Except that Safari has not been released for the operating system that I do web development under. So no.
Besides a few profiling tools, his list of arguments seems to boil down to "things are prettier in Safari". Maybe it's just me, but that's really not my number one feature when looking at development tools.
Since when was "things are prettier" a bad thing? I do extensive Windows testing using browsers, and Safari's rendering engine is leagues ahead of everything else, its developments tools are more polished than Firebug and easier to figure out, and it's one of only two browsers that fully supports HTML 5. Firefox renders things shittily (even on the Mac, which has possibly the best rendering engine out there available for all apps by default, it fails Acid 3 at the moment, and while Firebug's great for some things, at other things it fails hard.
Firefox is available for Linux, OSX and Windows. It's open-source to boot and is available in different builds and brands for different systems.
That means that 100% of developers can use Firefox, regardless of the OS they choose to run.
Two browsers can each be good without one rendering the other entirely useless. Safari's development environment is in many ways better than Firefox's, so why not use it when you've got it (which is 99% of the time)?
It's also available under Solaris, AIX, *BSD, IRIX, HP-UX...
That makes it very close to 100% of the desktop and laptops around.
The only software I know runs on more platforms is Emacs, which I had on my WinCE-based IBM workpad z-50.
I'm saying that things being pretty is not my primary concern when looking for development tools. It's OK if they are pretty, but that's pretty far down on the list of things I care for.
As for Safari's rendering engine, I see you claim that is "leagues ahead of everything else" on Windows. Are you talking about text-rendering? In that case I would like to comment on how it is different from all the other software on Windows. Running its own anti-aliasing it just stands out and looks weird.
If you are talking about speed, I honestly don't care. Same reason I am completely yawning over Chrome. If you are talking about CSS3 feature-set, I honestly don't care either, because using any CSS3 features while people are still using MSIE would be messing up the experience for about 50% of your visitors.
As for Safari being "one of only two browsers that fully supports HTML5"... You know that HTML5 is only a draft at this point? The spec isn't even finalized. The Acid 3 test even admits this much, saying it's testing features which may or may not end up in a official spec.
Excuse me for not caring very much for Safari, when Firefox is my main browser and does everything I need. I'll test my shit in Safari, but that's as far as I'm willing to go with exposure to craptacular Apple software on Windows.
I'm not defensive. You're the one who just got into a little minirant. I was explaining why I prefer Safari for development and you returned with the little gems like "Excuse me for not caring very much for Safari, when Firefox is my main browser and does everything I need." You know, some of us here don't comment just to "beat" you. Sometimes we comment because we honestly think you've raised a point worth debating and discussing. I'm sorry for responding to you like you wanted a debate, instead of assuming you were a prick.
If you are talking about speed, I honestly don't care. If you are talking about CSS3 feature-set, I honestly don't care either, because using any CSS3 features while people are still using MSIE would be messing up the experience for about 50% of your visitors.
So there's no room for graceful degradation, then? If CSS3 lets me craft a better user experience for some users, then I'll give it to them. It's why we don't primarily design for IE 6 and its crippled users. We give other users what they want, then focus on stepping down.
As for Safari being "one of only two browsers that fully supports HTML5"... You know that HTML5 is only a draft at this point? The spec isn't even finalized. The Acid 3 test even admits this much, saying it's testing features which may or may not end up in a official spec.
Safari supports what there is at the moment. That's better than Mozilla's "We don't need to do anything re:HTML 5 and our competitors are evil for supporting the standards" line that they touted last year.
I'll test my shit in Safari, but that's as far as I'm willing to go with exposure to craptacular Apple software on Windows.
Ignore all the other stuff I commented on, since it's obvious you'll just disagree and neither of us will get anything out of it. What makes Safari craptacular? Safari 4 on Windows has a native feel, it runs 3x faster than Firefox, uses less memory, has a smoother interface in many ways, and has quite a few features (including that anti-aliasing) that Firefox lacks. Perhaps it's not your choice for a web browser, which is totally coo', but I resent your calling it craptacular and implicitly insulting all the Windows users who think Safari 4 is worth their using.
Sometimes we comment because we honestly think you've raised a point worth debating and discussing. I'm sorry for responding to you like you wanted a debate, instead of assuming you were a prick.
In that case, I guess I read your comment wrong. Sorry about that.
It looks "weird" because it uses a much better method of anti-aliasing.
It's still different from everything else on the platform. To me that's a bad thing. Maybe not to you, maybe not to designers, but to me it is.
So there's no room for graceful degradation, then?
There is. But in the meantime I've found that I can cover lots of browser shortcomings trough jQuery instead of CSS and browser-specific hacks. Definitely not ideal, but it works. When CSS3 gets here, I'll prefer that instead.
Safari supports what there is at the moment.
I'm not against progress, but even Firefox has limited HTML5 support these days, and it's really not a major selling point for me as of yet.
What makes Safari craptacular? Safari 4 on Windows has a native feel
I actually had to check this out. Seems you are actually right. Historically though Apple has always tried to cram the Apple look and feel down my throat when it is obvious I don't want a Mac, giving me a non-native interface. I resent that.
That said, the fact remains that it is simply not what I am looking for in a browser (see my other post [1]).
As for my main complaint (with regard to the software being crap), my Core i7 is the first machine which iTunes is actually responsive and non-laggy on. I was genuinely surprised when I discovered that. I had to get a 2GHz Dual Core machine before Quicktime could play things fullscreen without skipping. My 200MHz Pentium MMX could that without CPU load.
When I refer to Apple software on Windows as craptacular, that is because they have quite a history for being just that.
Nearly every statement you've made about Safari has been subjective. You're entitled to that. But there's no reason to lose your lunch when somebody disagrees.
I'll share my own subjectivity that the only thing "worse than shit" right now is your attitude about this.
We're talking about a browser.
And I'll tell you what... FF on Mac is absolutely horrible. I use safari on my mac (at home). When using Windows (at work), I use FF3 and Firebug.
I don't mind going back and forth between them. And I have learned to accept that fonts do look fuzzy in Safari and the dev-tools in FF are sub-optimal.
Prettiness? If it blends in with the native look of the OS, that is "pretty" to me. Safari fails at this. Firefox does not.
Speed? I have a Core i7 idling at 1% CPU all the time, unless I'm doing HD video encoding. Even on my Core2 Duo, I can't remember last time I was CPU-constrained when browsing stuff. Why on earth would I care about speed?
Standards compliance? Firefox is top notch, and while Opera and Safari may go full 100% on ACID3, that is for a spec which is not even finalized and standardized yet. Anyhow, you need to keep MSIE in mind when developing stuff, so this point is pretty moot.
So what do I care for in a browser?
Stability, that it works intuitively, that it's configurable, that it sports a decent feature set, keeping mouse-dependency to a minimum and that most operations apart from link-clicking can be done trough keyboard operations and probably most of all: that it is extendible and that I can add whatever crap I feel I need in a browser. Things like Ubiquity, Firebug, Flashblock, Adblock, Rikaichan, Mousegestures, Greasemonkey, custom dictionaries and Bugmenot.
I pretty much think that the browser should supply me with the core basics, and let me decide from there on what I think a browser should be. If the browser is going to be the "OS of the web and the future", you better believe I want to have a browser which I can make mine.
Edit: Evidently Safari 4 actually sports a somewhat native interface in Windows.