You Sexy Thing

File this under: I know enough to make myself look stupid.

Look at the dialog labeled “General” in this blog post. This is the preferences dialog in Safari for Windows. There are very few clues that it’s a dialog for a Windows application. Really, the only clue is the ‘x’ close button in the upper right corner. Compare this to the other picture which is the preferences dialog for iTunes for Windows. It looks like a standard Windows dialog.

It sure looks like the Safari dialog was built using Interface Builder. The drop downs are Mac drop downs, not Windows.This seems rather unlikely, except that I now know (thanks to Amit Singh) that Interface Builder used to run on Windows, as did OpenStep. Could Apple be reviving this long-dormant functionality?

If I get time, I may try and explore Safari for Windows further and see what I can dig up. I suspect someone with more time and experience will discover any secrets long before I do.

Another (not exclusive) possibility is that Apple hopes that Safari becomes yet another “gateway drug” to get Windows users to switch to the Mac. Making the UI as Mac-like as possible does a few things:

• First, it helps acclimate Windows users to Mac UI conventions.
• Second, it lets Windows users know how much cooler looking Mac apps are.
• Finally, it let’s Windows users know that using software on a Mac isn’t that hard.

I actually have friends who are convinced that they are so acclimated to Windows, they wouldn’t ever be able to be productive on a Mac. To some extent I used to believe this about myself. Not that I couldn’t learn it, but that the learning curve was steep. Of course these days I also have friends who, like me, I wondering why they waited so long to make the switch.