Binary Impact

Is Safari 4 Beta Overhyped? [Hint: YES!]

Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Tech

Obviously this is my own opinion, but I honestly think Safari, while having a much improved interface, still falls short of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in my book. Apple claims it’s 3x speedier than Firefox, which is always arguable especially when looking at Lifehacker’s own test. If I’m looking for speed, I’m going with Google Chrome. But speed aside, Safari just doesn’t look as good as Chrome either.

I’m doing a lot of comparing with Chrome because Apple seems to have borrowed very generously from Google’s design choices. The first I have issue with is the tabs in the titlebar of the window. I love this feature in Chrome, but with Safari 4 I’m just not a fan of having the HUGE tab that divides in half every time you add one. That’s personal preference though. At the same time, I think this feature looks much better on Mac OS X than XP or Vista.

I can go on nitpicking on how certain features are better implemented in Firefox or Chrome (like Top Sites among other things), but that’s not the point of this post. The fact of the matter is that Apple is playing catchup with this new installment. It’s not breaking any new ground at all yet most of the tech blogs seem to be in awe by it. It’s great that they were able to implement all these upgrades to “bring the browser back,” and maybe I’m missing something, but they’re not original. I have more respect for Chrome now because I can see how much it influenced the direction of Safari.

Maybe some of it is because they both use the same source code, but it’s important to notice that a lot of the “new” features of Safari are straight from Google.

Tags: Apple, Browser, Chrome, Firefox, Google, Internet, Mozilla, Rant, Safari, Software, Technology