Apple’s claim that “Safari. The world’s best browser. Now on Windows, too” is a tall order. Unimpressed with the initial Safari port, Safari 3.0, I went into this latest update with speculations. There are still numerous bugs that need to be straightened out.
Originally, I was running an international (Japanese) version of Windows and Safari struggled with the bi-lingual setting I had placed it in. From the “discussions” on the Apple board, it seems the same issue is still recurring in the latest update. Personally, now running on an English version of Windows, it gave me some odd errors when closing down which I still haven’t been able to resolve and no solutions from Apple either.
Apple claims that Safari loads websites almost 2x faster than Internet Explorer (in my view isn’t a difficult feat) and 1.7x faster than Mozilla Firefox. While this claim may be founded (from observation), it certainly doesn’t do much when everything else isn’t working in line.
Overall, until Apple gets their act together and delivers a fully working product, it’ll be unlikely that I’ll be moving from Firefox. On a more positive note, Safari is an extremely easy-to-look-at, easy-to-use browser. It’s not overly complicated, everything you need is on hand. It has the streaked metallic Apple look found, also, in its iTunes and Quicktime line-up.
In due time, we’ll see if Apple makes a concerted effort to break into the Windows browser network. Macs have already been invaded by Microsoft (just won’t stop will they) and Mozilla has its footing in the door also. I’ll be waiting to see where they go with it.