I’ve been busy with other things for the past week or so, so I haven’t gotten around to discussing anything that happened at WWDC. First, I’d like to share my thoughts about the whole Safari for Windows fisco and how I feel everyone is getting it wrong. This is important stuff and a lot of people are clamoring for page hits about it and saying all kinds of things to get it, and those things are generally short-sighted and misinformed.

Why?

Why is there a Safari on Windows? After reading a number of news sites and blogs about this, the following possible reasons emerge (in ascending order of insanity):

• Apple wants to increase the kickback they get from the Google search feature.
• Apple wants more exposure to Apple software (chasing another halo effect).
• Apple wants to give Windows web developers a break so they can test on Safari on the same machine.

• Apple wants to get into the browser market and edge out IE and FireFox.

I’ve mulled over these reasons a bit and compared the mentality of these reasons against the way of thinking I was exposed to while I was at Apple and … it doesn’t fit. These aren’t Apple ways of thinking. When Apple deals with Windows, it does so to move something else forward. Always. There’s an iTunes for Windows to move the iPod forward. There’s an AirPort Admin Utility for Windows to move the AirPort Base Stations forward. There’s a QuickTime for Windows to advance the format and sell some QT Pro licenses. There’s an AppleWorks for Windows to … let everyone share the pain. But the point is, of the currently-developed Windows ports every one of them is a profit avenue in hardware or software sales. Nothing is done out of the kindness of their heart.

Step 3: Profit!

What income does Safari bring? If you believe Gruber then Apple gets around $25M/year from the Google search field in Safari. This isn’t so far-fetched. Google has a program that’s a part of AdSense that lets advertisers put a search field on their site and as users use it and click ads, the site owner gets some bling. It makes sense that Apple would be a part of this and make some as well. Widening the user base would help a lot.

However, Safari has some glaring flaws as a Windows application. Flaws large enough that only displaced Mac users (think “stuck at work”) will be using it. It doesn’t have a Windows appearance. It doesn’t resize like a Windows application does. The keyboard shortcuts are all wrong. It doesn’t use ClearType, but uses Mac OS X’s anti-aliasing technology. It doesn’t use system fonts; it prefers those built-in to the browser (think Lucida Grande). In short: it’s the very same Safari you see on a Mac today. You know how we feel when someone ports a Windows app to the Mac, complete with the Windows UI? Windows users feel the same way about Apple’s ports. So I don’t see Safari for Windows gaining a hundred-thou seats as Gruber mentions in example. I’d be surprised if of the million downloads it got in those couple of days if 5% still use it as the default browser in two months’ time.

Even if a large percentage of people stuck with the program and used the search bar, and even if the total income whipped past Mozilla’s $50M/year income from the same feature and became $100M, or even $200M, what kind of money is that to a company routinely handling amounts of money totalling in the billions of dollars in one quarter? Is that chump change worth it if hardware sales aren’t coming with it?

Excuse Me, Is Your Head Glowing?

So, what about a halo effect, then? What about showing Windows users how Mac applications work and thus spreading the Mac love? That’s the idea behind iTunes (so some say) and the iPod and such, so why couldn’t Safari be that as well? Well, money. Writing software is not free (something I’m learning the hard way these days) and for Apple to put forth an investment like this, they should be recouping it somehow (and, knowing Apple, a thousand-fold). If Google money isn’t it, then it has to be something else, so the halo effect is plausible at first glance.

With any inspection, however, that breaks down. We’re talking about a web browser, here. In fact, we’re talking about one that’s already in the potential customer’s hands on their existing computer. They’re not going to buy a Mac and run Mac OS X just to use the same Safari they already have running in front of them. And Safari is not itself impressive enough to cause anyone to go, “Damn, I need a Mac.” Just like iTunes for Windows doesn’t have a Mac halo effect (it has an iPod halo effect, which, in turn, has an unrelated Mac halo effect of its own), Safari for Windows won’t be selling Macs. It isn’t the most impressive Mac application out there today and it’s now on Windows (and, thus, a win for the consumer if that’s the concern).

