RSSSafari 4 for Windows slows down after Apple security update
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 18, 2009, 5:13 PM
After Apple yesterday released a bug fix update to its Safari 4 Web browser for Mac OS, reportedly to address incompatibility issues between it and certain features in iPhoto '09, the company also issued a new file for the Windows version as well. Though some in the press have been told there wasn't really a difference, and although the new file still installs with the build number 530.17, it wasn't the same file that Apple issued last week.
And in Betanews tests this afternoon, it didn't behave like the same Safari 4 browser either, slowing down nearly 5% in Windows 7 RC and posting speed drops for the other platforms as well. This while Google issued yet another update to its Chrome 3 beta series, with phenomenal gains in its AJAX handling.
As a result, Safari 4 has now dropped out of the lead on all three Windows platforms, handing over the speed crown completely -- for the time being -- to Google. On our physical Windows XP Professional SP3 platform, the new Chrome 3 build 189.0 posted a record index score of 17.50, representing seventeen and a half times the performance of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista (the slowest browser in our tests, and not the most recent version). Safari's performance there is headed the other direction, down to 15.04 from this new build on XP.
On Vista SP2, the gap between the two is somewhat tighter: 12.74 for Chrome 3 versus 12.08 for Safari 4. But on Windows 7, the gap is phenomenal: 15.86 for Chrome 3 versus 12.92 for Safari 4. Ever since Apple's Phil Schiller told the crowd at the recent WWDC in San Francisco that Safari 4 was the world's fastest browser...it hasn't been.
Rendering scores posted the sharpest decline for Safari -- this is usually a field where that browser shines, but for reasons Apple may not want to explain (or even acknowledge), the new release is slower in that department by about 9%. Page load times were slower as well, perhaps reflecting adjustments to the JavaScript engine to become more in tune with standards.
Meanwhile, the preview build that could become Firefox 3.5 RC2 is also gaining ground in Windows 7, catching up with Safari. The latest private preview build of 3.5 scored a 9.35 in Windows 7 RC versus the 8.81 score posted by the public 3.5 RC1 on the same platform. The preview build is almost 8% faster than the public build on Win7, though on the other two platforms, the preview is only slightly faster. On a parallel track, the alpha preview of Firefox 3.6 posted its first double-digit score this afternoon: a 10.06 on Windows XP SP3. The gap between it and Safari 4, although narrower, is still about 50% -- meaning if a future Firefox could find 50% more performance from someplace, it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Safari...even while those shoulders are a little lower.
if i remember right ..
Apples Safari has been one of the most disappointing in terms Improving the performance
as the others have come up a long way Safari might be really feeling the heat.
Whats the point of coming up with a fast browser when you can going to slow it down later??????????
Score: -1
|Is anyone at Apple listening? We want incremental updates.
Score: 0
|Now thats an autopwn lol.
Score: -1
|It's typical Apple. Everything looks great until they fix it. Each Mac OS X beta I've used comes out screaming and ends up whimpering. I suspect that, if Windows was coded to handle all the little details Mac OS X does and better handle things, it would be much slower also.
Still, Apple did a good job with Safari and there is always room for enhancement. Now, if they'd just issue patches (the way Firefox works) instead of having us download the whole application again, it would be so much better for end users.
Score: -1
|Is it possible to make your charts a bit clearer and easier to read? Toning down the JPEG compression (I can see artifacts) or using a different format (PNG?) might help, although making it larger might help, too. The faded background might also have something to do with it. The first couple I saw I thought were "screenshots" of a computer screen taken with a digital camera.
I'm sure there are several of us who would appreciate your looking into this. Thanks!
Score: 0
|RobertM, I've reshot the graph, used a different resizing algorithm, and turned JPEG compression completely off. See if this looks better.
-SF3
Score: -2
|Nope the graph still shows absolutely no useful information.. it just looks prettier now.
How bout you actually do some real tests, publish the actual information and get rid of this assinine "X times faster than IE" metric which helps noone at all.. other than to inflate the ultimate numbers of the current platforms.. to the point where the numbers are ALL useless (due to margin of error that a multiplicative system comes with)
IE @ 1.0 ==
chrome, opera and firefox are all so much faster as to give the appearance that any will be ideal..
But this is all synthetic testing of the javascript WOOPITY DO.. do real world benches that actually put those numbers in perspective.. Hell put out the real numbers in addition to the X times faster than IE6 if you must..But do something other than constantly spamming us with these "non update updates"
Score: -1
|