I like everyone else clicked on the download Safari 3 beta with enthusiasm – hey who isn’t going to be happy about a new browser? Ok, yes I may be a bit sad but there we go… My bouncing was quickly turned into head scratching as the installer claimed my system didn’t meet the requirements. Much puzzlement ensued but as it was late at night I gave in figuring the good ‘ole powerbook was having an off day. This morning I tried again with a few more brain cells and have discovered 2 things that could be preventing you from installing the beta.
Firstly, if you are like me and have more browsers than you could shake a stick at, you will probably have them in a folder just for browsers. This to the Safari 3 beta is a deal breaker. Just move Safari back to the root Applications folder and it will remove the ! from your hard drive and be happy to proceed. At this point I figured ‘great it’s smooth sailing now’…. Yes, you are right I probably shouldn’t have said anything and hence point 2 comes up. If you are finding the installer just sitting there and not seeming to do much, a lot of fear will ensue. I went through the ‘do I cancel and have to clear up mess?’ ‘great long day coming’ ‘where’s my install disk’ – and many more morning panics. As a random thought I closed down programs that were running incase these were causing the problems. The first one was itunes and instantly the Safari installer woke up.
So, there you have it 2 possible things you should be on the look out when installing the Safari 3 beta on your mac. I can only assume it’s set to see in a hard coded applications/ and that it is also using some common library or something with itunes. Whilst I am seeing far more than these problems in the various posts I’ve read, I’m writing this incase it helps someone who has the same issue I had. I’m going to prod it about and put it through it’s paces to see what the improvement is like. So far it seems a bit sluggish but it’s settling down and I’m sure things will get worked out – not quite sure about the benchmark speeds tests being quoted as firefox still seems far more snappy on my mac. One interesting bug I seem to have is that on loading a page you have to refresh to see anything – I am going to investigate this one later on today. The great news though is those of you on windows can also install Safari now if you click here.
I had no problem installing it…but I honestly don’t notice any difference at all?
I had no probs installing it either, Amber. There aren’t any differences to be seen, it’s all under the hood I guess, there’s a new search though… Anyway it really is a lot faster on my G5.
I lave Safari, always been my default.
Glad to hear it’s gone well for others. After using it now for a bit I really can say the main good bit is the speed as far as I can see. I do actually like the default form buttons – wasn’t sure I would but damn a lot of sites look sexy with that effect on them. It’s gone back to being a default for a while after Camino over took it as it’s really significantly snappy. I also despite my blip at the start haven’t had any of the crashes people are talking about … time to toch wood maybe ;)