More bullshit performance claims from Apple?
So Apple, out of nowhere, has released Safari for Windows. Among the reactions today, Joel Spolsky jumped the gun, complaining about how Apple Safari for Windows loads very slowly, only later to retract—apparently, Safari for Windows stopped loading slowly for Joel after the first couple times he launched it. Still, I understand Joel’s lack of faith, given Apple’s history of dubious performance claims (e.g. ‘PowerPc’s are super computers’) and the multimedia shit-fest they inflict upon Windows users just seeking Quicktime playback and control over their iPods.
I decided to try Safari myself, and while I never saw anything but zippy load times, the rendering and Javascript performance didn’t impress me. Surely rendering and Javascript engines claiming a 1.6x speed advantage over those in Firefox should translate into more responsive dynamic reflows or at least some kind of visible benefit, yes? Well, in casual browsing, I couldn’t see any difference. Then I tried the only Javascript speed test that really matters: dragging in Google Maps.
The verdict in purely subjective testing: dragging the map in Safari, compared to in IE, is a noticeable improvement, but is crap compared to Firefox (even with 7 plug-ins running, including Firebug, which has some bug/feature that eats your memory as you drag the map).
So even if Apple truly conducted its benchmarks honestly and with an inquisitive bent towards finding the user-subjective truth, they’re simply wrong: Safari is not The World’s Fastest Browser (TM).
UPDATE:
The experience I reported was when dragging a Google map with a large display area, but the difference between the browsers becomes less pronounced for a smaller area map (though Safari always seems to have annoying brief stutters).
When it comes to adding and removing many markers from a Google map, Safari does far better than Firefox: adding ~60 markers to the view took almost 10 seconds in Firefox but only 2 seconds in Safari. The problem is that, once you have that many markers on your map, it can be dragged with usable smoothness in Firefox but not at all in Safari (you can still click-and-drag, but the map won’t move until you release, at which point it will warp to its destination).