After a number of beta releases over the course of the last few months, Opera just released the first stable version of its Opera 10.52 browser for the Mac. This is the first production version of Opera for the Mac that features the company’s new Carakan JavaScript engine and Vega graphics library. Opera 10.52 also supports multi-touch gestures on modern Apple laptops and Growl notifications.
The company claims that this new version is the “world’s fastest browser.” In our somewhat unscientific tests (using the SunSpider benchmark), Opera did indeed best the latest development version of Chrome by a small margin (512ms vs. 571ms). During actual usage, this speed difference is hardly noticeable, however.
The Mac version is generally on par with the Windows version that Opera released in March 2010. Opera for the Mac features the company’s widget platform, Opera Turbo for faster browsing on slow networks, Opera Link for bookmark syncing and support for HTML5 and CCS3.
While it’s somewhat hidden in the sidebar, the Mac version of Opera also features Opera Unite, the web and media server that the company now builds into its desktop browsers.
For a more detailed look at all of the new features in Opera 10.52 for the Mac, also have a look at our earlier review of the Windows version.
