Last week Apple announced that the newest version of their browser, Safari, was going to also be available for Windows. I’m not much of an Apple user. I used one as a kid, but these days the computers in my room either run on XP or Ubuntu Linux. After hearing about Safari being available for Windows, I became curious enough to download it. So did over one million other people.
I played with Safari for a few hours and I have to say it is very fast. That is, however, about the only thing it offers that stands out. Tabbed browsing is nothing new anymore. RSS integration is nice, but I read my feeds via Thunderbird. I’ve never found a web or browser integration I really enjoyed. The lack of plugins, like Firefox, or widgets, like Opera, really turned me off as well. My Firefox browser is deeply customized, and my Opera browser, via their speed dial feature, opens everything I use in it with a mouse click.
Safari also has some serious security issues. TechCrunch reports that there is a variety of known problems already. Wired goes as far as to ask who in their right mind would run Safari on Windows?
I uninstalled Safari the morning after I downloaded it. There isn’t any reason for me to use it; with good options like Firefox, Opera, and the new, admittedly nostalgia ridden download of, Netscape out there, Safari offer nothing that would compel me to use it.