Safari 4 is now out of Beta. And you can definitely tell that they have been listened.

Tabs

First off the location of the tabs has changed. In the Beta, they were located at the top (like Chrome). It was an interesting experiment that doesn't fit within the Mac mold. The only way to make the tabs work, is for the top menu to completely disappear. Clearly this was too radical (or cannot be done?) that they've opted to put the tabs back to where they have always gone.

The work on the tabs doesn’t stop there however. They’ve gone back to allowing you to select the whole tab rather than a corner to drag them across. That was a function that really pissed me off with the Beta.

Speed

It's definitely MUCH faster. Both at loading and at rendering pages. In fact I'll go so far as to say it's giving me the same speed surprise I had when I first ran and installed Google Chrome (read item 4). Clearly Apple aren't resting on their laurels. They've taken it back to Google who only recently released their Alpha version of Chrome for the Mac.

Buttons and Interface

In Safari 3 I often resorted to hacks to add some much need functionality, such as a bloody tab button. Yeah I know it's cmd+t but dammit I wanted a button for when I was feeling bloody lazy. Thankfully they've brought in a bunch of buttons that can sit in the menu now. Another favourite is removing/adding the bookmarks bar button.

Loading and Reloading

The loading graphic has also changed now. I don't actually mind this at all. In fact I would go on to say that I actually like this, however I actually liked the previous integration of the blue bar across the entire address book a lot more. Reloading a page is still in the address line; When this was first introduced I was not a fan, however this has grown on me.

Overall impressions is that this feels like the next logical step forward for Safari. The Beta actually for once showed that they are willing to go back on their original ideas and that they do actually listen to user’s opinions, which is always nice.