Turns out that Safari on Windows has been engineered to provide a very typical Windows experience. It’s buggy, slow, and unusable on some of the systems I’ve installed it on.

Is this acceptable? Steve seems to think so – it’s beta after all. Sorry, that just doesn’t cut it for me. If Apple we’re to use the same excuse, I’d label is a lame cop-out. I’m wondering if one of the realities that Apple has run into here is the extreme diversity of the Windows world. Diversity breeds complexity.

There is a vast difference between beta and useable software that the mainstream user can test – say, Google docs. Until it gets to that stage, tech companies have a responsibility to not to unleash broken software riddled with security holes onto the unwitting public (or Enterprises for that matter). That’s not what Apple’s brand or product promise is. I love Apple and have a ton of Apple kit, but this is a really sorry attempt on the Windows platform.

And, frankly, where I could get it to barely work, I.E. 7 appears vastly superior on a number of fronts. In my testing it’s just as fast, Livewriter and del.icio.us plug-ins work great, and the interface is as slick. The bad news here is that there are so many cool competitive options I simply choose to uninstall Apple – and they’ll have to do something wonderful to get me back to using Apple Safari on Windows.

Steve, business is in perpetual beta mode – we just choose not to make all our customers suffer through it.