“It makes perfect sense for Apple to release its Safari web browser for Windows, but the question is: What right-thinking Windows user would want it?” asks Wired’s Leander Kahney. “Safari sucks.”
MacDailyNews Take: Well, there goes whatever credibility that Mr. Charity Critic possessed in return for getting to play shock jock in text for a split-second. The big problem with Kahney’s view is that it’s untrue. Safari simply doesn’t “suck.” But whatever, no accountability, right, Leander?
Kahney continues, “A lot of Mac users won’t run the browser (I’m one of them), so why would anyone run it on Windows?”
MacDailyNews Take: If 18.6 million Mac OS X users run Safari and there are 22 million Mac OS X users, then 85% of Mac users run Safari – which coincides with our sites’ stats for Mac visitors and the browsers they are using. Sorry to disrupt Kahney’s stream of blather with the reality of basic math. We now return you to Kahney’s screed:
Kahney continues, “On my Mac, Safari is buggy and unreliable. It’s always crashing…”
MacDailyNews Take: We use Safari every day. This article and every article since yesterday afternoon has been posted via Safari 3 beta. It hasn’t crashed once despite being used on multiple Macs, each for hours with us juggling multiple tabs, switching apps, and visiting literally hundreds of sites. No, it’s not perfect: hence the “beta” designation. But, it’s certainly the best overall browser available today – we’ve tried them all – and very few people push their browsers to the extent we do. Kahney should offload some of those cheeseball Safari hacks he’s probably got running or get someone who knows what the heck they’re doing to look at his Mac because his situation as described, if true, is extremely atypical.
[Disclaimer: Having taste and brains, we don’t bother trying to use Windows beyond keeping up with Redmond’s latest in order to be able to accurately compare with Apple’s efforts. So, we haven’t yet tried Safari for Windows beta and it certainly could be crashing up a storm over there in hell — but wouldn’t that simply provide the warm comfort of familiarity to the sufferers?]
Full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
In addition, we have reports from both CNET and The Register, of course, questioning Safari’s security by quoting the likes of one David Maynor. That’s David “If you watch those ‘Get a Mac’ commercials enough, it eventually makes you want to stab one of those users in the eye with a lit cigarette” Maynor. Still trying to to fulfill your wants, David? Also of interest, please see the related article: SecureWorks admits falsifying Apple MacBook ‘60-second wireless hijacking?’ – August 18, 2006
CNET’s, Think Before You Click™, is here.
The Register’s, Think Before You Click™, is here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, from where, oh, where does this Safari for Windows FUD originate? We wonder.
Why is a Mac user posting all over the web that his copy of Safari for Windows crashed “Six times, in six minutes”.
Same formulation on every forum, on every website I’ve read today: “Six times, in six minutes*. All over the web… Quite a coincidence for all different people to all crash “Six times, in six minutes*, no?
Maybe this guy is Six?
No problem here.
Couldn’t import booksmarks from Firefox, it’s left browser icons on my XP desktop – how they got there I don’t know – and there no icon for adding a new tab. The interface is rather bland. Other than that it seems to run well enough.
I prefer using firefox when I’m on the mac however this’ll be great for testing web sites on Safari without having to roll over to my old imac.
Would love to buy a mac when leopard comes out but $2800 for the base model is still way to high when I can build a high quality machine for $1,000-1,200 using premium parts and contrary to the FUD that gets dished out here regarding XP, Windows rarely crashes and I never get a virus and very little spyware. Cost: $35/yr for anti-virus software and a little common sense. I can get my work done quite efficiently.
Leopard looks pretty cool though.
Gee, it’s a BETA.
Sometimes is buggy. Crashes. Has a few possible security hole?
Repeat after me: It’s a BETA!
That’s why betas are released. To find and REPAIR bugs.
Sheeeeesh!
> Kahney continues, “On my Mac, Safari is buggy and unreliable. It’s always crashing…”
Always crashing… on mine it sometimes crashes. Pages that are heavy on content – even ESPN’s home page – have a tendency to crash Safari.
I usually have a bunch of other tabs (like Craigslist, MDN, Sherdog, and some news sites) open and loading in the background. So I guess I push Safari a little bit, but that’s the whole point of tabbed browsing. To be fair, I’ve crashed Camino and Firefox quite a bit when surfing like this as well.
So YES… Safari is far from perfect. But it works good enough.
Well, I actually disagree with MDN’s take, mostly. I still think Safari sucks, at least 2.0. I haven’t given 3.0 beta a good enough try yet, but will (on both OS X and Windows). Still, from what I’ve seen, Firefox is still the best browser available, overall. Apple has a long way to go on Safari. I haven’t yet seen much improvement over 2.0 .
I downloaded Safari onto my XP machine and it’s fast as lightning. But it crashes everytime I try to import my bookmarks from Firefox..
Safari is buggy on the Mac. I use Firefox.
http://www.MittensRomney.com/
sorry, also the beta copy for OS X is quite buggy.
yeah yeah, don’t scream ‘BETA’ at me, this is unfortunately quite an under-par experience for Apple.
