannot be the only ones. It’s getting very problematic to code responsive sites and oddly enough, some of the workarounds needed to fix iPhone issues actually cause issues in Safari for Windows (I’m looking at you iPhone hover emulator).
So, while it’s working OK on many sites currently, it’s going down the drain fast.
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