OK, I don’t think anyone is shocked by Apple showing a near final version of it’s next operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (with over 300 new features) at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), however, I must admit to being a little puzzled by the announcement that they’re bringing Safari (Apple’s web browser) to Windows. I’m not sure what the benefit to Apple is here? Is this just something to tick off Bill? Probably. I would have much rather they brought out iChat AV for Windows. Now that’s something that would be useful for both sides. However, I will download the public beta for both Mac and PC and give it a spin. It’s supposedly up to twice as fast as IE 7 on Windows and 1.6 times faster than Firefox. The real question is will Windows users download and use it? One benefit that we could gain from this is that more sites would support Safari if more users were using it. So maybe that’s Apple’s real agenda here. The next “Get a Mac” ad should be funny if PC is using Safari.
In other WWDC news the iPhone will gain 3rd party apps that are written in Web 2.0. Apple is trying to maintain this balancing act between allowing developers to add apps, but also maintaining security and stability. Apparently Web 2.0 gives them that. I’m not that familiar with the Web 2.0 development environment so I can’t speak to what’s possible and what’s not. However, I’m quite pleased that 3rd parties now can step in and hopefully fill some of the potential iPhone gaps. It’s all good.
UPDATE: You can watch the Keynote here
The word on the street and in The Wall Street Journal is that Safari and iPod are Trojan Horses meant to show people how Apple thinks and works like real human beings; not having to put up with convoluted maneuvering to get something done. Between the move to Intel and iPod, Mac has grown quite a bit by convincing Windows users that there IS a better way.
The other rumor about Safari on PC is that with iPhone launching and Safari being used a good deal there, Apple wants PC developers to be able test their apps as well, therefore, Safari.