Apple's Safari coming to Windows PCs

Apple plans to ship a version of its Safari web browser for Windows, and third-party developers will be able to get a piece of the iPhone.

A beta version of Safari for Windows is available now, CEO Steve Jobs announced during his keynote speech at the company's 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Safari will also allow web developers to create applications for the iPhone using common web development standards that can interact with the rest of the apps that will ship with the iPhone.

Jobs previewed several features that will be shipped with Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, which is due in October for $129. But the Safari news was unexpected. The software became available yesterday on Apple's website for Windows users as a free beta version.

Apple has only a five per cent share of the browser market, behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox, but Jobs reckons allowing Windows users to download the browser will help boost market share the same way that making iTunes available for Windows users helped that application.

Got two seconds?

Make your voice heard - take our latest poll.

The new version, Safari 3, is also the key to allowing application developers to create third-party applications for the hotly anticipated iPhone, which is set to go on sale in the US on 29 June. Jobs announced that the sale will kick off at 6PM on that date but an Apple representative could not immediately confirm whether that will be 6PM Pacific time or Eastern time, or whether it will be a rolling launch.

The pitch is that developers can create web applications using web 2.0 standards such as Ajax that will work just as well as applications Apple has written natively for the iPhone.

Applications designed with the iPhone in mind will run in a Safari browser on the phone with hooks into other applications, such as voice calling, email and Google Maps.

Scott Forstall, vice president of iPhone software development, demonstrated a sample application that Apple built to access contacts in a corporate database. Clicking on a phone number in a contact record, for example, would automatically dial that contact.

This gives application developers a path to the iPhone but it falls short of the software development kit some were hoping for that would allow developers to create native applications for the iPhone.

Jobs devoted the majority of his talk to Leopard, which was originally supposed to be available around the time of this week's WWDC but was delayed until October so that Apple could get the iPhone out on time. He showed off 10 features of Leopard that look set to be additions to the operating system, including some that have been shown over the past year, such as Boot Camp, Cover Flow and Time Machine.

Leopard developers will now have the ability to create 64-bit applications specifically for Macs. They could previously create 64-bit applications for the Unix code base that's underneath Mac OS X but Apple is now extending 64-bit support to the Cocoa development environment, allowing developers to create native 64-bit Mac OS applications, Jobs said.

Apple focused on making the desktop easier to manage and organise with Leopard. One new feature that helps make that happen is called Stacks.

Stacks lets Mac OS X users see the files inside a folder in the dock, the row of application icons usually found at the bottom of the desktop screen, making it easier to find files without having to open a lot of application windows, Jobs said. It also works as an application launcher if the Applications folder is dragged into the dock, Jobs said.

Jobs also showed off a new version of Finder that uses the Cover Flow technology to enable Mac users to browse for files on their computers using an interface similar to the one used in iTunes for scrolling through songs or movies.

It also lets users search other computers - both Windows and Macs -connected to a local-area network, and it syncs up with Apple's dot-Mac service to let road warriors access the sales contract they left back on their home Mac before setting out on a trip.

Apple's stock price fell $4.30, or 3.45 per cent, to close at $120.19 yesterday, suggesting investors might have been hoping for something more from Jobs' on-stage presentation.

CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report

Tom Krazit writes for CNET News.com