Apple Safari 4 Lands, Reviews Mixed

Earlier this week, Apple went public with the beta version of its Web browser, Safari 4. Safari 4 is being billed by the Cupertino crew as "The world's fastest browser," and is available for both PC and Mac systems. The requirements for downloading the beta of Safari 4 for a PC are Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, 500MHz Pentium class processor or better and 256 MB of RAM.

To access the Cover Flow functionality and Top Sites, a Direct X 9.0 video card with 64 MB of video RAM is required.

Safari 4 public beta has been in the wild on the Web for a couple of days now and the blogosphere and Twitter are trying, testing and reviewing the new browser. So far, the reactions have been mixed.

The reaction on Twitter has been abrupt, as is typical for the microblogging service. One user enjoys the startup page, but is frustrated by the fact it is hiding his bookmarks.

"Dear Safari 4.0 Beta -- thanks for the groovy new startup page. Now stop hiding my Marketwatch bookmark."

Another potential Safari user on Twitter is nonplussed by the new browser: "Not feeling Safari 4. Maybe it'll grow on me."

The new features are, not surprisingly, what most reviewers and journalists are talking about on the Web.

A lot of attention is being paid to the Cover Flow navigation feature, which allows users to scroll through bookmarks and Web sites as if they are browsing an iTunes collection.

Top Sites is a feature that Google Chrome users should recognize. Rather than providing a single page as a homepage of sorts, a number of commonly visited sites are listed in a grid as thumbnails, giving users the easy option to click on one and immediately go to that page.

Over at VentureBeat, the new user interface is discussed. One basic spot where Safari 4 takes a step forward is with the addition of a new tab button. VentureBeat's gripe, however, is that the button is at the far corner of the screen, making it less intuitive to use than Google Chrome, where the button is readily available in the tab bar.

The addition of a tab bar, incidentally, is another new feature in Safari, which again channels Chrome and Opera. The general assessment is that the tab bar browsing makes the page easier to navigate while reducing clutter on the desktop.

Forbes points out a marquee feature of Safari 4: Nitro, a JavaScript engine that Apple claims will make the browser even faster. In the browser wars between Firefox, Apple, Google and Opera, users tend to be fixated on speed. Whether or not Safari 4 really does get a "nitro" burst remains to be seen, but the inclusion of Nitro -- something that wasn't available in Safari 3 -- is probably a step in the right direction.

Cover Flow, Top Sites, Nitro and Tab Browsing are just four of the 150 new features that Apple is cramming into the public beta of Safari 4. Undoubtedly, the final version of the browser will grab some of the market share. Whether or not it drastically increases Safari usage, unseating Internet Explorer and, to a certain extent, Firefox, remains to be seen.