Genuine question: has anyone here actually ever used Safari for Windows, except for browser testing? I've never met anyone.
So this doesn't really surprise me. Looking up the numbers says Safari is used by 0.46% percent on Windows users -- and it doesn't seem to have ever gotten much higher than that. Why waste resources on it?
Safari for Windows was released more than a year before the first Google Chrome beta. Before that, Webkit wasn't available on Windows at all and it was impossible to test websites on Webkit without a Mac. Google Chrome is now an excellent and widespread browser on Windows so there's no point maintaining Safari for Windows anymore.
I have encountered more than one bug that exists in either Chrome or Safari, but not both. If you only test using Chrome on Windows, you still won't really know how it will behave in Safari.
While I'm a Mac user and have used Safari every day for years, I gave it a quick try on my work Windows desktop when it first came out. Since the interface was so much slower than Firefox (probably due to all the custom drawing) I didn't bother to stick with it.
Apple has never really pushed Safari for Windows at all. The theory I've read that always made sense to me was that it was created to allow Windows developers to test pages without an iPhone (or later iPad).
But here we are a few years later and the cost of getting a Mac is lower than it was. Apple already has a ton more developers thanks to the iPhone and iPad. And if you just want to see "will my site look good on an iPhone" you can buy an iPod touch for ~$200.
I'm actually a bit surprised it took them this long. It clearly wasn't an important product for them.
This is where dropping Windows support may harm Safari. Yes we can test against webkit via Chrome now so in theory anything that works on the current PC trinity (FF, Chrome, IE9+) should work just fine in Safari, any bugs that get raised by Safari users that can't be reproduced in Chrome are just going to get labelled "NONREPRO" or "WONTFIX". Chrome and Safari are not completely in-step so there could easily be the odd issue that affects one and not the other.
Admittedly this isn't a big problem for Apple users so the above concern isn't a killer: they can use FF or Chrome if Safari won't cooperate (though good luck convincing some users that switching browser is a valid workaround for any given bug).
I've actually used it for almost a year, as a primary browser. One of the reasons was that it allows (allowed?) switching of font rendering engine to either Apple or Microsoft one. It was part of the experiment whether it's possible to live with a Mac with its extremely blurry though shape-preserving rendering.
Turns out they've bet on ultrahigh resolution displays, where their rendering is perfect.
The other way to go (which I've noticed most Mac people do go with) is comparatively larger fonts. As long as you are above 12px, the Apple font rendering not only looks nicer, but I seem to be able to read it faster.
Of course, I want 12px or smaller unless a display is really high DPI... ;-)
Have you ever considered using GDIPP or Mactype? I used both, GDIPP doesn't work with Chrome so i switched to Mactype a few months back. Everything looks great, but in some situations, certain letters don't show up (like the lowercase "l") which happens very rarely.
So this doesn't really surprise me. Looking up the numbers says Safari is used by 0.46% percent on Windows users -- and it doesn't seem to have ever gotten much higher than that. Why waste resources on it?