Apple Releases Safari 4 - The World's Fastest & Most Innovative Browser

SAN FRANCISCO, June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today released Safari® 4, the world's fastest and most innovative web browser. Available for Mac® and Windows PCs and introduced as a beta in February of this year, Safari 4 features the Nitro engine which runs JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Safari 3.* Safari 4 makes browsing more intuitive and enjoyable with innovative features, such as Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow®, and support for modern web standards like HTML 5 and advanced CSS Effects.

"The successful beta release helped us fine tune Safari 4 into an even better, faster version that customers are going to love," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari is enjoyed by 70 million users worldwide and with its blazing fast speed, innovative features and support for modern web standards, it's the best browser on any platform."

Safari 4 is built on the world's most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.*

Starting with the development of the open source WebKit browser engine, Apple has been leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, enabling an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari 4 includes Top Sites, for an incredible visual preview of frequently visited and favorite pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; and Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks. Other innovative features include Smart Address Fields for automatically completing web addresses from an easy to read list of suggestions; Search Fields, to fine tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches; and Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text.

In Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™, available later this year, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent.** Snow Leopard makes Safari more resistant to crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process, so even if a plug-in crashes, Safari continues to run and the user simply has to reload the affected page.

Pricing & Availability
Safari 4 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download atwww.apple.com/safari. Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® v10.5.7 or Mac OS X Tiger® v10.4.11 and Security Update 2009-002, a minimum 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire®. Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at www.apple.com/safari.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac® 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML benchmark based on VeriTest's iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

**Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009 comparing prerelease Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6 with shipping Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Testing was conducted on a shipping MacBook® 2.0 GHz system and a shipping iMac 2.66 GHz system, both configured with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmarks based on the SunSpider Performance test comparing Safari running in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

[Giz Liveblog]

What were your impressions? What features do you like / not like?

Windows
On Windows, if you've never used Safari but used Chrome or Opera, it'll actually feel a lot like that, with the overhead tabs, Speed Dial, and even a few Chrome icons. After years of shunning standard Windows UI elements—which seemed especially dicky in a way, given how anal Apple can be about standardized UI themselves—Apple is actually playing nice. It's got the usual minimize, maximize and exit buttons, standard fonts and even real Windows shortcuts like Ctrl+Tab to cycle through tabs, so it actually mostly feels like it belongs on Windows now. Well, except for placing the X to kill tabs on the left side, which is annoying 'cause on Windows it should be on the right.

I'm still not quite sure how I feel about the pitch black look of the top tabs in Windows when the window is maximized if your default window color is one of the darker shades—yeah, it matches, but I think Chrome's approach, with blue tabs set down a little bit that are easy to distinguish, works a little better. Overall, I think I prefer the tabs on top, at least in Windows. What I love for sure is that there's an actual arrow on the right side which you grab to tear off the tab into a new window—which results in a cool little pop-out animation, like it was a squished up sponge or something—because I'm always accidentally tearing off tabs in Firefox when I just wanted to move it down the line.

Speed is actually not incredibly important in a way—loading sites like ESPN, the New York Times and Slate against Firefox 3.0.6 and Chrome 1.0.154, honestly, they're all pretty damn quick, averaging around 3 seconds, though on super-Javascript heavy pages Safari 4 and Chrome, both based on Webkit, perceptibly edge out Firefox.

Top Sites is pretty slow to load the first time you fire up Safari 4, but then it's instant. You can't manually add sites—it's automagical—and once you delete 'em they're gone. A star pops up in the top right corner when there's something new at that page, which is a nice touch. Cover Flow moves smoothly, at first, but can get jerky if trying to move through a ton of sites at once. I hate how it replaces what ever site you're looking at if you just click the icon—you have to make a icon or middle-click so it does load over whatever you're lookin' at.

The smart search bar brings up suggestions from Google much faster than Firefox does, but the actual address bar is nowhere near as brilliant. It only pulls suggestions using the main part of the URL (before .com or .net or whatever), not from anything after a slash, or even the page's title. For instance, if you start typing "giz" and you've been to Gizmodo, it'll bring up Gizmodo. But typing Safari, even if you've been to Apple's Safari pages, won't bring up anything since it's not safari.com. As some have noted, the blue progress is gone, which is annoying, but I didn't notice it initially if that tells you anything.

