Apple announces Safari for Windows

Apple Inc. has said that it will make its Web browser ‘Safari’ available on Windows, creating stiff competition for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The announcement came from Apple co-founder and Chief Executive Steven Jobs during the company’s annual World Wide Developers Conference. According to the New York Times, Jobs said Safari would have twice the performance of Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer. He also said that Apple would increase its market share which is presently at 5 percent.

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and first included in Mac OS X as a public beta on January 7, 2003. Later on a final version was included as the default browser in Mac OS X v.10.3. With browsing interface similar to that of Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, Safari also features a bookmark management scheme, Google search box and software services that include an integrated pop-up ad blocker and image blocker. The present decision to make Safari available on Windows is in light of the fact that most of the half-billion downloads of Apple’s iTunes software were by Windows users, said Jobs.

Safari had until now been available only on Apple Macs. The current move indicates the limitations of the current Mac market as well as the growing ambitions of Apple Inc. Web browsers which are available for free download over the internet are not direct sources of revenue for software companies.

However, analysts feel that users who like the services that Safari provides might want to go in for other Apple products. “Even if they only gain a few percentage points of (browser) market share, that's an awful lot of users out there that get exposed to Apple technologies”, said Van baker, an industry analyst.

A preview version of Safari 3 can be downloaded from apple.com/safari and is available for Windows XP and Windows Vista apart from Mac OS X. The final version is set for release in October.