Inbox:Last month Apple launched the Safari 3 browser for both Windows PC and Macs. That means PC users now have yet another industrial-strength browser to choose from out of several others.
Can it match up to the competition? First of all, why would Apple, which makes Macs, produce a browser for the PC? The simplest answer is that Safari, like the iPod, is a Trojan horse. Apple's reasoning is that if more and more people use Apple software on their PC - most notably the iTunes music software with the hugely successful iPod - the more they will enjoy Apple's consumer-friendly software and eventually buy Apple hardware.
The main claim for Safari by Apple is that it is the "world's fastest browser". Of course, it would be possible to argue till the end of time about whether this was the case, but it does reference the industry standard iBench tests regarding speed. In this case Safari renders web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. However, some testers have reported no difference in speed between the browsers.
The large grain of salt one must swallow is that so far this is still being called a Beta release, not a full-blown release of the software. As a result, there are continuing reports that the browser hangs and freezes frequently on the PC.
However, Safari does contain features you won't find in Firefox or Explorer, such as the ability to drag tabs out of the main browsing window, thus turning it into its own browser window, which is pretty nifty. Its handling of RSS feeds is also pretty good.
Safari looks similar to iTunes and tends to render web pages quickly.
When comparing other browsers you will find that sites often look different between them. In Safari, sometime this equates to bolder and darker fonts on typefaces, and some tweaking of your type-handling settings may be required.
Ultimately though, the question is whether a PC user would bother making the shift to Safari when they have Internet Explorer pre-installed. ITunes is needed to work an iPod, but Safari must be downloaded by choice. In addition, it lacks some of the features other browsers offer - notably Firefox - such as advertisement blocking, dictionary search and the ability to add the search engine of your choice.
Keyboard controls on Safari are also different to both Explorer and Firefox.
Would Safari 3 appeal to the average Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox user? Yes, there is a noticeable speed increase in web page surfing, but it seems unlikely most PC users would trade all the other differences for that. Until Safari comes out of its beta phase and improves on the PC, you're better off using it where it belongs: on a Mac.
