First reform Safari, then again Safari (the Mac application) for Windows
Safari for Windows: Good or Bad Idea?
I wonder whether you can add a poll by editing the opening post. I don't imagine a positive result, but it could add value to the topic.
Side note: I often feel that the structure of https://forums.macrumors.com/index.php is not ideal – no good point in the hierarchy for good topics such as this – I'll post site feedback.
… iCloud extensions for Internet explorer, Firefox, and chrome
I often install or update iCloud on Windows but I wasn't particularly aware that there was support for multiple browsers. I imagined that only two of those three were supported.
Was it true that the earliest version of iCloud for Windows supported Internet Explorer only? If so, that was a major turn-off; a detractor from the Apple product.
I really don't understand why they don't bring back Safari for Windows. … Did you like Safari for Windows?
Yes, I loved it. Still do, wherever I find it. It the past, Safari was a standard installation on all Windows machines in my area, and most users enjoyed it as their default.
Opinions varied, will vary, wildly.
Here's a 2010 example of someone who appreciated an improvement to Safari:
Best Browsers 2010 . . . Five Browser Comparison | FilterJoe (referred from
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/20434154/ where someone wanted an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer).
Safari on Windows is, for me, the outstanding example of
a well-integrated Mac application. I choose that word carefully – in the Windows context, it's more a
Mac application than an
Apple application. And so it's also more a
Mac application than an app or a program. Yes, I know that 'Mac' is now more commonly used to describe hardware (specifically not software), but Safari did have the design qualities that I associate with
good software on a Mac. To have those qualities in a Windows environment was, is, a breath of fresh air.
It's possible that the majority of Windows folks never appreciated those qualities. So accustomed to a wild variety of designs, that Safari was just another design.
(And so
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/2/ might be a better place for this topic, if you would like a moderator to move it.)
Do you think Apple should bring back development and really try to make an outstanding product?
Yes, I would like Apple to
resume development of Safari for Windows – but not a crippled/ridiculous Safari.
Not entirely off-topic: yes,
Safari on OS X should be reformed as an outstanding part of an outstanding Mac OS X system (not crippled, as Safari is in the Yosemite part of a lacklustre Apple technology ecosystem; lacklustre as a consequence of the crippling).
http://help.apple.com/osx-yosemite/whats-new/from-mavericks/#/apd118301798 for example, observe the animation that occurs when a user aims to click somewhere within the domain field. Addition of a
moving target like that to
any Apple product would be bad practice. To find that introduced at version 8 is excruciatingly poor.
And the sheet of many sites that drops down when all that's required is the address of the current site? Too much. Annoying.
And so on.
I would also like
Safari for Linux.
Also, selfishly, Safari on
PC-BSD, although I'm not sure which desktop environment I would choose. Realistically I'll probably use Gnome Web.
Safari only
Somewhat off-topic, but I can't write about reforming Safari without also thinking about the
Safari-only environment for guests on Macs that are protected with FileVault 2. I imagine that a future offering from Apple will have Safari only by default. So I believe that it's of paramount importance to have the best possible Safari, not a crippled foundation, sooner rather than later. In that context I remain partly interested in the recent news article,
Google's Chromebooks Overtake Apple's iPads for First Time in U.S. Education Market (disinterested in that overtaking; Apple should be about the
best, not the most).
