Safari 4 Downloaded 11 Million Times in First Three Days

Jun 17, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts 11 Comments

Apple announced last Friday that Safari 4 has been downloaded over 11 million times in the first three days since it left beta.

CUPERTINO, California—June 12, 2009—Apple® today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari® 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows.

More than half of the downloads were from Windows users. Isn’t that interesting? And no, they were not pushed through some sort of automatic update. I had to manually download the new version of Safari for my MacBook, and it’s not yet on either of the Windows-based machines that I administrate.

In contrast, Google Chrome nearly had 2 million US downloads in it’s first week (no word of the full numbers), and Firefox 3 had over 18 million.

  • http://blog.karolzielinski.com Karol Zielinski

    could be more… but there isn't any version for linux.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      Will the Windows version run under WINE?

  • Paulse

    Well, downloading a software package, and using it, are two different things. I tried Safari 4 for Windows too… and after a few hours, removed it from my computer. It was terrible.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      "Terrible" is certainly an opinion. I use Firefox as my main browser, but Safari is very solid and certainly better than Internet Explorer. I use it now and then as a secondary browser.

      • Paulse

        "Terrible" is just my personal opinion, and used to explain why I removed Safari from my system. However, I noted beforehand that many, many Apple users (on the Apple forums) seemed to have the same opinion and for the same reasons that I did–very slow response, hangs and freezes, poor page loading–and this on Apple computers, not on Windows. On my system, Safari is the -only- browser that exhibits this particular blend of inconvenience, but I suppose that's one reason that so many browser options exist. Safari, for me, is certainly not better than Internet Explorer, and not even close to Firefox.

        • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

          Were you running the Safari 4 beta, or the final release, which only recently came out? I never had problems with either, on the Mac side, but I suppose things like that depend on your system.

          • Paulse

            This was with both the Beta and the Release versions. I installed the Release version hoping that these problems were fixed (I mean, after all, a beta isn't a finished product), but found that the behavior was even worse. And since no other browser acts the same way… well, there just wasn't any reason to put up with it.

          • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

            Well, it certainly is strange that it would be that unstable. Did you ever submit a bug report?

            Also, does Google Chrome act similarly? They share an amazing amount of code, since both are based on Apple's open source WebKit project.

  • http://www.40tech.com Evan

    Did they change the tab position from where they were located in the beta? In the beta, the tabs had moved to the top of the window, above all the toolbars. While it had some benefits, it also slowed me down. After a while, I found it to be really annoying. I don't want to download it only to find that this is still the case.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      Yep, they moved them back. You can also drag any part of the tab instead of the tiny handle now. (Yay!)

  • Stolidfeline

    I really love this browser BUIT I am getting so frusatrated with the instability. In this respect it is the worst browser I have tried. Coming from a company with the resources of Apple I am surprised. Come on guys, stop dreaming in cuckooland and wake up! We need something that works….