Apple releases Safari 4.0.5 with performance, stability improvements - Page 2

Worked fine for me using Firefox.

I wouldn't qualify anything Safari does as 'abysmal', and I actually never had any problems with the performance of the top sites screen, it works great for me. Faster is always better of course, but I think you're exaggerating here.

I used to be a real Firefox fanboy before but right now I actually hate having to use it at work. The extensions are great, but rendering speed is worse than Safari, and on Linux it's buggy as hell, I have it crash or hang at least once a week, for the last tweny 3.x versions that have been released. Don't even get me started about IE 7 or 8.

No, I'm not. I'm talking about frozen UI while Safari is pondering about updating the top sites for several seconds and equally slow opening of new tabs because for some reason only known to Apple Top Sites seem to run in the same thread as the UI. Chrome got this right: Their page is lightning fast and stalling UI is pretty much unheard of.

'Auto-Click' in Safari achieves what Morning Coffee does in Firefox. I have an 'AM' bookmark in my Bookmarks bar that I click every morning. Another for various Mac blogs.

Firefox is jerky and un-Mac like. And yes, I have the latest MBP, system updates, and current version of Firefox.

Just to let you know, Firefox can drag and drop a site from the address bar into a bookmark bar menu, into it's sub-menus and even to the exact spot in the sub-menu.


Guess my point is Firefox allows one to make their browsing experience as personal as one wants to meet their individual needs and the capacity of their hardware.

There are thousands of plug-ins, it's like a overwhelming bonanza of choice that is hard to go back to anything else. Also it gets updated rather quickly and the plug-ins automatically too. There is even TV in your browser with 2780 live channels from all over the world!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox

I love Apple, but it's possible they can't let Safari become too complicated as it would invoke a deluge of support calls, plus they have to think about encouraging users to buy new hardware, so they add a bit of mandatory "we think this is good for you" sort of feature bloat here and there to accomplish that objective. If not a Mac could last 3 times as long as any other computer.

The RangeRover of web browsing is a powerful Mac and Firefox with plug-ins.

It would kill me to live in fear that my entire system might crash if I click on a web link.

Doesn't that ruin the internet experience for you?

How do you reconcile your opinion with these facts?

Apple plugs 16 holes in Safari as Pwn2Own looms
Computerworld - Gregg Keizer - ‎1 hour ago‎
Computerworld - Two weeks before a browser hacking contest is to kick off in Vancouver, British Columbia, Apple yesterday patched 16 vulnerabilities in Safari, 12 of them critical bugs that could be used to hijack a machine.

They innovations they've made add to the usefulness, like CoverFlow history. Apple doesn't go for bloat if they can help it and they certainly aren't looking to out feature other companies just to do it.

Work machine being a Windows box?


Firefox does have a lot of features, and if you use ad/bug blocking there is a delay because it's waiting for the timeout in some cases. So one can load pages faster in Safari, but they get all the annoying crap too.


No problem here, but I'm using 9.04. So it's seasoned.




Crap, most like Microsoft is too blame for ills.

The key word in my original post was 'just', "Not JUST plugging some holes or fixing critical bugs". I never said Apple doesn't have holes to plug or that it shouldn't, I just said that -in my experience- Windows updates normally don't add or improve anything but plugging holes or fixing bugs.

I know you like to rant and troll about just about anything positive people have to say about Apple, but please do take the time to read carefully before you make yourself look like an idiot.

No, Ubuntu 9.10 with dual-boot to Windows XP with IE6 (yeah baby, yeah!)


I have Safari Adblock and Flashblock so I don't get the annoying crap either

I agree, most Apple updates do seem to genuinely offer something that the user will actually notice as opposed to just plugging holes.

Question for those on the boards who understand how OSX works (I don't!). Are all the system re-starts really required when an update comes? I can see why a re-start would be needed if something core to the OS was updated, but how come just an update to Safari did?

I thought one of the benefits of Unix was that different bits of it could be shut down and re-started without needing to re-start the whole?

Οpera has always been a pioneer and a stellar browser, that's why it's still around despite their negligible market share, and that's why fos community love a closed source product. If apple are seriously thinking of making an important acquisition they should buy the opera folk, huge talent and wits there. Seldom have I seen such a marginal product compete so effectively with the big guys, and actually set the standards for the rest to follow.

