Did Apple Just Quietly End Development Of Safari For Windows?

Safari 6 brings improved performance and many new features to OS X, including offline reading lists, a unified search field and support for Do Not Track. What seems to be completely gone from Apple’s site now, though, is any mention of the Windows version of Safari. Indeed, it looks like Apple has removed all download links for Safari from its site for the time being. This could be due to the fact that Apple is currently highlighting Safari’s new features in Mountain Lion (which pre-installs Safari 6), or because Apple has indeed ended development of Safari for Windows. Windows users can still download the old version from Apple, but the link is hidden on the company’s support page.

Apple launched the first preview version of Safari for Windows in 2007 and the first stable version arrived in 2008. Despite some innovative features, Safari never caught on with Windows users. Google’s Chrome, which is based on the same WebKit browser engine as Safari, on the other hand, quickly became one of the most popular browsers on the market. As MG noted last year, it only took Chrome a year to surpass Safari’s market share.

It was always obvious, though, that Safari for Windows was not a priority for Apple and users often complained that Safari (just like Apple’s other Windows applications) felt unnecessarily bloated and slow. Maybe Apple decided to put Safari for Windows on the back burner for now and focus on getting it right on OS X, but it’s curious that every reference of the Windows version is now gone from the site (with the exception of a number of support articles).

We have reached out to Apple and will update this post once we find out more.