Apple recently released the public beta of Apple Safari 4. Some of the new features include:

  • Top Sites: Tab homepage similar to Google Chrome’s, only fancier
  • Cover Flow: Integration of iTunes-like Cover Flow for viewing history and bookmarks
  • Tabs on Top: Also taken from Google Chrome (see screenshots)
  • Nitro Javascript Engine: Once more, inspired by Chrome. Safari’s JS engine would render web apps up to 30 times faster than IE7 and 4 times faster than Firefox.

Not that I’m complaining, but did Apple just take the Chromium project and tack on its own additions? I haven’t looked into this yet, but Safari 4 certainly shows a lot of similarities with Google Chrome… On to some screenshots.

Note: After having used Safari 4 for 10 minutes, I already came across a rendering bug. When attempting to edit a link in Wordpress’ WYSIWYG-editor, the page greys out and becomes unresponsive, forcing me to refresh and lose all unsaved work. Beta software indeed.