Loads instantly using Safari 4.04. I haven't upgraded to the new faster version because I can't restart the computer just yet. Animation takes 20 seconds more.

Took about one second to load in the latest Firefox, and about 13 seconds for animation.

Quadra, I will have to disagree with you for a change here, we are not talking about feature bloat, we are talking about a few important touches that safari is undeniably missing. Apple have a solid product that integrates well with the OS, mobileme, and i devices, but it's a far cry from being feature rich or innovative. It's not a blemish to the line up by any stretch, but it's not an innovative best in class piece of software by any stretch either. While say itunes grows in leaps and gets a lot of work put into it growing in features and usability, safari does not. And they should not rest on their laurels at apple but push on because both the mac users are demanding folk and expect high quality and the market is a competitive one.

Plus safari is a prime vehicle in integrating the mac ecosystem and due care has to be put to it that it does so effectively.

Then you have a problem because Top Sites appears instantly for me, all updated. Tabs also open very quickly.

I have to correct myself here. Safari spawns another process called "Preview Fetcher" or similar which supposedly does the job of populating Top Sites. Not sure what goes (went?) wrong during the communication between the two processes that Safari's UI would come to a standstill.


For some reason I suspected that Safari's history function would be mentioned as this is the only thing that Apple really nailed. Safari currently has the best history search among all major browsers I have used in the past years. The highlighting during search is also worth mentioning as an positive example. Still, it lacks in so many other areas and not all are code related or cause feature creep. For instance, Safari is now the last browser which still uses a modal dialog when asking whether a password should be saved, something all other browser vendors abandoned because a non-modal dialog makes far more sense. I'm sure most Safari users also wouldn't mind a true (automatic) session restoration instead of the band-aid solution currently in place, some more sophisticated functions like alphanumerical sorting of bookmarks or a slightly more intelligent redirection of new windows into tabs.


With which Safari version? Prior to 4.0.5 even a pretty much squeaky clean install of OS X and Safari would start stalling the UI when top sites where working once the history grew to a certain size. There are also enough people complaining about this across the Interwebs (not to mention Apple's ongoing effort to fix it) to make it doubtful that these are single occurrences.

You have a problem. We have a mix of G4's and Intels here and other than the obvious cpu differences, Safari is just as quick. By comparison, Firefox is not.

Rendered almost instantly on an old G4 over 802/g with p2p uploading with no bandwidth restrictions. Jerky for maybe 5/6 seconds but I assume that's my cpu and the p2p.

The problem does exist, but it depends on the video card in the machine as to whether you see it or not, or how serious it is. Safari renders the whole animation at all times, even those that are off-screen in the video card buffer. Firefox renders only the portion visible in the window.

Well, it actually only happened when opening a new window that opened to Top Sites. It is annoying, yes. I'm just glad I figured out quickly that Top Sites was the probable cause, based on the stack trace in the crash report. Of course, it means there is also a video driver bug floating around somewhere as well. I sent about 5 or 6 of the crash reports to Apple thru the auto reporter, so hopefully they get around to it.

Other people reported the strange display corruption; I suspect that was the same bug I saw, but on my system, it resulted in a panic.

4.0.4 on 10.6.2, though it seemed to work fine before that. I haven't had time to update to 4.0.5 yet so I can't talk about it. My history's pretty long.

This has to be a somewhat isolated problem as most people don't seem to be experiencing it. I just checked my wife's machine, and it's fine there as well.

Amen brother.

It's dog slow compared to Safari even with only a couple of extensions loaded.

I ll try clearing the cache or something then, I think history is bogging it down but I could be way wrong...

Since updating Safari has crashed for me numerous times.

upgrade last night. crashed already once (G4 Tiger). What happened? Anyone else got problem? thx

Two Intel machines here. No problems yet.

nkhm: My first post here, but... Was browsing to see comparisions betw S 4.0.5 and FF 3.6.3 (to see about switching to S). In your reply, you implied there is an equivalent to FF's MorningCoffee. May I ask, what is it? I have several add-ins in FF installed, am looking to (perhaps) switch. Thank you for your reply. I could list my FF add-ins, but being a nb, don't want to do so (yet).