There has been considerable astonishment at Apple’s announcement of a version of their web-browser that will run on windows. After all, despite what Apple claims, Safari does not have greatest reputation even among OS X users, and it is not as if Windows users do not have a wide choice of browsers already.
All of this misses the real point, I suspect. Apple has announced that it will allow limited development of third-party applications for the forthcoming iPhone. Developers will be allowed to develop “web” applications that run within the Safari web-browser.
Allowing Windows users a version of Safari gives them the pseudo-SDK needed for iPhone application development. If Apple manages to persuade a few Windows users to use their browser, then so much the better – it will certainly get the Apple fans cheering, but a futile attempt to re-open and win the “Browser Wars” is hardly worth developer-time.
While we are on the subject of yesterday’s keynote address at the Apple developer conference – my personal UI peeves are needless transparency (why make my eyes work hard?), icons that look very similar except for subtle, artistic differences, and file managers that display previews of files instead of icons.[1] Leopard looks set to deliver all three. Terrific.
[1] The latter has been attempted by every major operating system, and everyone can get it to work well for demos and poorly in the real world. It looks good in a folder of very different documents, but in a folder of letters that all look very much the same at 20x20px, it simply sucks up computer resources without providing any utility at all.