Apple Safari to be released for the Windows Platform!

[bangbang023 Veteran]

I'm surprised that a mod and web dev like yourself doesn't seem to realize that there's a lot of work to be done to port a browser from one OS to another. I'm not saying you're not supposed to comment, as thats what I made this thread for, but even you have to admit that "not being impressed" with a browser's first incarnation on a completely new platform is just silly. I mean, what did you expect? For it to be spectacularly quick, act just like a Windows browser, and render at an acceptable level for you considering the circumstances? A lot of people here are sounding like noobs here, including you, with these silly comments. I mean, from your post count, I can tell you aren't a novice here, so why make such a noobish statement? Leave your "im not impressed" for when this app has a fighting chance, not when its barely out of the womb. :|

Apple is the one that released it and Jobs himself was up there saying how it trounced IE in all these benchmarks. Once you release a product and immediately start comparing it to the other main players out there, all criticism is fair play. Hell, look at Quicktime. That's been out forever and still doesn't work all that well on Windows.

[MGS4-SS]

Does anyone know how to override the default font style on websites and use my own?

[Dashel]

Be still my beating heart. :rolleyes:

[Sniper101]

I liked it only tested it for about 1 hour on my Vista box and it worked well, wasn't keen on the whole apple start page it loaded about the same amount of time firefox took to load and Safari Loaded neowin faster then firefox but there wasn't much difference.

[TruckWEB]

Crashes when I press anywhere :( (Win Vista Ultimate 32bit)

Uninstalled...

I can't do nothing related to bookmark with Safari, it crash. Using Vista x64.

[Rappy Veteran]

I will probably leave it till final...I mean I tried it but memory was eaten to quickly...

[Denis W. Veteran]

OK, if we can forgive Apple this one time for their marketing department running their usual bull**** for each new product info page: Their first efforts to port Safari to Windows is not that bad. The browser installed and ran fine on Vista Ultimate x86. The text rendering isn't that bad, but I've got used to ClearType, as many users here have. Their user interface has much to be desired: at least if they insist on porting over the Aqua interface, give us some Aero shadows for the Vista version of Safari!

This is a good first attempt to bring a working KHTML browser to Windows. It'll please developers and testers, but I doubt it'll make that much of an impact on browser usage numbers.

First thing to fix: memory usage. It used 145 MB just for this one little post. My moderately extension-heavy Firefox with a bunch of undo tabs stored in memory is at 131 MB.

(OK, I had more typed up here, but Safari clipped off at least half of my post. Damn it! Time to repost this in Firefox.)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I can't do nothing related to bookmark with Safari, it crash. Using Vista x64.

Same here. Running Vista Ultimate x86.

Did a poor Apple intern upload a pre-beta perhaps instead of the real thing and will be publicly flogged by Jobs himself?

[Alan Zeino]

I havn't experienced any of the above yet. It's amazingly fast, it starts in about 0-1.5s, and loads pages at about the same speed as firefox.

[MGS4-SS]

Interesting quote from the Apple website:

Performance measured in seconds. Testing conducted by Apple in June 2007 on a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based iMac system running Windows XP Professional SP2, configured with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB of VRAM. HTML and JavaScript benchmarks based on VeriTest?s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings. Testing conducted with a beta version of Safari; all other browsers were shipping versions. Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection, and other factors.

[Gaius]

Apple is the one that released it and Jobs himself was up there saying how it trounced IE in all these benchmarks. Once you release a product and immediately start comparing it to the other main players out there, all criticism is fair play. Hell, look at Quicktime. That's been out forever and still doesn't work all that well on Windows.

Dude...come on...you can't be this stubborn. Every browser developer comes out with a "does X about Y% faster than Product Z." Just because it's Apple doesn't make them more wrong or more deserving of scorn for their release. This was a keynote speech saying "Safari loads pages and runs Javascript faster than IE/FX" and those two speed comparisons alone. Read it yourself.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/11/steve-j...from-wwdc-2007/

Thats it. Thats all Jobs said. He did NOT say "will run as well as your current Windows browser" or"is designed to work seamlessly with Windows" or "some people may just switch to Safari from Firefox right then and there because its just so damn good right now". If they did say things like that, then your argument would be valid, but they didnt. Jobs said this: "we're releasing it today as a public beta to you. It's a free beta, apple.com/safari and who knows, maybe we can grow our Safari share in the future, we can sure try."

Now, does that sound like haughty talk to you? I think not.

EDIT: Also, please don't try to say that the speed comparisons are off the mark because you weren't complaining about speed in your previous posts. You were talking about how the pages looked and how the application works on Windows, so stick to it.

