May 25, 2012 - 05:30 PM EDT — AAPL: 562.29 (-3.03, -0.54%) | NASDAQ: 2837.53 (-1.85, -0.07%)

Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy sites now incompatible with Apple’s Safari browser

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 · 9:07 am · 62 Comments

Numerous MacDailyNews readers report that web sites for “The Gap,” “Banana Republic,” and “Old Navy” and no longer work with the latest version of Apple’s Safari browser. The sites attempt to reload seemingly endlessly with no content being displayed.

Gap, Inc. sites affected:
http://www.gap.com/
http://www.bananarepublic.com/
http://www.oldnavy.com/

Contact info:
– (800) GAP-STYLE
– (888) BR-STYLE
– (800) OLD-NAVY

Of interest, former Gap CEO Millard Drexler (now Chairman and CEO of J. Crew) currently serves on Apple’s Board of Directors and Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to sit on Gap’s Board of Directors.

[UPDATE: 10:44am ET: Added Board of Directors historical information.]

Categories: All Sites, News

Thank You for supporting MacDailyNews!

♥ Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended for Mac - Student and Teacher Edition DVD (65171323) only $249!
♥ Blowout: Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro i7/4Core/2.0GHz/4GB/500GB (MC721LL/A) only $1,549.99 + Free Shipping from MacMall
♥ Mac Madness Save 25% on Parallels Desktop 7!
♥ 15% Off Compatible Ink. 10% Off All Others (excludes OEMs). Free Shipping over $55. Coupon: 123BLOSSOM, Expires 6.18.12
♥ Save up to 60% at the Hammacher Schlemmer Special Values Sale-While supplies last.
♥ Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.5 - New! Simply Smarter Speech Recognition
♥ Up to 30% OFF Accessories from Verizon Wireless
♥ Limited Time Offer: Get free ZAGGsmartbuds when you buy a ZAGGsparq!

Comment Feed

62 Comments

1 2 3 4 Next »

j

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:19 am · Reply

hmmmmmmm. Luckily I shop for clothes at Sam’s Club.
Brian A. Davis

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:20 am · Reply

Are Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy all part of the same corporate family?

It sounds like a system wide Web site update has caused the problem.
Yep..All Same Corporate Family

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:23 am · Reply

Yep..All Same Corporate Family
editg5

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:26 am · Reply

works fine on FIREFOX….on my funky PC (forced to use @ work)
firefoxer

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:27 am · Reply

don’t work in firefox either.
Ronald RayGun

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:30 am · Reply

…Yeah but it works in IE so who cares. (in your best 10y/o voice)

- I love that line.
bvdecicco in Buffalo

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:35 am · Reply

Switch the User Agent to Windows IE 6 and it works fine. Crappy work around though.
DudeMac

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:37 am · Reply

Always have Firefox ready when Safari fails you
GrapeGraphics

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:37 am · Reply

Isn’t the CEO of the GAP et al also a board member at Apple? There’s some relationship between Apple and GAP et al.
Shieldzee

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:37 am · Reply

I just called Old Navy and they were very apologetic and pointed me to Firefox. At least they did not try to tell me to use Windows. The woman with whom I spoke said that they were aware of the problem and that they were working on a fix to be implemented soon.
iMacUK

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:40 am · Reply

firefox loads all of ‘em ok. this is not the first time i have seen safari handle things badly, which is why ff is now my default browser.

and as for the connection between apple and gap, didn’t gap just run a promotion “try on a pair of jeans and get free music from itunes” ?

MW:years as in “the browser debate is set to run for…”
JadisOne

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:42 am · Reply

They broke down in the latest version of Opera as well.
gopher

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:45 am · Reply

Don’t forget when e-mailing them to point out that they are also violating accessibility laws. http://www.anybrowser.org/ has some good form letters, and http://www.w3.org/ has developed some age old standards for building proper webpages that these guys should follow, and anyone else should follow to avoid the problem of not being able to be browsed by specific web browsers.
gorilla

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:49 am · Reply

works fine with Netscape
splat

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:49 am · Reply

internet explorer works…LOL
Malthus

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:52 am · Reply

Of course, the real twist to this story is that Steve Jobs used to be on the board of Gap Inc., and Mickey Dressler, one of Apple’s board members, is a former CEO of Gap Inc. I guess when some people stop playing, they want to take the ball home…
Malthus

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:54 am · Reply

Looks like they did the update while I was fact-checking. That will teach me.
Alan

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:54 am · Reply

Omniweb has the same problem unless you set it to spoof as a recent browser like Netscape 7.2 or IE 6.0 in which case it loads but the page layout isn’t quite right. That’s why I like Omniweb, if a site doesn’t work many times there’s a way to change the settings so it will.
Bill Palmer

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:55 am · Reply

“Internet explorer works…”

No it doesn’t, at least not on a Mac. I tried it out of morbid curiosity (how did IE even get installed on this computer?), and received the following error message:

“We’re sorry, but we do not support the version of the browser you are using. Our site works best with the following browsers…

Mac users
Netscape 7 and above
Mozilla (including Firefox) 1.0 and above”

Yeah that’s the ticket…support a couple of obscurist hobbyist browsers on the Mac, but not the official web browser that’s built into the Mac. Yes yes, I know, every card-carrying Mac geek has at least three copies of FireFox installed on their system, but the other 99 percent of the user base uses Safari…
BulbVivid

Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - 10:58 am · Reply

So now how am I going to go about looking like everyone else? Don’t tell me I have to go to the mall.

Good thing I just ordered a year’s supply of khakis.