As a developer why you should care that Apple has released Safari for Windows

As many of you may have heard, Microsoft has released Safari for Windows. You maybe asking yourself why do I care! First if your a web developer that uses Windows XP or Vista as you primary  operating system, you should be excited!

Should you be excited that you’ll get to use a really good browser? Sure, but the primary reason I can think of is that you now have a browser that you can run on your machine that will allow you to test your web applications  for OS X! You no longer have to ask your Apple friend or creative department to do your testing.

Personally I use OS X all the time so this is not a big deal for me. However this is a big deal for the 40+ developers that work the company I run (with my other partners) and it should be for you also!

Think about it… you now have the same browser that 90% of all Apple users have and use on their computer. The other 10% is Firefox,  that you have  already covered. No sane Apple user still uses IE for the Mac. Safari now hold roughly 5% of the total web browser share and this number is going to increase due to the number of people who continue to jump to OS X (I had another friend who just asked me that he is thinking of switching himself and his mother to OS X).  Now that Safari is available for Windows, that number should continue to rise.

It’s a really good browser that is bound to gain acceptance because it’s backed by Apple. FireFox may have the geeks, but Apple has the branding to get people to use Safari if they have had enough of IE. You can bet the bank that Apple will distribute the browser with iTunes as they have been doing with Quicktime. They are getting millions downloading iTunes on Windows each month. If they start distributing Safari with iTunes, and market it correctly, you’re bound to see a huge percentage of users!

Either way you look at it, you’ll need to download it and test your web applications.  Heck you may even begin to use it as your own primary browser!