Edited June 11, 2007 by Gaius

[PegasusX]

Well this is a piece of S

I was going to install it to test my sites compatibility with Safari and I get:

[reactionary007]

not quite the quickest i've ever installed and then uninstalled a program... mostly cause I was mildly intrigued. the interface looks like crap though... purest crap. just butt ugly. course firefox 2 isn't any better under vista!

[shift4]

Great for developmental purposes. Make sites compliant across the board easier now. :)

[KenAF3]

It seems pretty fast, but it takes almost twice as much memory as Firefox and three times as much memory as IE7.

[bangbang023 Veteran]

Dude...come on...you can't be this stubborn. Every browser developer comes out with a "does X about Y% faster than Product Z. Just because it's Apple doesn't make them more wrong or more deserving of scorn for their release. This was a keynote speech saying "Safari loads pages and runs Javascript faster than IE/FX" and those two speed comparisons alone. Read it yourself.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/11/steve-j...from-wwdc-2007/

Thats it. Thats all job said. He did NOT say "will run as well as your current Windows browser" or"is designed to work seamlessly with Windows" or "some people may just switch to Safari from Firefox right then and there because its just so damn good right now". If they did say things like that, then your argument would be valid, but they didnt. Jobs said this: "we're releasing it today as a public beta to you. It's a free beta, apple.com/safari and who knows, maybe we can grow our Safari share in the future, we can sure try."

Now, does that sound like haughty talk to you? I think not.

But if it can't render properly, it doesn't behave properly, and it's not faster performing than the other browsers, then something is up. This was obviously rushed out, but I have no hope for it. Like I've said, they've had how many years to fix QT and they never did. I don't care what you think about my opinion, honestly. This iteration of Safari simply sucks. It shouldn't have been released and Jobs shouldn't have played it up as much as he did.

[tunafish]

i am finding this to be very sluggish in areas. Like maximizing windows, loading pages etc.

[gigapixels Veteran]

But if it can't render properly, it doesn't behave properly, and it's not faster performing than the other browsers

But it is doing all that for me. The beautiful WebKit rendering is awesome, fonts look great, and it's faster than anything else on my system right now. No bugs whatsoever for me.

It's a beta. These things are to be expected. Frankly I'm surprised that I haven't encountered any issues yet.

[bangbang023 Veteran]

But it's doing all that for me. The beautiful WebKit rendering is awesome, fonts look great, and it's faster than anything else on my system right now. No bugs whatsoever for me.

It's a beta. These things are to be expected. Frankly I'm surprised that I haven't encountered any issues yet.

Once I saw my site and things like the titles of the news posts on Neowin's front page, it became clear to me that the font rendering is off. I even lowered the font smoothing effect, but it wasn't enough.

[tunafish]

Is it me or does safari now pass the Acid2 test?

[bangbang023 Veteran]

Is it me or does safari now pass the Acid2 test?

Last version of Safari passed the test a while ago. Nothing new, really.

[Mordkanin]

It's utterly hideous.

Why the hell can't Apple follow ANY Windows UI guidelines? It looks so disgustingly out of place in Vista.

[Gaius]

But if it can't render properly, it doesn't behave properly, and it's not faster performing than the other browsers, then something is up. This was obviously rushed out, but I have no hope for it. Like I've said, they've had how many years to fix QT and they never did. I don't care what you think about my opinion, honestly. This iteration of Safari simply sucks. It shouldn't have been released and Jobs shouldn't have played it up as much as he did.

Still being stubborn eh?

1) You are acting like this browser won't ever improve to your standards as if its been worked on and released over and over and still can't get it right. What don't you get about first iteration? FIRST. See that? First. Initial. Original. What don't you understand?

2) This is a BROWSER, my friend. this is not a media player that is seldom used when somebody downloads an Apple.com trailer. This is something meant to be used almost ALL the time since its your primary gateway to the internet. You can't compare Safari to Quicktime. Heck, you can't even compare it to iTunes, because everybody knows people use browsers more than than those types of apps. It demands more stability simply due to exponentially longer use and it will receive it because it needs it more than any other Windows Port that Apple has.

3) I can't believe you still think "Jobs played it up as much as he did". You're just being silly. Did he jump up and down on stage saying that we would switch immediately and that this is the end of IE and FX? No. read the keynote summary. He gave some marketing lingo, no more than any other browser out there and said here's our first beta. Try it. Jeez...

[Jamie9]

All I can say is they better fix this so it renders the same as on OSX then it might have a small use to some web-devs without access to safari on OSX however as it stands at the moment most of my sites look completely different on Safari OS X compared to this Safari Win... if they don't it's just yet another slow bloated buggy windows application from apple. Do they make their windows software this bad on purpose?

[FlibbyFlobby]

@Gaius

Bangbang is right though. Apple are notorious for not fixing things in their Window applications, Quicktime being a great example. What's going to change? They want people to move to their platform away from Windows remember?