Safari 4 storms out the gates

The company said that since the browser was first unveiled Monday at the Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco, downloads have been steady for both the Mac and PC versions.

"Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Apple senior vice president of product marketing Philip Schiller.

"Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow."

Of the 11 million downloads, roughly six million have been from Windows users, while the remaining 5 million have been for MacOS X systems. Originally released as a Mac-only browser, the company first made Safari available to Windows users at the 2007 Worldwide Developer Conference.

Amongst the new features for the browser are the ability to view history files in the iTunes 'cover flow' style and improved archiving of browsing history. The update also fills some 51 security flaws.

Headlining the Safari 4.0 release, however, is the new Nitro JavaScript engine. The company said that the new engine significantly improves JavaScript performance and could get even faster when the company releases the 64-bit OS X Snow Leopard update later this year.