Apple has just released a Windows version of their Safari browser. It’s supposed to be twice as fast as Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.
Tain’t so, based on my (admittedly limited) testing. I downloaded it. Installed it. Launched it. The default Apple home page took almost 20 seconds to load. Yikes!
Yahoo News loaded much more slowly than with FireFox. The New York Times opened a bit faster, but that was included as a default bookmark, so it may have started loading even before my click, like FireFox’s pre-fetching capability.
On many pages the type (Verdana) looked muddy and smeared, like I’d forgotten to put on my glasses. But the strangest thing of all? I’d forgotten how crowded, flashy and distracting the Web can be when you don’t have AdBlock Plus filtering out the crap. Until Safari has ABP, I’m sticking with the ‘Fox. (And probably even then.)
But hey, Apple — I still love my iPod…