Safari 3 for Windows

Sign one more up for the browser war, Apple is shipping the third version of its well received Safari WebKit-based browser over to foreign shores to duke it out with the likes of IE, Firefox and Opera... on Windows. The Mac-only browser has already attained a 5% market share, and it seems the Apple folks plan to use it in much the same way they've used iTunes to grow the Mac fanbase by giving Windows users "a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!" Apple claims their browser is up to twice as fast as the competition, and the public beta of Safari 3 is being released today as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

[shaunySHOTGUN @ Jun 11th 2007 4:51PM]

so overall is this a yay or nay?

[Ricky Bobby @ Jun 11th 2007 4:53PM]

You want fast??
Browser = "Pigfoot FireFox"
Audio Player = "MusikCube"
PDF's = "Foxit Reader"
Archive = "7-Zip"

[JD @ Jun 11th 2007 4:55PM]

Is it just me, or is it not really as fast as the chart on their page indicated? I mean, IE7 is faster loading engadget by a long shot!! And the resizing thing is a bad one. Lemon, for now. Stick to making itunes not crash when you try to play a movie in vista, please.

[Dan @ Jun 11th 2007 4:59PM]

Annnd another crash. I set my Safari homepage to my company's intranet page. (http://intranet)

I get prompted for a username and password, and once I enter it, BAM! Windows has encountered an error. I don't even have the ability to go in and change the URL. I uninstalled and reinstalled and it retained my new start up page, so it looks like this bad boy is going to crash from now on. Awesome. (I even tried to be a smartass and create a local html file and select "Open with safari" to have Safari load up that page instead of the previous one... nope.

Piece of crap. (And I love macs)

[Josh @ Jun 11th 2007 5:24PM]

Not loading anything...nice one Apple...

[Wolfticket @ Jun 11th 2007 5:27PM]

I used iTunes for the first time ever on a mates xp laptop a couple of days ago. Frankly I found it one on the least intuitive, POS programmes I've ever had the misfortune use. This combined with my love of Quicktime (top tip: google "quicktime alternative") means I won't even bother trying Safari. There are way to many extensions for Firefox I can't live without anyway.

[Alec @ Jun 11th 2007 5:29PM]

As a web developer, I loathe Safari for Mac. Webkit is better, but still worse to develop for than IE. Yes, I think Safari is *that* bad. This news is the most depressing that I've heard in a while.

[Roy @ Jun 11th 2007 5:30PM]

I have been using it for like 5 min, and it seems to be working fine on XP

[Harrison Wade @ Jun 11th 2007 8:20PM]

Agreed.

[crescentdavid @ Jun 11th 2007 5:38PM]

Safari BETA 3, lives up Apple's bad reputation of writing buggy Windows software on my XP (fully patched) home box. Unlike Opera and unlike Firefox, it did not install correctly, did not uninstall correctly and is unworkable. It had NO menu bar. None. Where the address box would be, was blank. All menu functions had roll-over effects, but no text and the drop down menus dropped, but had no text and didn't work either. The Google box was blank and didn't work. We're talking a solid, ugly, "brushed grey metal" tool bar of nothingness. The only thing that worked was the START page which happened to be the Apple site. You could use the page links in the browser window to navigate that site but nothing was possible outside of the page.

I uninstalled it and found out Apple's simply "does NOT work" beta Safari also:

1. Does not get rid of numerous registry entries.
2. Does not get rid of owner\application data\Apple Computer\Safari which contains two subfolders and numerous files.
3. Even with an uninstaller, leaves an entire folder of entries called "Bonjour" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_SOFTWARE.

I rebooted, reinstalled the program and experienced the same "simply does NOT work" experience. So I'm done with it, for now. Beta must mean something really different to Apple than it does to Google or Opera or Firefox.

I'll wait until they get things right in version 3 plus plus or 4.

[ATLDMC @ Jun 13th 2007 8:10AM]

Had exactly the same experience. This is the worst Beta software I've ever tried. It makes me seriously wonder if it will ever be right.

