Despite my trust in my beloved Tech Digest colleague Kat's review of Safari for Windows, being a current Mac-addict and Jobs fangirl, I had to download and have a look at the version 3 beta myself.
Even whilst doing so, the blogosphere was buzzing with rumours of security defects and other problems. Remembering this is a beta, I tried not to curse too loudly when it just randomly crashed about an hour after I started using it, but there are one or two other problems too.
I really can't discern a difference in page upload time. Apple are claiming that Safari wipes the floor with both Firefox and IE in this respect, but while I can't speak for IE, having not touched it in over a year, I cannot in good conscience claim that I've noticed any such thing. It's definitely not the claimed 1.6 times as fast at the moment.
The default Apple homepage took several seconds (around five) to open up; it was down to two or three seconds when I reset the homepage to Google. Firefox is about the same. I generally work with several tabs open at once: Movable Type, Shiny Shiny, Tech Digest, Bloglines, Statcounter and any number of pages of research on a given topic. Tabbed browsing was easy and as intuitive as ever, but it was odd to have the exit button for each tab on the left.
Having to customise the toolbar to add the "Home" button was odd, but it didn't bother me because I can't say I've ever bothered to actually USE the home button. It was far more pivotal to add "Stop". The Google search field was included, as were a number of cheeky links whenever I typed in a URL - I wasn't too impressed at this, but, again, it wasn't a major issue for me.
Apple aren't making any concessions to Windows styling (and, given Vista's fugly interface, it's just as well) except for moving the exit buttons to the top right. Otherwise, everything is Apple territory, from instructions that refer to "pressing Ctrl + click" to Apple dialogue boxes and resizing from the bottom right corner.
The availability of Safari is mainly good news for developers, since the iPhone will come packing the browser and with no SDK being produced, web apps will probably be the way forward for those planning to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. For Apple, any increase in the poor 4.9% share in the browser market (after IE and Firefox) is a good increase.
While it's good to see ever-increasing communication between the Jobs and Gates camps, I can't really see why you'd want to make the switch. As with the perplexingly pointless Boot Camp (unless you're a developer, why would you buy a Mac just to run Windows on it?!), it's one of those cases that just serves to highlight that when in Rome, wear a toga and a wedding ring on your right hand. In other words, if you want to use Safari, use a Mac.
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