There's been a good deal of press about the release of Apple's web browser Safari for Windows, in its 3.0.1 incarnation. Most of the responses have been uniformly mixed to negative: it's slow, it has an unimpressive passel of features, and it's so hopelessly tied to its roots as an OS X application that it doesn't even exploit basic Windows UI conventions (like being able to resize a window from all four corners / sides).
When I first heard about it, I wondered: why even bother? To tempt people to switch to OS X? I courted the idea that iTunes was ported to the PC for the sake of such a thing (with PC compatibility for the iPod being the major justifier), but every version of iTunes I've dared to install has suffered from the same problems -- the program is bog-slow and clumsy, requires the presence of QuickTime to work at all, and there are better media players for Windows -- one already provided with Windows by default, come to think of it. The only Apple program I have at all is the bare installation of QuickTime, and that's mostly because there are more than a few sites out there that won't work at all without QT (like, say, Apple's own movie trailers site, which I visit regularly); it's more a matter of needing it than actually wanting it.
One of the reasons bandied around for bringing Safari to Windows which I find halfway plausible is developers: this gives a website designer the ability to test his site in Safari without having to drop cash for a Mac or bug someone who already has one. But let's face it: if there are enough deviations between the way Safari renders a given page and the way Firefox / Mozilla, or IE, or even Opera render a page, whose fault is that, really?
I'm probably going to give Safari a shot within the next week or so, if only because I maintain a site elsewhere where cross-browser issues are fairly important. But from what I've seen and heard so far, I remain unconvinced it'll even make a dent in the browser market -- and unconvinced that Apple is introducing it for the PC to even accomplish that in the first place.
One comment that I have heard, along the lines of your developer theory, is that Safari being the iphone browser, having a Windows port makes it easier for Windows users to develop applications for the iphone.
That would make more sense than just adding another browser to the pile. For I imagine that Joe average is likely to stick with what they have already so Safari is unlikely to make much inroads through that path. Unless they start packaging it with itunes or quicktime, similar to how they already offer a Windows Safari package complete with quicktime.
Personally, I will skip the beta versions. As a few friends have already installed and then fairly quickly uninstalled it after it totally refused to work on one PC, kept crashing on others and sort of working on another, some of the time. From the sound of it this is barely out of Alpha, let alone a beta.