Web Developers

Safari 4 Hits Eleven Million Downloads

Posted by on Jun 12, 2009 | 5 Comments

There should be an image here!The claim to fame is that Safari is currently faster than IE8 and the current release of Firefox. Interestingly, this release has zero mention of Chrome that I noticed, butI do believe the press release is accurate on showing off better speed on OS X than Firefox. As for it being “that” much faster than IE8 on Windows, I have not done any testing myself, but will take things at face value for now.

The real issue here is Safari seeing over 11 million downloads in three days. While this might not seem like a big deal to some, I would say that it potentially could spell out a real threat to Firefox should users opt to keep this browser over the alternatives.

Then again, this is merely pointing out that people downloaded the browser. This does not mean that they suddenly found themselves making the switch over to it full time. So in the end, despite any real speed provided Safari is just seeing an influx of interest. The real magic, will be if that interest holds over time.

  • Jon

    I was using Safari beta and it was really killing me with the crashes. The tabbed browsing at the top really started bugging me, so I actually switched over to Firefox. It’s definitely slower, but feels a lot more secure and stable than even previous versions of Safari did. I think I’m going to stay with this even though Safari is out of beta now.

  • http://twitter.com/wisdoom Wisdoom

    You have to think that, most people with iTunes will download the Safari, because of the download system, which I don’t remember the name, Apple apply.
    Even if there’s a small percentage, lets say 10%, that downloaded it because it was in the “update manager” that iTunes uses… that means that more than a million downloaded it just because. So, I guess that the amount of people is not that shocking, and if Safari is going to take a bigger piece of the market, I wish they could take it from IE than Firefox… Just because IE SUCKS XD

  • http://markuszeller.com Markus Zeller

    Google seems to beat your article, Chris. Look this article writing about Safari and Firefox and the Google ads get mad showing Chrome downloads!

  • PacoBell

    It’s adblock interface still doesn’t hold a candle to ABP + Element Hider. Until it shapes up in that category, it’s no dice for Safari (or any other browser, for that matter).

  • GreyPilgrim

    “this is merely pointing out that people downloaded the browser” – er no, this is Apple PR BS putting spin on the fact they pushed the update 11 million times. A significant portion of those users will never use it, despite having it pushed to them in an update. Lets put that in perspective shall we… Firefox 3.0.11 was downloaded 150 million times during the first 24 hours. I hardly think this is a threat to Firefox!