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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

It took Microsoft 6 months to port one version of IE to another version of Windows, while Chrome and Firefox are available not only on all versions of Windows (XP included, which is 40% of the market), but also on Linux and Mac OS. I thought Microsoft wanted to be taken seriously in the browser market?

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Honestly, how is this a fair argument at all?

And also, to make it more complete let's add in Safari. Released (as a beta) in 2003, with its first Windows version in 2007. The Windows version's last (read: no more releases after this) release was Safari 5.[1]

Are we to take Apple seriously since they only support iOS and OSX?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)

This is more in line with Safari 6 only being available for Mountain Lion upon launch, and taking 6 months to be available for Lion.

Chrome, Firefox and Opera provide more than enough credibility to the argument, even if Safari no longer works on Windows.

Besides, OS X has moved towards multi-touch gestures, for example, which Safari supports. It makes sense that they'd have to give up on Windows.

Why? Most Windows devices being sold have touchscreens. Most Macs do not.

I think you'd have trouble buying a Mac that doesn't have multitouch support today, considering that Macbooks come with multitouch trackpads and iMacs come with Magic Mouses (with desktop trackpads advertised alongside them).

If the trackpad counts, then virtually every Windows device supports multitouch too. So why is this a reason for Apple to stop supporting Safari on Windows? I don't think it has anything to do with gestures.

I think it has to do with webkit2 which safari uses. I think they haven't ported webkit2 to work on windows.

At least I can run a recent version of Safari on a windows machine today. I don't think it's possible to run a recent version of IE on Mac OS.

They are quick to take advantage of new Win8 features, and it took a while before their backport of some of them (Platform Update) to Win7 can be finally released.

That may make some sense if they were already ahead of the others with IE10, but they are about 2 years behind in HTML5 support. Spending another 6 months just to port it to a pretty similar OS of their own doesn't make me very optimistic about IE's future.

I guess it's easier to ship an updated rendering engine if you are also the one shipping the single embedding application of said rendering engine, unfortunately.

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