A couple of months ago, there were several unconfirmed rumors floating around which suggested that apple had plans to release a windows version of their popular safari browser. Good news for both casual web users, who could enjoy faster load times and the typically slick apple interface design; but also for developers, who as well as gaining the benefits an average web user would, would also have the ability to test their sites in a webkit based browser (the open source rendering engine framework used in Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications.)
Well today our collective prayers were answered, as apple finally accounced the immediate release of a public beta of a windows version of the browser.
According to the official download page, the latest version of Safari outruns even the much coveted firefox in terms of rendering speed and application load time, as well as offering lots of the little extras features that make apple software what it is. (well they’ve got to give microsoft something to mimic in their future releases)
Having downloaded it earlier i can say it’s good to finally have it running natively on my desktop without the need for additional software, hacks, or a dedicated machine. The interface feels zippy and i haven’t noticed and crazy BETA bugs hiding anywhere so far.
So come one, come all – and head over to apple’s spiffy new safari subsite to download it and try it out yourself.