[Harrison Wade @ Jun 11th 2007 5:53PM]

I don't really know what you guys are talking about! Safari is working perfectly fine on my XP! The only thing i dont like is that Cntrl + Enter doesn't auto-insert www.(the text you inserted ).com like Firefox and IE do. Other than that it's really nice! Makes me wish even more that I have a Mac. :)

[ark_v2 @ Jun 11th 2007 5:56PM]

Looks like Steve will slowly transform all the PCs into macs...
I'm downloading the beta just to check it out. Booting on XP......

[ssummer @ Jun 11th 2007 6:09PM]

I'm surprised nobody has said that XP/Vista is making Safari crash ;) After all you know, Apple can do no wrong.

[Oliver Sayers @ Jun 11th 2007 6:15PM]

I have to say, engadget looks hot in Safari.

This will be helpful for designers out there with no access to a MAC.

[Moburkhardt @ Jun 11th 2007 6:18PM]

I’ve been using the 9a410 built Safari version 3.0(5522.5) as oposed to the new download available from the apple page 3.0 (522.11). And the only difference I could find was the fact that in the 9a410 included version the tabs display HTML preview in the alt text when hovering the mouse over a tab, instead of 522.11 where you just get the full title of the tabs page.

[Thrillcekr @ Jun 11th 2007 6:33PM]

Man they must have did a major overhaul on this new version of Safari. Not only is Safari the worst browser available for Mac but the slowest for any OS that I've seen period. Steve's been pretty delusional in the past when speaking of his beloved browser in the past. I sure hope that this time it's not just more hot air. If he blows it this time he does it in front of the whole world. Not just a bunch of Mac loyalists that will make excuses for his slip ups.

[ard buijsen @ Jun 11th 2007 6:39PM]

hey I'm typing this from a MAcBook and Parallels in Safari. Guess what, no crash (yet) and super fast. Don't understad what everybody is complaining about. Get a proper computer dudes!!!!!

[peterjohndean @ Jun 11th 2007 7:26PM]

OK- so you don't understand. You seem to have been lucky but others clearly aren't. (And I have the latest Mac).

[peterjohndean1 @ Jun 11th 2007 6:39PM]

Safari 3 is crap- even more so than version 2. Stick to Firefox and Camino.

[Ayle @ Jun 11th 2007 6:49PM]

installed, crashed while trying to maximize the window, hard lockup of the systemm, reboot, uninstalled.... Well I'm happy we, windows user have a new browser but even for a beta this thing is pretty unstable and shouldn't bring down the whole system with it..... Subjective opinion: my firefox with the macfox theme look way better thnat that.....

[crescentdavid @ Jun 11th 2007 6:55PM]

@ Harrison Wade: There are numerous XP or Vista configurations out in the real world- minor version upticks etc. So, for example, out of 3 home computers, I successfully installed Safari on one- and learned it does not correctly render javascript links on site navbars (unlike IE, Firefox and Opera).

So your experience could be just fine, while many others could have problems ranging from minor to horrendous- even though they may be running fully patched XP pros or home. Numerous comments on engadget and slashdot support this observation.

[Steve Creative @ Jun 11th 2007 7:03PM]

Has anyone else noticed the new spell-check function that's appeared in Safari 3. I'm not sure whether this applies to both windows or mac but it's definitely in the mac version.

This could mean the end of misspelt comments!

[rp @ Jun 11th 2007 7:07PM]

Seems to work just fine for me. Menus work, no crashes yet, loads everything faster than IE... I'll be sticking with it until it starts acting up and going full time once it's out of beta.

[Tom G @ Jun 11th 2007 7:12PM]

Why the F*CK does Safari feel the need to anti-alias all text on a webpage?

[ark_v2 @ Jun 11th 2007 7:14PM]

Ok, I tried it. I don't know WTF happened with the res, but it made my eyes hurt bad, it's NOT even faster than IE7 (ZOMG), crashed after about two minutes, a lot of text was missing...and the list goes on...so now I can say this "BETA release (Is this even pre-alpha?)" SUCKS. Going back to my beautiful linux and FF ^__^.

