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The company's chief executive, Steve Jobs, claims Safari will be Windows' fastest browser, rendering pages at twice the speed of Internet Explorer and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox.

Jobs made the shock announcement at the company's developer conference in California, and is typically bullish about Safari's prospects. 'We think Windows users

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are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari,' Jobs says. 'Hundreds of millions of Windows users already use iTunes, and we look forward to turning them on to Safari's superior browsing experience too.'

The questionable speed statistics aside, it's not obvious which 'superior browsing' features Safari brings to Windows users. Apple says features such as one-click access to previous search results, resizeable text fields and privacy features distinguish Safari from other browsers, though whether these will be sufficient to tempt IE and Firefox users remains to be seen.

The company has made a 'public beta' of Safari 3 for Windows available for download immediately from its website.

Is Safari good enough to overtake IE and Firefox on Windows? Tell us your thoughts by clicking Add Comments below.