Apple Safari 4 (beta) browser kickin' it up a couple notchs

[stefan]

http://tinyurl.com/apr6k4

[DiscGo]

I had heard yesterday that it is supposed to be 4x faster. Have any of you tried it?

[kris]

Seems like firefox offers alot of what they claim is innovative.

[DiscGo]

Yeah, I looked into it and it sounds like everything they are claiming is innovative is old hat for FireFox users and the speed claim rumors also appear to be false.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10...g=2547-1_3-0-5

As CNET News' Stephen Shankland points out, it's this lack of an add-on community that handicaps Safari 4 the most: "The lack of something like the extensions architecture that Firefox pioneered still means Safari 4 is better only than Safari 3, not the competition."

[Deathcricket]

But... it's apple, it's new, and it's shiny... Musttt haveee nowwww!!!

[DiscGo]

One of the first responses to that article was someone claiming that IE takes 30 seconds to load a page that Safari does in 10 seconds. I timed it with each browser and IE8 was faster than Safari for me and Firefox loaded it faster than both IE and Safari.

[stefan]

Yeah, I looked into it and it sounds like everything they are claiming is innovative is old hat for FireFox users and the speed claim rumors also appear to be false.


http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10...g=2547-1_3-0-5

As CNET News' Stephen Shankland points out, it's this lack of an add-on community that handicaps Safari 4 the most: "The lack of something like the extensions architecture that Firefox pioneered still means Safari 4 is better only than Safari 3, not the competition."

the speed test are javascript benchmarks
you can see CNET UK's tests here

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,3...9301219,00.htm


here's the suite of benchmarks that was used

http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspide...sunspider.html

test it for yourself if you like

[stefan]

Yeah, I looked into it and it sounds like everything they are claiming is innovative is old hat for FireFox users and the speed claim rumors also appear to be false.

does this include

(1) passing acid3
(2) coverflow of sites
(3) wall of windows


i haven't installed this yet, but i could see "coverflow" being very useful at times. i find it already quite useful for looking through pdfs, image files, etc naturally it would make skimming webpages more efficient

[DiscGo]

Thanks for the response Stefan. I really have been getting worked up over these claims and trying to understand how anyone could claim this about Safari.

I don't know if this bench mark only includes Java and the discrepancy is in all the different components in different websites, or if it just comes down to the usual issue with Bench marks where some systems perform better in the benchmarks environment than practical use.



My brother and I both recently purchased new computers. He purchased the Intel Quad Core Processor and I purchased the Intel I7 Processor. The I7 is a better processor but the 3dmark bench mark rates the Quad Core has being higher. Regardless of which processor scores better, it is all about which performs better.

[DiscGo]

Yeah, I looked into it and it sounds like everything they are claiming is innovative is old hat for FireFox users and the speed claim rumors also appear to be false.

does this include

(1) passing acid3
(2) coverflow of sites
(3) wall of windows

I see that Safari beat Firefox (by 30 points) on passing acid3 but I really don't know what that does for me. Are you familiar with it?

Coverflow is REALLY cool. I like it a lot.


I don't know what wall of windows is.

[stefan]

Thanks for the response Stefan. I really have been getting worked up over these claims and trying to understand how anyone could claim this about Safari.

I don't know if this bench mark only includes Java and the discrepancy is in all the different components in different websites, or if it just comes down to the usual issue with Bench marks where some systems perform better in the benchmarks environment than practical use.

i haven't had the time to look into any of this in depth just yet. but i did fine the ars technica review interesting as well. a link if you're interested. they do make some minor comments about the benchmarks

http://tinyurl.com/b5lbcw

My brother and I both recently purchased new computers. He purchased the Intel Quad Core Processor and I purchased the Intel I7 Processor. The I7 is a better processor but the 3dmark bench mark rates the Quad Core has being higher. Regardless of which processor scores better, it is all about which performs better.

true ... some also care about performance as a function of power consumption which can skew this perspective a little since each major jump seems to decrease power consumption in a comparable way

[DiscGo]

http://tinyurl.com/b5lbcw

Good article. I did the sunspider bench mark and Safari killed Firefox. I have not yet found a single page though that loads faster in Safari than Firefox, but I have found several that had Firefox load faster than Safari. Have you checked this yet at all?