[ripper @ Jun 11th 2007 7:22PM]

Yahoo! mail beta not supported...
Other than that, I'm actually quite enjoying the experience, not getting all these issues reported here. No crashes, i can add bookmarks fine. it's quite zippy on some pages (i.e. yahoo front page), but don't know about multiple times faster than FF. That search is REALLY cool - you should install just to check it out. The font smoothing is ok, IE 7s is better IMO. I'm a FF user on both osx and windows (adblock - nuff said).
Not for me, but a very nice browser on windows. Light, fast, easy on the eyes, great ease of use. I would recommend it to a non-techy person. That rules out all us nerds reading this blog ;)

[din @ Jun 11th 2007 7:30PM]

crashes on login pages such as gmail, wall street journal, etc
using xp sp1

[ewi @ Jun 11th 2007 7:45PM]

It runs noticiably faster than Firefox anf ie7 on my P4 3GHz. I also find the fonts are darker on Safari, can someone explain the darker fonts?

[ryanae @ Jun 11th 2007 7:59PM]

Soo im guessing this isnt the twice as fast version becasue its crap

[Ohanes @ Jun 11th 2007 8:06PM]

Hell froze over again.

[Ryan @ Jun 11th 2007 8:10PM]

works ok on my windows xp professional... but i see no reason to leave firefox.. but ill atleast keep safari installed for now i guess. menus on mine DO have the options and it hasnt crashed yet.. speed is NOT as fast as firefox but IS faster than ie6... just a FYI...

[Ryan @ Jun 11th 2007 8:14PM]

**EDIT: the P.O.S. froze the SECOND I confirmed my comment. It is now being uninstalled... this software is DEFINITELY on par with Apple's quality standards...

[Gordon @ Jun 11th 2007 8:17PM]

Haha. Installed safari. Tried going to espn.com, crashed. Now uninstalling safari. Never installed and uninstalled software fast enough. Going to stick with Opera and Firefox. Heck at least IE didn't crash on espn.com

[ripper @ Jun 12th 2007 1:19AM]

Nope, ESPN.com didn't crash for me either. I can't reproduce any of these crashes. I did get it to freeze after watching a bunch of videos in a row and running out of memory, but FF does that constantly. Been using this all day, XP sp2, on a 512mb Vaio, and i gotta tell ya, i'm liking it more and more. Though RSS handling is teh suck compared to FF, and the plugin support is not as good as FF... it is zippy!

[Brandon Patterson @ Jun 11th 2007 8:53PM]

you peoples computers suck! ive had no problems so far.

[Nomi @ Jun 11th 2007 9:01PM]

I had it crash on: http://www.apple.com/iphone/ipod. But it is definitely snappier than firefox. However, the speeds could be because of all the crap people add on to firefox. I know I do.

[nik @ Jun 11th 2007 9:13PM]

bookmarks don't work w/out crasing... and if there is not internet connection, then it says i have to reinstall the whole thing.

mac version is better... then again, so is itunes... darn you apple

[Alex Cormier @ Jun 11th 2007 9:30PM]

Hmm... a little slugish but it works fine for me. I love it. I can't wait till they get the bugs kinked out!

[BCTI @ Jun 11th 2007 9:40PM]

Faster browsing.....HAH!
That is the biggest load of marketing bull since, windows 95.
I just installed it. My slide bar doesn't work. Yahoo loaded in 20 seconds, and links were displayd in a jumbled mess at the bottom of the page.
I hope apple is listening.....DON'T LIE TO CONSUMERS.
The browser take twice as long as IE to load.
I'm running a dual core 64 bit processor with 2 gigs of ram.
That is enough to run the latest, and most complx of games.
So removing the argument that I don't have enough memory, we are left with poor workmanship.
Plain and simple.
That seems to be the running theme with software developers though.
"It's good enough for now"
Whell, NO, IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH.!!!!!
Did these people even look at it before they released it, or did they just take the word of whatever comic collecting, acne scarred geek focus group said it was kewl.
Just because it looks shiny, doesn't make it effective.
Try asking real people if it works for them. Taking the opinions of tech heads is not the way to go. The average computer user is not a senior level programmer, and certainly not going to be patient. I'm going to completely pass on this software until it actually works.

