WWDC and Macworld Expo come only twice a year - and that's too bad. Because twice a year, the Mac community gets all excited when Santa Jobs comes in bearing presents and we all can't wait to see what's there to unwrap. I've been following each of these keynotes for the better part of ten years now, and while some have been disappointing, the surprises outweigh the doldrums.Today's surprise? Apple announcing that the browser wars aren't over by a long shot. After the company's success with iPod and iTunes for Windows, they're branching out by bringing the somewhat popular Safari Web browser to the forbidden platform.
Web browsing on Windows today is yucky. I noted here a while back that I actually preferred Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser to Firefox for Windows, but that just goes to show how bad the offerings are over there in Redmond.
Will Safari take off on Windows the way iTunes has? I really don't know. I think the barriers to entry in the Web browser market are very big. Microsoft went to court to defend their monopoly in this space already, and many a browser has come and died in the face of the IE juggernaut. I also don't know that there's a groundswell of Windows users begging for Safari, which isn't perfect in itself.
But if I ever have to power up my Dell laptop again, you know one of the first things I'll be doing is downloading Safari for Windows and seeing if it's as fast as Steve Jobs told the WWDC crowd it was just this morning.
I'll say one thing though. Apple never gets boring.