Alaska was, as with previous trips, absolutely beautiful. I'll post some photos soon (and by soon, I mean some time in the next couple of years :-)
Today Apple Inc. announced that they're going to offer their Safari web browser for Windows. This is exciting news and I'm thrilled to see that the world of web browsers, stagnant for so many years, is really moving again. I think that Mozilla and Firefox can take a lot credit for this revitalization and having one more "modern" browser on Windows -- where the overwhelming majority of users are accessing the internet, is good for everyone.
This will certainly solidify Safari's spot as the third most used browser, behind IE and Firefox and well ahead of Opera, but it's going to be a while before we see how much they can actually penetrate the Windows desktop. A lot will depend, I think, on how Apple choses to distribute it. Jobs' answer to that question was to reference the success of iTunes on Windows.
iTunes on Windows is a bit of a different creature, though, with a wildly successful hardware product, the iPod, pulling it onto Windows. Their other Windows offering, QuickTime, has two main channels onto the Windows desktop, the pull from the proliferation of QT files on the web, and the push from bundling it with iTunes for Windows.
There's no hardware pull, like the iPod, that I can see for Safari on Windows, and given the open formats of the web, there's not an obvious content pull like there is for QT. I'm guessing that they'll pursue a similar bundling strategy to QT and they're likely to get a decent installed base pretty quickly using that push. Speculation on how many of those users actually switch from IE to Safari, though, is much more difficult.
How successful they are at growing market share will be the main factor in how much they help web developers and the health of the open web. Anything that moves more users out of the IE experience and into a standards-based browser will make the lives of web developers better. Another successful implementation of agreed-upon web standards will definitely promote a healthier web. A healthy web and happy web developers is certainly a good thing.
There are still a lot of questions about how this unfolds, but there's one definite winner here: people who use the web. Choice and innovation are the real backbone of the internet and the more they are fostered, the better for everyone.
