Apple has released a final version of Safari 3.1 for Windows. Is it really faster than Firefox?
Yes, actually it is… the start-up is lightning fast - less than 2 seconds. You’d think that it’s memory resident, but actually Safari is a very small app (3.28MB) & so is the installation (18MB).
The interface is basic, with the graphite Apple theme, just like iTunes. Safari has excellent CSS support, mainly due to its Webkit platform (also used by Nokia). All fonts rendered on Safari have extra font-smoothing, making it look rather blurred.
The progress bar is located on the address bar itself, with the Aqua animation. However, I was really surprised when Safari displayed links when I used it for the first time. Well, it turned out Safari imported my address history from Firefox… without my permission!
Safari has a built-in RSS Feed Reader that pops up when you click the blue RSS icon on the Address bar. The Reader itself isn’t that bad either, but I still prefer Google Reader.
Apple has included some OS X animations with the notification tab that slides out from upwards. & the download bar is very similar to the one found in Firefox.
The Verdict:
Oh yes, it does! In more common terms, while Firefox is the equivalent of Adobe Photoshop CS3 where you can loads of plugins & do loads of stuff… Safari is like Microsoft Paint - basic & stripped-down.
Safari is indeed very fast, pages are loaded quicker than usual, but it’s really too prehistoric. You can’t use Add-Ons on it, it takes as much memory as Firefox (100MB+), there are no plugins, it crashes on YouTube & when you press Back, it reloads the previous page completely. Safari is just like the browser I’d expect to find on a mobile phone.
Even then Apple has decided to force it down on users who use Apple Software Update. Safari is enabled by default! Even Mozilla's CEO has labelled Safari as malware.
Safari is completely ill-suited for Windows users. It’s just another piece of bloatware from Apple… I wonder how Apple found it to be the World’s Best Browser… in MacLand maybe?