Apple has surprised us with Safari for Windows. But is it a genuine competitor to IE and FF for Windows or just another drab browser? We run our own real-life speed tests.
 Safari for Windows: Apple has eschewed Windows UI design rules to almost entirely recreate the look and feel of Safari for Mac (even going so far as to only allow window resizing via the bottom right-hand corner of the window) |
We, the aesthetically challenged, spreadsheet-loving, fun-hating, number crunching
PC users don't get too much out of Apple's WWDC events.
Apparently we just sulk in the corner and wait for it to finish, secretly hoping for Steve Jobs to do a Bill Gates.
Also, whenever John Carmack appears to showcase his new graphics engine we throw a tantrum and overclock our machines just a little bit more. Nothing says a hardcore PC
like volumes of black smoke rising from the chassis.
Anyway, this time Apple has unveiled something for us: Safari for Windows. That's right! We now have one more browser to add to IE, Firefox and Opera.
Safari is based on the WebCore engine which itself is based on KHTML that powers Konqueror. (FYI: Firefox is based on Gecko, Opera is based on Presto and IE for Windows is based on Trident.)
According to Apple, Safari is the "world's best browser" (the school of unfounded exaggeration and hyperbole is alive and well) and there are 12 reasons why you'll love it
Jobs' WWDC presentation mentions that Safari for Windows is the "most innovative browser", "fastest", "twice as fast as IE 7", "1.6 times faster than Firefox 2". He showed a bunch of figures which indicate that under Windows XP Safari has the fastest JavaScript and HTML performance, not to mention the quickest loading time. You can see these amazing figures here.
Although the version of Safari for Windows is still in Beta we decided to run it through a few tests of our own. These tests are quite rudimentary but they do give an indication of where things stand.
Safari hands-on
Our first impression was briefly sullied by a crash bug which happened whenever we tried to open Safari. The root cause turned out to be a proxy configured in Internet Explorer which Safari tried to use. Unfortunately it crashed each time it tried to do so. Removing proxy settings in IE brought Safari back to life.
In speed testing, for most pages, Safari's speed was generally on par with Firefox 2 and Opera 9.20. I noticed that Safari, occasionally, stalled while downloading data.
The anti-aliased font rendering in Safari made text look different (bolder) to other browsers. Apple has included some of its key fonts shipped with OS X - including Lucida Grande - which it uses in the Safari interface. Some people will like the stronger anti-aliasing, while others will wish it could be turned off. We didn't mind it too much either way. Some interesting information about Safari's font rendering can be found here.
 Anti-aliasing compared: the same text rendered in Safari (top) and Firefox (bottom) |
Surprisingly Safari’s memory usage was quite high. Windows Task Manager reported that Safari consumed a little over 45,000KB with just one page opened against Firefox with 28, 400KB and Opera with 23,600KB. Keep in mind, though, that Safari is still in Beta. It should improve. It's probably also worth noting that on systems built in the last few years, the difference between 45MB and 28MB is fairly insignficant, given most people's usage of at least 512MB and often more than 1GB of RAM.
Next we ran a CSS rendering test. Safari blew Firefox out of the water but scored worse than Opera. This test positions 2500 DIVs, reloads the page three times and takes the average time. Safari averaged about 50 to 60ms, Opera clocked at 20ms, Firefox performed rather poorly with 120ms. Even Internet Explorer 6 beat it with 40ms.
The Acid2 test showed that Safari is no slouch when it comes to following standards. It did a perfect rendering of the face with Opera being the only other browser being able to do so.
Google Docs compatibility was the next major test and here things nearly became interesting. While trying to open a spreadsheet we got a message: “Oops, sorry Safari is not yet supported”. We were, however, able to click on “OK” and proceed further. The spreadsheet seemed to work fine. We were able to save it, open in Firefox and continue our number crunching. There must be some compatibility problems with Safari and Google Docs but for basic usage it seemed acceptable.
 Google spreadsheets: still not supported under Safari -- even in 3.0 |
Final Thoughts
Safari performs as you would expect from a Beta product. It's a nice browser, but it's unlikely to grow beyond its current five percent market share in the long term.
Yes, Apple has excellent marketers, loyal fans and a very long reach but there is nothing in Safari that makes it better than Firefox or Opera on the Windows platform. In fact, it lacks the excellent plug-in architecture that pushes Firefox over the line in comparison to IE7 for many users.
Windows users will try it for novelty (thus temporarily increasing its market penetration) but will not stick with it. Apple may try to boost its penetration by bundling it with iTunes, but at the same time risks damaging its reputation in the same way companies like Real have over the years by bundling in stuff that people don't really intend to download.
We are nonetheless glad that Safari has joined the Windows world -- at a bare minimum, it's excellent news for developers who want to be able to test their websites for compatibility with the Mac's default browser, but don't want to have to buy a Mac to do so. We'll follow its progress.
My verdict
Good: the promise of speed; simplicity, significantly easier-to-use bookmark manager than other browsers.
Bad: doesn't always follow Windows app conventions; uninspired, dull, metallic look; lack of add-ons.
Could take or leave it: bolder text rendering.