John Gruber was the first person - that I saw - who points out that Apple makes money on Google searches done with Safari's built-in search-box. (i.e. not just browsing to google.com.) That's the angle I was trying to fill in. Apple didn't port Safari just to grow browser share. They didn't do it just to help develop for the iPhone. They did it to make cold hard cash, even if it's not obvious how.
John Gruber's angle and my angle are not mutually exclusive. In order to grow Safari's market share, and the associated search revenues, Apple has to do more than just put it out there and say "we've got the better browser." Firefox and Opera have already been doing that for years. Firefox has had some success with that, Opera less so. Safari now has to compete not only against the incumbent Internet Explorer, but also Firefox and Opera. To entice people, Apple has to create some perceived advantage to using Safari to access some part of "the cloud." .Mac can be the way to do that.
Wait a minute... "perceived advantage" of one browser over another? Isn't that what started the standards wars in the 90s? Well, yes, but that's not at issue here. In the standards wars, Netscape and Microsoft were fighting to control the de facto standards of the entire World Wide Web. If Apple wants to add value to their own web site when viewed with their own browser, so what. Especially if the browser is a free download. Do you feel outrage that the YouTube video player only plays videos from YouTube's own site? Nope.
Helping to develop for the iPhone may be a secondary motivation, but it's not the primary one. I just don't buy that, and here's why: If you're developing a web app with Safari on Windows, you're not developing for the iPhone. You're developing for Safari on Windows. Any web developer worth his salt will tell you that you can't develop for browser X on platform Y and just assume that browser X runs the same on platform Z. Differences in the way the application interacts with the underlying platform APIs can cause subtle bugs. (Or not so subtle!) You must cross-test against each combination of browser and platform. Indeed, the initial surge of Safari/Windows exploits hinges exactly on this fact:
On the OS X platform Apple has enjoyed the same luxury [...] namely intimate operating system knowledge. The integration with the originally intended operating system is tightly defined, but the breadth of knowledge is crippled when the software is released on other systems and mistakes and mishaps occur.
- Thor Larholm
URL protocol handlers on the Windows platform work by executing a process with specific command line arguments. When Apple released Safari for the Windows platform they neglected to implement a proper level of input validation for these arguments
- Thor again
Plus, to take advantage of the iPhone's new hotness, like making calls, you need an iPhone to test that stuff! So you may as well do your early work on the browser with which you are most comfortable. Would Apple like that browser to be Safari? Of course. But from the developer's own perspective, having the iPhone as a deployment target is not a compelling reason by itself to do your early work in Safari.
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