Apple has compared the performances of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0 and Opera 9 to its own browser transitioned to Windows Vista and Windows XP and has concluded that Safari is top dog. The Cupertino-based company made Safari 3.0 available for download as a public beta on June 11, 2007, following an announcement by Apple Chief Executive Office Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco. Apple has compared the four browsers and calculated the HTML and JavaScript performances and the time it takes its product to launch. In every category of the benchmarks delivered by Apple, Safari 3.0 public beta came on top.

By accessing the image integrated toward the bottom you will be able to access graphics produced by Apple indicating what the company refers to as the "blazing performance" of Safari. As the benchmarks come directly from the Cupertino-based company, the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, Apple also applauded Safari as secure from "day one" and in the browser's first day of availability on Windows Vista and Windows XP, independent security researchers dug up eight security vulnerabilities impacting the product.

"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," Apple revealed.

And Apple goes on to praise Safari as the fastest web browser on any platform, not just Mac OS X. "Blazing performance. The fastest web browser on any platform, Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them," Apple added.

As you are able to see from the graphics on the left, Apple touts the fact that Safari handles HTML content in just 2.14 seconds in comparison with 3.67 seconds for Firefox 2.0, 4.63 for IE7 and 6.22 for Opera 9. As far as JavaScript performance is concerned, the beta version of Safari managed the content in 0.88 seconds. In contrast, Firefox 2.0 took 1.72 seconds, IE7 2.48 and Opera 9 just 0.98 seconds. Additionally Safari 3.0 launches in 1.74 seconds, faster than Firefox 2.0 with 2.22, IE7 with 2.34 and Opera 9 with 1.82 seconds.