Two events that may seem unrelated have converged this week to paint a picture about one company on the ascendancy and another company that’s faltering and seems to only understand how to damage its tarnished reputation even further.

First came Apple’s surprising announcement that some 11 million copies of Safari 4.0 were downloaded during the first three days it was available. Even more intriguing is the fact that six million of those downloads came from Windows users.

Now as you might recall, Apple’s first foray into building a Windows version brought force a Mac-like interface in all its glory. In a sense, the Windows user was being transported to another operating system universe. I can see, in part, this being a good thing, or just doing to that platform what some Windows developers have done to the Mac over the years by delivering apps that failed to follow Mac OS conventions. My first reaction was “serves them right.”

On the other hand, if Apple is serious about its cross-platform intentions, they really had to build a Windows app that can seamlessly integrate itself into that operating system. That has been done with Safari 4.0, which even uses the Windows font rendering system.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 6:00 PM and is filed under News and tagged with: Apple, Apps, Browser Wars, Cross Platform, deception, Developers, Interface, Mac, Mac Os, Mac-like, Operating System, Reputation, Safari, Windows, Windows User, Windows Users, Windows Version.