Today, Apple released a public beta of Safari 3, the default MacOS X webbrowser. The final version will be included in the upcoming MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard” which is scheduled for October, but for the first time it will also be released for Windows XP and Vista.
Although I really like the fact that it’s released for the Windows platform, I wonder if Safari will manage to gain popularity under Windows users.
First of all, Apple’s main selling point seems to be Safari’s speed. They claim Safari is “the fastest web browser on any platform” and that it “loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2″. All though these claims sound good (and even if they are true), I doubt this will have many people switch to Safari. For most regular users on Windows, Internet Explorer (or Firefox) is fast enough.
Besides it’s speed, many of the other features mentioned on the Safari page are already in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Looking at the feature list the only interesting options which Safari has to offer over the other webbrowsers are SnapBack and it’s built-in RSS reader.
Admittedly, even if Safari had all the features and functionality you could wish for, I doubt it could capture a big slice of the browser market. Take for example Firefox. One thing that really makes Firefox special is the fact that it can be extended and customized through it’s numerous plugins. This alone makes it far superiour to Internet Explorer. Still, Internet Explorer is by far the most dominant browser for Windows.
Why? The reasons are simple :
- A lot of users don’t know other webbrowsers even exist. Some even don’t know that the webbrowser they’re using is called Internet Explorer;
- and those that do know about other webbrowsers don’t care about extra functionality or simply don’t want to switch over because they’re used to Internet Explorer.
This leaves us with those users that are willing to switch over. I think they will probably do so because they want more functionality. And for those Firefox (or Opera) have more to offer than Safari.
If you want to try out the new, free beta version of Safari 3, then head on to :
