A Wired article asking “Who in Their Right Mind Would Run Safari on Windows?” got a lot of tech press recently. He complains that Safari sucks and that Mac users don’t even use it, so why would Windows users? I just want to address a few issue I have with it.
First off, I agree with a few of the complaints he has about Safari. I’ve found that it crashes too much. I’ve hit the close button on a window with numerous tabs and it closes without comment. It doesn’t offer a way to reopen the last page that you’ve closed (it has the history, but if the page was open a while ago it can be difficult to find). The problem with this is that they’ve fixed all of these problems in the new version of Safari. It could even be argued that the problems with Safari crashing are being fixed by the release of Safari on Windows (more users means more feedback means better product).
Plus, Apple has added some other really nice new features. One being a elegant way of moving tabs. Another being their beautiful inline page search. Private browsing isn’t new in Safari 3, but it’s always a good excuse for using Safari.
Finally, he says that the Windows browser space is too crowded for another major browser. It’s funny how that sounds like the sort of thing that Internet Explorer users would have said before Firefox became prominent. The group of Firefox users (of which he seems to belong) would say that more competition keeps the browsers involved both innovative and secure. I think that still applies.
