Decided to give the beta of Apple’s new web browser iteration, a try.

You can have a look at these:

Macworld’s comprehensive first looks review

Macworld’s Safari 4 speed test

Computerworld’s Safari vs Google Chrome

Computerworld blogged opinions

Computerworld Review

Computerworld – Under the hood analysis

Or download it! :)

Ironically, i couldn’t get the wordpress insert link pop up to load on safari (well, it’s only a beta) and had to switch over to firefox to complete this post. Dutifully reported the bug (ah well).

Just going by macworld speed benchmarks (and the others i didn’t link to), safari really does blaze through page loading. It’s not all that noticeable if you make a deliberate attempt at discerning the speed advantages, though as with these browser wars, the differences become less subtle when used on a daily basis.

I do like the new interface, but i wished they could add simpler way of adding pages to the Top Sites screen. Perhaps a button or something like that. But i like the Top Sites layout. Apple’s draw isn’t simply about design. It’s about empowerment. The Top Sites screen makes the user feel as if he or she (don’t rule out a female world dominant… wait, that sounds really wrong) has this secret underground bunker (the black background) and a high tech command centre (from the curved, self updating mosaic) etc…

And please, Apple, do something about the bookmarks repository. The alternating white and blue lines is archaic by your own standards. So is the tiny font and little blue folder icons. Coverflow has long been recognised as an insubstantial glossy patchover. Why, for example, can’t i drag a bookmark in the sidebar into a folder in the sidebar? Dragging and dropping works perfectly fine between the sidebar and the main bookmarks screen.

There simply has to be a way of cataloguing that huge jumble of messy bookmarks. So do your thing Apple. You are the saviour of us messy short sleeved people. Give us tags, or flexible folders (never quite caught on to smart folders – it’s a great idea but i keep hating to having to update it over and over again to accomodate new catagories and data streams), or something that allows me to classify both a thread on Cambridge admissions under both ‘medical school applications’ and ‘UK university applications’.

Save us please, from ourselves, we beg of you.

EDIT: i just realised how ‘Safari’ and ‘Google’ is an stand-alone moniker, while ‘Chrome’ still isn’t.

EDIT: this is just another stab at microsoft:

When IE7 is brought into the picture, Safari 4 looks lightning-quick: Apple’s browser is more than 76 times faster at completing the JavaScript tests than Microsoft’s.