Man, I downloaded Safari for Windows yesterday and it is the ugliest of the 3 browsers out right now. It seems exceptionally slow as well.
Do people use this thing by choice or is it the only option on Macs?
Worse than IE7? Surely not. That thing is the Elephant Browser.
It’s not as ugly on the Mac (where it actually fits the look of the rest of the OS.) Most people I know who don’t use Safari use either Firefox or Camino.
On a Mac, it’s the fastest and prettiest browser I’ve used.
It’s very quick and nimble on a Mac. It’s just slow on a PC because Windows itself is a slug.
All the wasted screen real estate gets on my nerves. Does it have enough gray?? I don’t want to see gray, I want to see web pages!
Browsers installed on my Mac:
Safari
Firefox
Camino
OmniWeb
SeaMonkey (formerly the Mozilla “suite” of browser + mail client + HTML editor)
Opera
Netscape
Mozilla
DeerPark
IE5
iCab
Shiira
Wyzo
Gray is a nice, neutral color. We Mac users don’t like bright blue clashing with the colors of the Web page we’re viewing 
Shit, I have my Firefox at work skinned as Safari.
Safari’s the only browser that “feels” right on the Mac. Macs have had a pretty unified UI for decades now, but all the other browsers I’ve used on OSX toss aside some of these standards, which is infuriating.
(Does anyone know how to make Firefox for Mac select word-by-word when you double-click and drag?)
I too prefer the look of Internet Explorer to that of Safari
It’s always worked that way for me (well, at least since I discovered it was possible).
Doesn’t work for me.
I also use Firefox but have a Safari skin. I like the clean look of Safari. At least on the Mac; I haven’t seen the Windows version.
There are plenty of options, but in my experience the new or casual Mac user considers Safari the default much like many Windows users don’t know non-Explorer browsers exist.
I think even experienced Mac users prefer Safari. I’d been using Macs for many years before Safari came out, and switched to it quickly and easily because it was just better than the alternatives. Same with most of the people on the OS X mailing list I’m subscribed to.
On the other hand, I periodically switch to Firefox (I’m using the v3 beta right now, and really liking it).
3??
I have 4 browsers right now on my Windows PC and I know there are many, many more out there. See Phase42’s post (although his was about Mac browsers).
I don’t mind the look of Safari, but I don’t like that it doesn’t let me preview the URL of the link I’m about to click on.
I prefer Opera. The only thing it doesn’t do is spell-check for me automatically. But I can close the browser and open it back up – and it goes back to the same set of websites on all the tabs I had open before! No more “homepage” bullshit. It just starts everything up again from last time. Plus the ‘mouse gestures’ are just fun.
I think Safari has the “Status Bar” turned off by default. If the Windows version has a “View” menu, click it and select “Show Status Bar”. That will place a bar at the bottom of the browser window where URLs can be previewed.
Me too. It’s excellent, and RC1 should be out very soon, with the full release due for June. My only complaint right now is that this week’s update (Beta 5) doesn’t support Adblock Plus yet.
Possibly, but I wasn’t talking about liking it, I was talking about considering it the default and/or knowing there are others.