Why Safari is the Best Internet Browser

Safari, the new Internet browser for Mac systems with Mac Os X and higher, is by far the best browser I've encountered in a long time since the days of Netscape 3.0 and Gold. It's got the old Netscape's simplicity with the nicer features of Internet Explorer. And it isn't buggy like both of them are now. It runs fast and quietly and you don't have to hunt for the features that you need.

Safari first came out in June 2003 with version 1.0. We're now up to version 2.0.1. Presumably, the name was meant to match the tendency to name Mac OS X systems versions of 10.2 and higher after large cats: Jaguar (10.2), Panther (10.3) and Tiger (10.4). The joke might have been that if you wanted to roam with big cats, you ought to go on safari. The Safari browser is, of course, proprietorial in the sense that you have to have Mac OS X 10.2 or higher to use it. This leaves out PC and Unix systems and any Mac machine older than a G3. But since that means every Mac produced in the past five years can use it, that's not a big hardship for Mac users.

Safari works better with a Mac than Internet Explorer does with a PC. Internet Explorer is specifically designed for PCs, though it has Mac versions. However, the attempts by Microsoft to monopolize the Internet browser market and push out Netscape resulted in a buggy program that punished non-Microsoft systems users while managing to work badly even on Microsoft systems.

In contrast, Safari works superbly well on the operating system it was designed for: Mac Os X. It doesn't take forever to load up a page. It doesn't crash all of the time like Internet Explorer and the newer versions of Netscape and it doesn't balk at all of the new media programs out there. It doesn't demand that you upload things to see a simple Quicktime or Shockwave file. It just shows them. What's not to like about that?