Apple Releases Speedier Safari

As Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) labors to keep pace with competitors in the smartphone, digital music and personal computer fields, the Cupertino, Calif.,-based company is unleashing an updated Web browser to stay in step with its rivals. On Tuesday, Apple made its updated Safari 3.1 browser available for Mac and Windows users.

The updated browser loads Web pages 1.9 faster than Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2, Apple said.

Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than rival browsers and is the first browser to support new interactive Web programs.

"Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface," said Philip Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing . "And best of all, Safari supports the latest audio, video and animation standards for an industry-leading Web 2.0 experience."

It's About Outreach

Outreach to non-Mac users is much of what the new Safari is about, said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence.

"I think it's part of a kind of larger effort on Apple's apart to reach out to non-Mac users, an attempt to broaden their market and reach by touching people who are non-core users," Sterling told MacNewsWorld.

The launch and subsequent updates of Apple's iPod and iPhone, and their success in their respective marketplaces, has brought waves of new customers into Apple's business, and giving Web surfers a taste of Apple's browser may give them an inkling of the Mac experience, Sterling noted.

"The iPhone and iPod have had kind of a halo effect on Apple's core computer sales," he said. "The numbers are up more than the industry average for the first quarter. The Safari browser is kind of a why-not effort to reach people and bring them into a little look-and-feel Apple experience on Windows and familiarize them with what it's like to be on an Apple machine."

Windows users trying out Safari could break down some longstanding barriers. "A lot of reason people didn't buy Macs because of the ubiquity of the Windows OS and also because of a comfort level or lack of familiarity," Sterling commented. "This goes some distance toward addressing this. It makes Mac for people who aren't familiar the Mac OS more comfortable with it."

A Lot of Hype, Little Substance?

Nevertheless, the new release of Safari isn't a head-turning move for Apple, said Alan Chapell, president of Chapell and Associates. "It doesn't seem like that big a deal . I'm much more interested in what Apple is doing with the phones. Apple has got an awful lot of things going on, and this just doesn't seem to be at the top of the list."

Browser wars are passé, Chapell told MacNewsWorld. "They're very last-decade. It doesn't strike me as anything groundbreaking that's a game-changer. And that's fair. Apple has had a lot of game-changers lately."

Apple simply wants to make it easier for iPhone customers to access more sites with their handsets, said Greg DeMichillie, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft.

"Safari is the browser on the iPhone, and they want to do everything they can to encourage applications for Safari," DeMichillie told MacNewsWorld.

The browser war is basically limited to two players -- Explorer and Firefox -- these days. "On Windows, it's an IE and Firefox world, by and large," he said. "They're competing and [will] continue to compete for market share."