[Finnschi @ Jun 11th 2007 9:41PM]

Safari for windows, Itunes for windows ..... PLEASE APPLE PLEASE PORT THE WHOLE iLIFE TO WIN.(or even better, to Linux =) then I can get a rid of OSX X86 on my

[cyberati @ Jun 11th 2007 9:53PM]

Safari 3 really is a beta. It can't resize via the taskbar command to resize horizontlly or vertically. And you can't save the tabbed pages as the home pages, like you can in EVERY other browser. No thanks, I'll stick with Firefox thank you.

[perfectionist @ Jun 11th 2007 10:01PM]

Tested.

Pros:
- Nice design. esp. for Lightbox searching.
- RSS feed manager has nice organization.

Cons:
- Pretty slow, especially compared to all other browsers (IE/FF/Opera). (For example: Cover Flow through a 10GB library seems more responsive.)
- Anti-aliasing is ugly and can't be turned off.
- No separators or new tab button a la FF.
- Live Bookmarks for RSS is simpler and more streamlined than Apple's design.
- Typical Apple limitation on customization. (Yes, simplicity is nice, but unlike FF, it starts out simple, and offer no expansion.)

It's a beta, but I'll stick with Firefox purely for the extensions and large development community.

[JEF @ Jun 11th 2007 10:16PM]

Well..just did a 3 min test run. Importing bookmarks is a pain just as it is like on my Mac at work (which is why i use FF on OS X)..it does import bookmarks from FF..but it keeps them in the secret hidden bookmark folder and not on the easy to access bookmark bar (doh!).

It seems slightly faster on my 256KB but the difference is negligibly imo (esp if you do have cable or like) and it still looks boring (brushed metal is ok for a piece of hardware imo like MBP, but doesn't look as good onscreen).

Now just as I was about to go deeper..it's freezed when i start tabbed browsing and won't recover - checking task manager (I'm using Windows XP) with 2 tabs it's using a whopping 112 MB RAM, while my FF is only using 265 MB with 2 windows open with a total 7 tabs (standard..since FF2 it has become a bit of a memory hog with tabbed browsing, also freezes once I pass the 10-12 tabs limit..my PC I guess)...still, not a good sign for Safari beta!

Time to do the ctr+alt+del kill-that-app routine! I'll keep it a while longer but as is FF is still the man!

[John Doe @ Jun 11th 2007 10:28PM]

Wow a browser I give less of a crap about then IE....That impressive.

Really with Opera and Firefox. What is Apple's point? There HAS to be some other reason then "spreading the goodness" My guess is its going to be used in other ventures on Windows at some point.

[Boris @ Jun 11th 2007 10:37PM]

Ok, the beta really really sucks. The text and images look very bad and trying to highlight something in the URL bar is not fun. Very basic though its really cool how it just added all the bookmarks without even asking or saying something. MS should really follow up on this- Cancel or Allow

[Darren @ Jun 11th 2007 10:52PM]

Okay, so Safari doesn't even render the menus properly on my XP machine. And Firefox's developer ALPHA is more stable than the Safari BETA! Something seems wrong here....

[TeeKay @ Jun 11th 2007 11:25PM]

oh it's stopping me from posting comments here, AND trying all the bookmarks feature.

crashed for more than 10 times in 15 minutes.
i gave up and still waiting for a patch in a day or two. (hopefully)

[PDR @ Jun 11th 2007 11:39PM]

Hate to break this news to all you Engadget readers, but the current download is by no means a beta but an alpha version. Because when IE7 and FF were releasing their public beta versions they were not as horrible as this. Check out the image from my own installation.

http://i13.tinypic.com/4oux8oi.jpg

Guess it's back to the ol' reliables

[barnz2k @ Jun 11th 2007 11:39PM]

safari sux. period.
on the times i do have to use a mac I install firefox immediately. users/clients always have issues in safari. it doesnt even let gmail chat bloody work (in whatever version is installed here). so many sites just never load correctly, and it crashes.. So the XP/VISTA version would have to suck as their itunes and quicktime versions do.