Cupertino launches the first version of its web browser designed to run on Microsoft's operating system

Apple has released the first version of its browser, Safari, for the Windows operating system.

Safari 3.1, which was launched on Tuesday, will run on Windows XP or Vista and, of course, Mac OSX. Apple released a beta for the Windows-supporting version in June last year.

Apple has claimed that the browser is the fastest available for Windows. In a Tuesday statement, Cupertino said it "loads web pages 1.9 times faster than [Internet Explorer] 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2 [and] runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers".

"Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, on Tuesday.

According to Apple, Safari 3.1 is the "first browser to support the new video and audio tags in HTML 5 and the first to support CSS animations". The browser is free to download.

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