Safari vs IE - Prelims

Apple Inc. has released a BETA version of their internet browser for Windows - Safari. Apple is known world over for their "cute" designs and this one was supposed to be no different. Based on Apple's reputation of style I went ahead and installed Safari on my Vista PC (aero enabled) from www.apple.com/safari

The installation went fine and was quicker than that for IE 7 (given it validates genuine Windows PC, installs malicious software removal tool) etc. However, it did try to install additional software that it thought was useful for me and the ones that i respectfully didn't install.


I am a first time user of Safari and some of my initial impressions are as follows:
  1. Safari takes longer to start up than IE. While starting IE on my machine is a snap, it takes longer for Safari to start.

  2. While Safari makes a claim on it being faster than IE, I would not agree with the same. At best, they both load at the same time.


  3. The text comes out rendered very well on IE and Safari does an average job. See the screenshots below.
Webpage rendered in Safari




Webpage rendered in IE


Notice the text rendering that is much worse in Safari vis-a-vis IE.





In my few mins of normal usage, Safari didn't crash and so didn't IE 7. All the features of Safari are available on IE 7. So there is nothing extra!

For me given everything is same, IE7 does a better job of showing the webpages. I am staying with IE7!


Also read review for Safari here:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-safari-3-for-windows-download-now.html


Do let me know your comments if you tried Safari out...


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Comments

Unknown said…
Abhishek,

By loading time, Apple meant Page loading time and not the application loading time. Safari handles page elements quicker than IE or FF.

but the application is crashing few times for many users.See the Apple forum.

You can convert your FF to Safari in easy steps though. See how its done here http://www.dailydoseofinternet.com/2007/06/convert-firefox-to-safari-in-3-steps.html
Vasudev said…
I am also not impressed with Safari. Nothing Special.
But having similar problems as described about Rendering etc. Though not had any crashes but still not eager to use. Not friendly interface, i think they'll work on it.
Have you noticed, they have provided the Windows Media Player plugin which was made available by MS for firefox.
I installed and it works.
Anyway still Safari has to improve a lot.
Anonymous said…
I too agree with Vasu..Its not so impressive and worthy to look out. you'll find my review here- http://cyberiafreak.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!410E76C6390C7090!906.entry http://www.google.co.in/search?q=safari+sucks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
-Apple’s new release (Safari ) really sucks !! not worthy as like FFox. Decided to stay back with FF ;)

Mahesh
I had written a small review - how Safari is presently useless for Indic Language pages.

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