Face|Off: Mac Browser Showdown


Safari may be OS X's default browser, but which is fastest? Opera, iCab, OmniWeb Mozilla and others all spring to mind. PC World set out to find out.

Contrary to many nay-sayer's predictions, Apple's Safari did not kill Mac browser development. Far from it. In fact, there's more choice than ever. Even Netscape popped up with an update just this week.

PC World compares the performance of Safari 1.2, IE 5.2 and Mozilla 1.7.2. All score well in the rendering department, with no display problems on secure sites. Java and JavaScript is also a non-issue. So far, so good.

Early on in OS X development, even Apple admitted that the OS was not yet optimized for browser speed. This problem was largely overcome by Jaguar (OS X 10.2) updates and has largely become irrelevant with OS X 10.3 (Panther).

And Safari proves it. Loading Nike's page took 14 seconds, IE 19.4 and Mozilla 21.7.

But in this review, Mozilla wins in the feature department, even if it is slower. IE 5, however, is no longer under active development at MS. That means that IE has few cutting edge features. For instance, both Mozilla and Safari both feature pop-up blocking, as well as tabbed browsing (as does iCab, for that matter).

The winner? Safari. But that's not the end of the affair. Next month, PC World will check out OmniWeb, Firefox and Camino.

Analysis: Choice is good. We're sure Steve would agree. For me, one browser's not enough. And there are certain sites which work better in some sites than in others (and Netscape 4.8 in OS 9, despite its ancientness, is still hugely speedy compared to many of its brethren). Opera is looking good in OS X, although we haven't tested the new OmniWeb yet.

What's # 1 browser for you?