Safari 4 benchmarked: 42x faster than IE 7, 3.5x faster than Firefox 3
Proving itself a staggering 42 times faster at rendering JavaScript than IE 7, our benchmarks confirm Apple's Safari 4 browser, released in beta today, is the fastest browser on the planet.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's Safari 4 beta benchmark sweep is a sharp reversal from two years earlier, when Wired's testing showed Safari 3 trailing both IE 7 and Firefox. The jump from laggard to claimed leader — driven by a dramatically faster JavaScript engine — lands in the middle of the browser performance wars that Chrome's 2008 arrival ignited. It also sets up a recurring pattern: Apple's speed claims would be contested again a year later when Computerworld exposed that Safari 5 wasn't actually the fastest, and the JavaScript-race framing persists all the way to Google's 2022 claim that Chrome 99 beats Safari on WebKit's own Speedometer benchmark.
First-order effects
- Safari 4 beta users get a measurably snappier web experience immediately, especially on JavaScript-heavy apps, while IE 7 — still dominant in market share — is exposed as roughly 42x slower at rendering scripts.
- Apple gains a marketing weapon for the Mac-versus-Windows narrative: independent CNET benchmarks now back its 'fastest browser' pitch rather than undercutting it as they did for Safari 3.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft and Mozilla are forced onto the defensive; within months Microsoft ships a Chrome-derived plug-in making IE 8 run ten times faster, an implicit admission that its in-house engine had fallen hopelessly behind.
- Benchmark bragging rights become a core competitive axis, pushing Firefox to respond with Firefox 4 Beta's faster graphics and audio stack and accelerating the industry-wide shift toward JIT-compiled JavaScript engines.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, browser choice increasingly hinges on engine performance rather than OS bundling alone — eroding IE's default-install moat and opening the door to the Chrome-led consolidation of the browser market.
- The benchmark-claim arms race institutionalizes third-party testing (and fact-checking of vendor claims) as a permanent fixture of browser competition, from Safari 5 through today's Speedometer disputes.
The trend: This is one data point in the long-running JavaScript performance war that turned browsers into application platforms, where every major release since has been judged first by benchmarks.