As you may know, Apple is holding its worldwide developers conference (WWDC), and making a bunch of product announcements. Among the announcements were some new features for its Safari browser.
From the sound of it, Safari is about to get more Chrome-like, with search functionality from a unified search/URL bar, as well as synced bookmarks and history across various devices.
Baidu has even been added as a search option.
There’s a new feature called iCloud Tabs, which shows you all the tabs you have open across your iOS/OS X devices. This way, you can pick up on your Mac where you left off on your iPhone or iPad, for example. With Tab View, you can use gestures to physically navigate across tabs.
There’s an offline reading list feature, and another feature, Smart App Banners, lets you upload photos to websites.
The new Safari, Apple says, has the fastest javascript engine of any browser on the planet.
Here’s what Apple has to say about the new Safari on its iOS 6 page:
iOS 6 brings even better web browsing to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. iCloud Tabs keeps track of which pages you have open on your devices, so you can start browsing on one device and pick up right where you left off on whatever device is handy. Safari now saves web pages — not just links — in your Reading List, so you can catch up on your reading even when you can’t connect to the Internet.6 And when you’re posting a photo or video to eBay, Craigslist, or another site, you can take photos and video — or choose from your Camera Roll — without leaving Safari. When you really want to see the whole picture, turn your iPhone or iPod touch to landscape and tap the full-screen icon to view web pages without distractions.
As far as search goes, Google set a new standard with its Chrome omnibox, and frankly, I’m surprised more browsers haven’t latched onto this kind of functionality. It simply improves the speed of web surfing. One has to wonder how this will affect adoption of Chrome for iOS, if it ever actually comes out.
How will it affect Yahoo’s push into the mobile browser market with Axis, which seemed geared towards iOS, given Chrome’s absence from the operating system.