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Safari for Windows
While I'm not a fan of the "It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!" attitude that His Steveness has toward Apple's development of Windows versions of its apps, I was looking forward to trying Safari for Windows because of its famed lightning fast render speeds. Having installed it, I was very impressed. They aren't lying when they say that Safari is one of if not the fastest rendering browsers around. In Beta 3, I was also impressed to see that Apple has greatly improved their standards compliance, with many previously buggy areas of HTML/CSS compatibility being smoothed over. But its not all smooth sailing and I'm sad to report that I've had to switch back to Firefox as my default browser after a mere 3 days of using Safari. "Why?" you might well ask. Well, I can no longer access any pages using Safari due to a strange bug which seems to have completely crippled the whole application. What's going on, Apple? For the purported kings of user-friendliness "unknown error ((null):10061)" is a pretty cryptic error message. After some initial Googling it seems like its not going to be easy to fix either. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the application but to no avail. This is the kind of bug that should not be occurring in a beta release of a piece of software. I can't help but feel that the whole port of Safari to Windows is a little half-arsed if you'll excuse the language.
I think the problem of this Windows port relates to a far wider problem with Apple's development for Windows: its really poorly done. Over the years, Apple has ported another of its most famous applications, iTunes, over to the Windows platform and done an appauling job of it. The problem is their apparent attitude: we're doing this because we have to, so lets not try very hard. iTunes for Windows is now several years old and yet it is still riddled with unforgivable issues:
The default installation on my PC skipped and jumped while any other appication was stressing the CPU. I managed to fix this with some tweaks, but it still happens with higher levels of activity.
The interface locks up constantly. Synchronising your iPod? Frozen UI. Importing songs? Frozen UI. One of the most critical things about user interfaces is that they let the user know what is happening. Nobody wants to see a frozen screen while they hope that whatever they asked for is happening.
And finally, the most annoying feature of Apple software ports: they look like they're running in Mac OS X. Maybe its an attitude problem Apple has, or the applications themselves are having an identity crisis and miss their mother but when you port an application don't take the operating system's UI with you! Both iTunes and Safari stand out in the worst way possible by saying "hey, look, I'm designed for Mac OS!". It's not even a matter of effort - I'm sure the Apple developers had to work very hard to get applications to look like they were running in Mac OS under Windows - its just Apple's we-are-so-superior attitude coming through again.
I have to admit that I'm a reluctant iTunes for Windows user, but I didn't set out to hate the thing. One might argue that it doesn't make sense for Apple to develop first-class applications for their competitors operating systems, however, if you're going to port the application you might as well do it properly! The latest version of MS Office for Mac OS is a great example of how Microsoft seems to have learned their lesson from the previously attrocious ports of their office suite. By developing a poor application for your competitors OS, you don't make them look bad, you make yourself look bad. Apple is known for making very user-friendly, polished applications which makes their failure to achieve this under Windows even more glaring. I can't help but feel continuing in this fashion is only going to alienate users who otherwise would have been happy to use their products.
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Apple, Windows, Safari, Rant
