I think it’s an interesting idea, and even if it fails to catch on and only picks up another couple percentage points of market share in the Windows world, it’ll at least make cross-browser development a whole lot easier, as you mentioned. From a strategic standpoint, yeah, I see the benefit of getting more hooks into the Windows world (and thus maybe getting more people to move to OS X in the long-term), but it is a different move than iTunes. With iTunes, Apple could sell you iPods and songs from the music store. Safari, other than the vague hope to get people on OS X, doesn’t have direct revenue potential. Makes one wonder if this is going to be an indicator of the next couple of years… iChat on Windows? With all the cool stuff they’re pushing into iChat (sharing screens, files, presentations, video, etc.), it’d definitely be useful to get more of the market supporting that.

(Oooh! I just noticed while typing this that Safari 3 supports resizable form fields, which is a change from Safari 2. Cool beans.)

Good point. I’ve also run into John Gruber’s remarks on it:

My somewhat-informed understanding is that Apple is currently generating about $2 million per month from Safari’s Google integration. That’s $25 million per year. If Safari for Windows is even moderately successful, it’s easy to see how that might grow to $100 million per year or more.

I always forget about that revenue generator. It goes to show that my point above that Safari “doesn’t have direct revenue potential” isn’t exactly accurate.