The browser wars just got a whole lot more interesting with Safari entering the fray on Windows.

It’ll definitely be an uphill climb for Apple on this one, but a few years ago no one would have thought Firefox would be getting 500,000 downloads a day. If Safari is able to deliver the supposed 2x speed improvements over IE and almost 2x over Firefox 2, a lot of casual users who download iTunes may at least try it out – just like they did with Firefox.

This is an interesting strategy by Apple though. Is it simply to make the new .Mac syncing work, or is it to try and lure more users to OS X when they see how well Safari runs? Maybe they are just trying to make it so that web developers take Safari more into account when developing…

Can’t wait to download the beta for XP – it is hilarious that Apple is becoming one of the better Windows application developers. The first time I boot up XP in about 6 months will be to try out Safari for it.

The Sarafi 3 beta for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and OS X is now live – download it here.

[UPDATE]: I’m running the Safari 3 beta in OS X right now, doesn’t seem all that different but there is finally WYSIWYG support and you can resize text input boxes dynamically.

All the Google apps seem to be running more smoothly and things like the ‘Notes’ widget for iGoogle finally works in Safari.

But Safari beta also killed my ‘new tab’ button (a hack), and Apple apparently didn’t think to make one of their own. Luckily there are keyboard shortcuts.

[UPDATE 2]: Engadget has a bit more as does Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog.

[UPDATE 3]: As yes, Stan at franticindustries is on to it – the iPhone 3rd party apps are all going to be geared around Safari, so it only makes sense to have Safari on Windows, in effect making Safari a platform.