I love Apple. I really do. While this year’s keynote did not hold the surprises I was hoping for, it did reveal an intriguing new strategy for Apple’s conquest of the computing age… Safari.

It seems obvious (to me) by the announcements of web-standards as the sandbox SDK for the iPhone platform, and the release of Safari on Windows, that Apple is beginning a new strategy to take over the world. Before this annoucement, I might have said that it’s just convenient to use Safari because the technology is lying around being underutilized. But the announcement of Safari on Windows makes it clear that they are not just using Safari (on Mac OS X and the iPhone) because they can, they’re pushing it as a ubiquitous web/iPhone/web-enabled-devices development platform.

Getting lots of people to use the iPhone means they’re going to be using Safari. Weirdo Windows owners who are shelling out the $1k it’s gonna cost to own an iPhone, but are too cheap to move to Mac will download Safari so they can feel like a Mac owner and will promptly be looked down upon by the Apple fan-boys as wanna-bees.

By my reasoning, this would put widespread adoption of the iPhone as key to popularizing and getting widespread adoption of Safari on Windows. Otherwise, I doubt very much that there are going to be droves of people that are going to actively go download and use Safari as their daily web-browser on their Windows box. It all hinges on the success of the iPhone. It’s hard enough to get Windows people to switch from using FireFox, let alone telling them to consider another choice: Safari.

“Safari what? I just want to surf the web.” Microsoft won the computer industry game of monopoly exploiting one incontrovertible fact when comes to the average Joe: Joe doesn’t care what he’s using as long as it was cutting-edge when he bought it, and it is still working for him. Then you also have the misguided souls who jumped on the Windows Bandwagon and joined the ranks of the Anti-Mac-Haters-Because-Anything-They-Don’t-Know-Scares-Them (aka, Everyone-Uses-Windows) crowd.

So, while I’m all in favor of Apple being able to take a big bite out of the Internet Explorer market share percentage, I’m hoping it doesn’t make Apple into the enemy (Microsoft). I guess, looking at the bright side, we’ll be all that much closer to a full web standards development community.

Mark my words though, Apple’s world wide domination is just beginning.

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