Why pick a fight now?
Some analysts are suggesting, and I tend to agree with them, that a primary motive for entering the browser fight this late in the game has little to do with browsers and everything to do with iPhones.
Jobs announced Monday that the iPhone would support third-party applications only in the form of Internet-based browser applications. And guess which browser runs on the iPhone? Apple no doubt wants to provide additional incentive to software developers to build sites and applications that support Safari.
See how Apple "thinks different" about these things?
Rather than providing iPhone users with the existing universe of largely IE-optimized applications and sites in a browser that supports existing standards, and telling iPhone application developers to just go ahead and build universally compatible apps that will also run on the iPhone, Apple feels the overpowering need to once again build and control a new, proprietary playing field.
This is the problem with Apple's plan: To control the user experience of third-party apps on the iPhone, Apple needs to control a quasi-proprietary browser platform. To get developers to build for the browser, Apple needs the power of market share. To get market share, Apple needs Windows compatibility and Windows-user acceptance. And -- here's where the logic fails -- to get a critical mass of Windows users, Safari needs to embrace existing Web standards, UI conventions and functionality.
The iPhone will do fine in the market, and a smattering of cool apps will be written for Safari-on-iPhone. But I think Safari will get slaughtered in the bare-knuckled brawl that is the Windows browser market.
Apple may believe that it can enter and dominate at least the "alternative" Windows browser market as it did the media player space. But this is an entirely new and unfamiliar world for Apple. Direct competition on a level-playing field that Apple doesn't control just isn't Apple's thing.
Safari on Windows will fail.
Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, The Raw Feed.