Putting this another way: porting Windows Media Center or Internet Explorer 6 (the real one, this time) to Mac OS X won’t make any of us buy Windows, even if they didn’t suck. Why? Well, we’d already have it…

What About the Developers, Developers, Developers?

So perhaps, then, the profit behind Safari for Windows is in the developer and security communities that would have access to it?

Plausible, and here’s why: a ton of sites out there require Internet Explorer or Firefox to use them, especially web applications. If you develop one of these applications and only test on IE and Firefox then Mac users are going to be left out if anything “creative” is being done with the site (oh how I long for the days when a bad webpage was just someone that didn’t close a tag). The main reason such decisions are made is that the designers are testing in IE and developing for IE because that’s the largest user base for websites. Firefox and Opera are Windows alternatives and so are tested as well. Safari is left out because it’s limited to the Mac user base and, well, market share (you don’t see me developing for lynx and iCab, do you?).

However, if Safari runs on Windows then things change a little bit. Not so much that the average user is using it, but now web designers can start up and test with that browser as well and give it a cursory run-through without getting their company to blow a grand on a test computer for a market segment they generally don’t care about anyway. Then, if the program has excellent design tools (as Safari 3’s inspector brings) then the designer might wind up using it to help fix some sites (a la Firefox’s Web Developer toolbar). If this becomes part of his toolkit then sites will start working right in Safari as a side effect. At the very least, web developers that live in Windows will be able to at least test with the browser and ensure it’s mildly functional.

Pardon me … Security!

One of the greatest benefits is also one of the greatest black eyes of this event. There’s a huge security community in the Windows world. Honestly, there has to be. So when any program comes out for Windows, this community will run a standard battery of attacks against it and see where it breaks. This is not for the vendor’s good — that’s a secondary concern — but for the IT professionals that might later ponder using that software at their companies. “Is it secure,” they ask, and the security monkeys will respond with exploit reports and patch turn-around-times on a schedule. Apple did well with a three day TAT on zero-day bugs of a preview release, anyone will tell you that. But the great part is that because Apple changed so little of Safari, there’s was also a security update for WebKit in Mac OS X several days later as well. You can bet large chunks of cash that the fixes made their way into the iPhone, too.

What Does the iPhone Have to … Ooooohhhhhh

It runs Safari. That Safari is also the subject of the most insulting cop-out in Apple’s recent history. Apple’s only way to expand the iPhone is to have people make websites. Which is to say, Apple doesn’t let people expand the iPhone and the marketers worked overtime to spin up a “sweet” distraction.

So what plausible reasons do we have at this point? Developers and security. What does the iPhone need? Yep. The point of Safari on Windows is so that both platforms have an iPhone development environment and so that Windows-based security firms can test the living hell out of Safari and WebKit and find anything remotely exploitable so that no one can get their own code running on the iPhone via accidental bugs in Safari/WebKit.

Actually, the former is by leaps and bounds the strongest reason. iPhone adoption must be high for it to not appear to be a failure, and for that to happen it must have killer applications (as in practical, not as in programs). Web sites (especially major ones) must render properly on the iPhone’s browser. Also, beyond the feature set the iPhone already has, there’s a hundred people out there with more ideas and that’s where the sites-as-applications idea comes into play. For the sites to be prolific, the tools to make them must be as well. Having the same rendering engine on the PC allows all developers (save those freaky Linux extremists) to create “sweet” web pages for the gadget and make it all the more attractive to blow a week’s pay on.

Right there is the hardware tie-in. Right there is the missing profit center for Safari on Windows. As unlikely as it might appear at first glance, the profit from iPhone sales (and Google ads, to be completely fair) is what’s funding the desire to have Safari cross-platform, not any delusional sense that they can push IE or FF into the corner and take over a substantial part of the Windows browser market or some fleeting dream of selling a million more Macs because people are enamored with Safari. It’s just a browser, and a rather mediocre one at that. However, with the direction Apple’s taken with the iPhone it’s imperative that web pages render correctly on both it and Macs, so it’s similarly imperative that the tool to verify the design be available to all designers, no matter their choice of operating system.