Full search history seems like the crowning navigational jewel here. It actually searches the text of websites you've visited, and even with fifty or so pages in my history so far, it's really fast and works well. I just wish it made it more clear where on the page the text was located before you click, and how many instances there were, though otherwise the use of Cover Flow is nice.

It gobbles resources in Windows: With 14 tabs open, it ate over 400MB of RAM.

Overall, I think it's a lot more Windows-friendly than the initial Windows versions of Safari, and its excellent performance (if your system can stand up to its resource consumption) actually makes it worth taking a look at again if you didn't like it originally (I sure as hell didn't). It doesn't have the Mr. Fantastic-style extendability of Firefox and it's not quite as stripped down as Chrome, but it tries to balance between feature rich and clean, and doesn't do a bad job.

Mac
Despite its Windows improvements, the new UI does look much better on OS X overall—the new tabs on top look works really well, I think, though its break with a more standard OS X layout might vastly annoy some people. Also History and Cover Flow look and feel more natural on Mac too.

Another Mac perk: Multitouch zooming, which lets you manipulate the new full-page zoom with iPhone pinch gestures. It's not silky smooth, but definitely slick—it's actually a lot like browsing a page on the iPhone, especially if you're using two-finger scroll to pan and stuff.

Speed difference between Safari 4 and Firefox is a bit more noticeable in OS X. It doesn't kill Firefox, but there's definitely a difference. Cover Flow runs more smoothly, from what I'm seeing, without the jerkiness I got on Windows sometimes, though full history search isn't any quicker—but that's still plenty fast. It does use resources more efficiently in OS X than in Windows: Those same 14 tabs only ate about 230MB of memory.

While it's hard to speak to stability yet and whether or not you should use it as your main browser, it seems okay so far and the new features and UI make it worth grabbing, even if you wanna hang on to a more stable build of Safari or Firefox in the meantime.

Top Sites sounds like Chrome and Opera's home page, with your most frequently visited websites in a wall of previews. The new Tabs on Top layout seems pretty Chrome-y too. It's also got full history search, and you can use Cover Flow to search through it and bookmarks. Firefox-y features come in the form of a smart address bar and smart search field. And hey, they're apparently a new Windows native look with standard Windows UI elements, whooooa—it's what you see in the shot above. It even uses Ctrl+Tab to move between tabs now, holy balls, even if the tabs are hard to distinguish with the black rim (to me, anyway).

The new features page is live, for the full rundown, if a little borked. Interestingly, it's the first browser to pass the Acid3 test.

Oh, and it's not just you if it's really slow to start up. Here's a shot of it in Leopard, with the new tabbed layout lookin' good:

Apple Announces Safari 4 - The World's Fastest & Most Innovative Browser

New Nitro Engine Runs JavaScript More Than Four Times Faster

CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today announced the public beta of Safari(R) 4, the world's fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac(R) and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.* Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow(R), to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

"Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications."

Safari 4 is built on the world's most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.*

Apple is leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards such as HTML 5 and CSS 3 for an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone(TM) and iPod(R) touch are all built on Apple's WebKit, the world's fastest and most advanced browser engine. Apple developed WebKit as an open source project to create the world's best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. The industry's newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.

Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:

— Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of

previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;

— Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they've seen before;

— Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes(R);

— Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;

— Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;

— Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;

— Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text;

— built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and

— a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.

Pricing & Availability

Safari 4 is a public beta for both Mac OS(R) X and Windows and is available immediately as a free download at http://www.apple.com/safari.

Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard(R) version 10.5.6 and Security Update 2009-001 or Mac OS X Tiger(R) version 10.4.11, a minimum 256MB of memory, and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire(R). Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at http://www.apple.com/safari.

* Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection

and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac(R) 2.8 GHz Intel

Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript

benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML

benchmark based on VeriTest's iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

(C) 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Safari, Cover Flow, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Leopard, Tiger, FireWire and iMac are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

[Apple]