On A Windows Safari With Apple

On Monday Apple made its Safari Web browser available for Windows based PC's. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple made the announcement at the company's World Wide Developers Conference opening up yet another venue for competition with rival Microsoft. Wall Street was not overly impressed at the news and Apple shares dropped by $4.30 after the news. The new Beta version of Safari is available at Apple's home site. Even though Wall Street does not seem to be impressed according to an article in the New York Times, there are other considerations. The instant compatibility of Safari with Apple's new iPhone when it comes out is not the least of these. This combined with the curiosity value for IE users may just prove to be breakthrough once again for Jobs and company. Something else "experts" may not be considering is the function and aesthetic appeal of Apple tools and I for one have always thought Apple had a huge edge over Microsoft in many areas.

Phil on Safari

The Safari download proved to be fairly painless and I could detect zero conflict once the neat little browser was up and running. The hardest thing to get used to after years of IE use is the Apple way of doing things. Visually the browser is rather stunning and hard core geek-like in my opinion. The controls all seem to be in logical places but to an IE user they might appear somewhat backwards. I did not want to challenge my learning curve too much so I did not even attempt to load all my browser buttons onto the little "Range Rover" for this test. I was primarily looking at speed and basic function.

Adding bookmarks was rather a cinch as was finding one's way to favorite sites like eBay, Apple, Amazon, Yahoo! or news. The buttons are right there in plain view and I must say in a most uncluttered interface. A simplistic speed test revealed that Safari is indeed at least twice as fast as IE on my old PC. In the screen I provide below you will note all the readily identifiable buttons, but there is one for reporting bugs that I found to be exceptionally thoughtful (it looks like a bug of course). Another button in the form of an open book toggles bookmarks as the shot also illustrates, and adding one's own favorites locates bookmarks either to the bookmark sections or directly to the bookmark bar also illustrated.

Fig. 1 Bookmarks in the split file mode. (Note the little Profy name in the bar)

Some features to love about Safari:

Speed – There is plenty of it.

Aesthetics – Safari is the most elegant browser in the world by far.

Easy Bookmarks – Advanced and simple utility for adding and viewing bookmarks.

Pop-up Blocking – I did not see any, but this is untested.

Inline Find – Allows users to find any text on any web page. This is very cool.

Tabbed Browsing – Advanced tab arrangement, sizing and merging.

SnapBack – An icon click away from finding your way back to another point in a surf.

Forms AutoFill – Never type forms again as your address book enables instant forms.

Built-in RSS - Fast, effective and customizable RSS addition and viewing.

Resizable Test Fields – Allows resizing text fields on any web site.

Private Browsing – Essentially turns of your browsing activities to the outside world.

The Take

Jobs does not just "happen" to do things like this without good reason. It is pretty obvious that anything that gets more people into the Apple way of doing things, the better it is for the company. Besides out performing IE and even Firefox in my opinion the nature of built in advertising and utility for Apple products like iTunes and the iPhone makes sense for users utilizing those services. I am not the only one suspecting more beneath the tip of this possible iceberg.

"There is something very clever going on here with Apple releasing Safari for Windows," said Scott Love, president of Aquaminds Software, a Macintosh developer based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Don't ever underestimate S. J.'s motives."

Conclusion

Having been a Mac fan back before Microsoft cornered the market in the 90's it is really interesting to once again work with the cool and yes a little unusual format. Getting used to a "new" system always causes some immediate pain, but I am not so sure I would not be willing to undergo the relative torture of a few days playing with something this cool and fast. Perhaps that is the biggest point of departure for any user really; the "Safari" in search of a better way is often too burdensome for the faint hearted or stubborn surfer. For people making extensive use of Apple services the switch just might be automatic.

The only down side is that Apple will have to integrate sites now using IE and Firefox more completely. People use so many site widgets and tool bar buttons these days that I cannot imagine not having them actually. This browser is a Lamborghini compared to the others, but this one setback will cost Apple millions of users. Still, Safari is by far the best browser I have ever worked with for simplicity, elegance, speed and logical utility. You should all check it out seriously, and I seldom simply make that recommendation. Safari is a trip!

Fig. 2 Safari and the always striking Apple lineup.