14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has announced that the final/stable version of Safari 4, released just days ago, has topped 11 million downloads, 6 million of which are credited to Windows users. The Mac maker touts its web browser as being the fastest and most reliable ever, having been built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine.
“Apple today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows,” reads the company’s announcement. “Safari 4 is the world’s fastest, most innovative browser and is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.”
The company goes on to explain that Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, which enables an entirely new class of web applications. Safari 4 is also the first to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, according to the report. Having been built on the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari 4 executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3, according to Apple.
When OS X Snow Leopard hits the shelves this September, Safari 4 will be even faster, the company claims. Thanks to Safari’s 64-bit nature, performance will see a boost by up to 50 percent, while crashes will be less of a problem for the end user, as the browser runs plug-ins in a separate process.
“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”
Mac users can download and use Safari 4 for free on any machine running OS X versions 10.5.7 Leopard and 10.4.11 Tiger, with both Intel and PPC processors being supported. Top Sites and Cover Flow on Mac OS X Tiger require a Quartz-Extreme-compatible video card. For Windows PC users, XP SP2 or Windows Vista is required. On both Mac and PC, Safari 4 requires a minimum of 256MB RAM.