If it’s not ready, *DO NOT* send out a BETA copy
pretty simple
I hate Firefox, I hate IE, I dislike Opera, the only browser I use is Safari.
Some of you may remember I was complaining a couple of weeks ago about daily Safari crashes on two of my Macs.
I took some advice here, zapped Realplayer, updated all my my plug ins and zapped the .plst.
I happily haven’t had a single Safari crash since.
sorry, heck, check the Apple support site…. Windows *AND* OS X versions are quite buggy…..
I won’t be ‘testing’ it for Apple
three people had it crash 6 times in six minutes…
666
The devil is in the detail.
sorry for the dumb ?
I installed 3.0, did not like, and Zapped it
now how do I get the version 2 back?? can’t seem to find where I can DL from
For all to see…
I upgraded last night and to my delight I founded the following Safari 3 is a whole lot faster than Safari ever was and it feels a little more secure too. Plus everything just looks better and runs better.
Granted I’m running on an older Mac but the whole experience has been a favorable one!
I’m set up on a Power PC, QuickSilver 733 MH with 1.5GB of Ram…
This upgrade came at just the right time, as I was thinking about drop Safari 2 in favor or another but after experiencing Safari 3 I might just drop the whole idea and stick with Safari 3
I posted “six times in six minutes” on two sites. It really happened. Someone must have run away with that. I made it clear in both posts that I don’t really think it was a big deal. All browsers crash now and then, and this is a beta.
I think quite a lot of crashes are caused by bad code on web sites, and the developer’s headache is to anticipate and compensate for that.
If you have more than one monitor, try this. Right click on the desktop. Go to Display Properties | Settings. Rearrange your monitors. Launch Safari 3 in Windows on the primary monitor. Double click on what would be the title bar. Do that several times. (Normal behavior.) Then drag Safari to the second monitor. Double click on what would be the title bar. On my machine, Safari disappears but the start bar button is still there. Where is it? Did it go to imaginary coordinates?
Right click on the task bar button to close Safari. Launch it again: all’s well.
Reminds me of Dreamweaver some versions ago. It launched to imaginary coordinates. I had to delete a registry entry to get it back! This is a Windows problem, but the application can check the coordinates to make sure they exist.
It’s not usable, for example, check out http://www.lundsnation.se in firefox/ie/(safari on os x) and then compare to safari on xp
I don’t use Safari on my Mac (I’m a Firefox guy), but was curious to try it on my PC at home. It really does suck as much as it does on the Mac. It can’t open yahoo mail, crashes when trying to open g-mail, and I hate the way it won’t allow you to access programs in the taskbar unless you shrink the window.
I’ll try it again when it’s actually ready for public consumption, but it’s back to Firefox for me on my Mac and PC.
Safari is my primary browser at home on the Mac, but at work I have to use Windows, and I’ve already given up on the Safari 3 beta for Windows until they send out some bug fixes. It crashes too often (causing me to lose my tabs and my train of thought) to be used as a primary browser, and it has some bizarre rendering bugs as well.
Use safari on Mac, Firefox on PC. Had a look at Safari on PC. It crashed on the second site I visited, which was http://www.apple.com. I gave up after that, figuring that other people can try it instead.
Not putting v3 on my macs until it’s released. I know a couple of people who have tried it and then asked for help re-installing version 2.
Anyone with a Safari that crashes needs someone who knows what they are doing to undo some of the things they have done to their Mac – like downloading all and sundry apps and add-ons.
I have not had a Safari crash since I bought this MacBook Pro over a year ago.
EFF U DEE if you ask me…
And here is something, Safari on Windows is the ONLY browser that color manages images…
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-8740-9003
And test your browser here:
http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
This whole episode is looking like another example of how Microsoft Windows – and the nutters who champion it – stifle progress.
Idiots.
Safari on the Mac does suck compared to Firefox. I had to give up on it after too many slowdowns and freezeups. I was happy, however to hear about Safari for Windows thinking it HAD to be better than IE. But sadly, almost every time I have opened it since I installed in yesterday afternoon, it has crashed. I have a fairly new Windoze XP PC that has not give me any other trouble.
I can’t still use javascript, windows media player(aol music only works on IE7), I keep updating the plugins with no luck. Hopefully one of these days. It is my default browser right now… I’m a firefox user and I definitely miss my extensions. I had Opera as a backup…most probably will delete it.
Man, this is kinda weird. Safari in the foreground and Windows XP desktop in the background.
I’m running this on a Macbook C2D, obviously booted into the Windows side. I’ve been to most of my usual places, even my bank, and have noticed nothing unusual at all. It’s just the same as Safari on my Macs (no real surprise). I haven’t compared its speed to anything else since I wouldn’t know where to start — everything loads in a flash so timing comparisons might be difficult.
Yeah, funny thing that Steve Jobs announces a beta version of a browser at a developer’s conference and all these (non-developers?) are btiching about using Safari 3.0 beta. You know, if it weren’t for the iPhone, most of the world probably wouldn’t have heard about Safari for Windows. Let it go and let it grow.