Apple backtracks on Safari 4.0 tabs on top, ZFS - Page 2

When Apple do decide that ZFS is ready to ship for MacOS X, I hope that it's not the default. A file-system needs to have been widely tested for a long time before it becomes the default. I would be happy to see ZFS as an option with 10.7 and the default with 10.8.

PS. Although the new loading looks great, I miss the liquid-filled loading animation, because it actually told you how the loading was progressing.

Apple must have reason to believe or fear that Oracle will GPL ZFS once they takeover Sun in order to add it to the Linux kernel. Apple has traditionally avoided integrating GPL code wherever possible, which is probably the #1 reason they chose to use BSD code instead of Linux code in OS X.

I don't see why Oracle would GPL ZFS, since Solaris would become its flagship operating system and would compete with Linux. Why give away that kind of technology to your competitors?

ZFS runs as the default filesystem on OpenSolaris, which Sun is promoting as a developer operating system to compete with Linux. While it's not a consumer operating system, it's most definitely a desktop operating system that's being battle testing in production environments. I don't understand why anyone would claim that it's not yet ready.

In any case, as a pre-OS X filesystem, HFS+ is starting to show its age (ex, I once needed to download and run a defragger). With superior filesystems all over the landscape (UFS, ext3/4, etc), I don't see why Apple hasn't switched to *something* else by now.

Exactly. Apple has been talking about resolution independence since OS X Tiger. It's way past time to deliver.

Spot on.

Furthermore, there were a lot of times where I was trying to select a tab and since the tabs where also the window bar, Safari would interpret it as if I was moving the window. This used to drive me crazy. I was truly happy when I saw the tab bars back to their normal place.

I have one small gripe though, Apple seems to have removed the "Refresh" button and there is no such button when you try to customize the toolbar \
The in-line refresh button in the address bar is not very comfortable. I guess I will resort to Apple Key + R. Bummer... nothing can be perfect eh?

Exactly what I was thinking.

I use tabs all the time. Am I the only one who doesn't care if they are top/bottom? It almost seems like a lot of navel-gazing to fuss about it. Pick one and stick with it. 4 is working great so far and seems fast. But I will try very hard to find something to complain about.

If you Disk Utility>Erase with Zero a new drive or computer boot drive before using it, it greatly reduces corrupted data from bad sectors.

(newbie warning: Erasing your boot drive deletes all data, OS, files, applications etc)

I agree though checksums would be a great benefit.

I liked the beta tabs. Seemed cleaner.

Safari 4 isn't working with M$ Silverlight needed to watch Netflix "watch instantly" movies.

Also Hulu keeps begging to reinstall Flash, even if the latest version is installed.

I wonder if this has to do with Safari 4 sandboxing the plug-ins, and will this apply to Java and the exploit currently being used against OS X?

(turn off Java in all browsers now!)

I agree, that was dumb move.

After all the object of sandboxing the plug-ins was to be able to flush the bugs out through refreshing the page.

Then Apple removes the refresh button!

I loved them, but I travel often and so i use a smaller display where display real estate is more important. I dont mind that they have moved them back, but I do mind that they arent even an option anymore. The last build of Safari 4 Beta allowed you to choose, albeit via a PLIST edit, but it only took a second to do. I have moved back to the last beta simply to get my tabs back on top.

Out of the 52 comment to dated, 17 favored the top position vs 11 the old and 3 neutral.

More interesting, out of the 17 fav's, 11 commented that it would be nice to have it at least an option. This was in contrast to the 11 who didn't suggest the option "option" and were often consistently quite negative adamant in demanding their preference.

I for one, favor the tabs on top as it replicates my Steelcase filing cabinets, and every non-computer filing cabinet that I have ever opened.

Incidentally, I am submitting this commentary to "Report Bugs to Apple…" in the Safari menu and under Problem type: "Appearance Wrong."

Wow, which monitor (LCD?) supports that resolution and at what physical size? I want one too if it is an LCD .

I reported the lack of tab options as a bug to Apple yesterday. I see no reason why they cant add them back or why they would have completely removed the option.

When Safari 4 beta arrived an 'over a beer' straw-poll of 8 my Mac using friends for/agains tabs on top was 50/50.

Today I asked them all again (plus a couple of other mac users I know) again and all 10 (plus myself) use the tabs on top despite the buggy behaviour. Strangely enough the ones who hated it in the beginning are now the most rabid proponents and are going nuts that Safari has regressed to a less usable and wasteful interface.

What really grates me personally is the loss of the "in URL" progress bar and moving the reload button away from all the others (ie to the far end of the URL bar). The progress bar was simple and easy to see now I don't know what's appening when a site is launching (or hanging) & have to hunt around for the totally different reload button. Crazy.

This is one backward step where giving the user choice would be very welcome.

I have to admit that while the tabs on top looked smooth and were obvious to see and use on OS X (alternating light grey and dark grey tabs), they were difficult to see and use in the Windows version because the taskbar is only one colour.

While Apple did the right thing in implementing standard Windows behaviour for Safari, they should have made the taskbar non-standard. Perhaps the Windows API lacked the hooks to make each taskbar tab an alternating colour.

Oh well! Maybe Safari 5 will fix this.

I wonder if the apparent disinterest in ZFS is caused by the increasing popularity and availability of SSDs ? They have a reliability that disk drives don't have and when they fail, they fail : no checksum can help then. Meanwhile, my understanding is that SSDs have a life span limited by the amount of "writes" on each block. Maybe ZFS caused the boot block of SSDs to fail prematurely ?

I'm only wondering...

thank god they changed it. so many people were complaining i thought for sure they'd give an option to change it... i guess it was that bad.

I want my tabs back on top. They threw me off at first, but i got used to it quickly. Apparently the whiner brigades who love having a big fat useless title bar won the argument. Of course, the choice should really be optional.

i was a bit disappointed by the tabs not being on top. i was REALLY disappointed by the amount of RAM that safari uses!! and it seems to only use more and more ram and not give any back to the system until i close the whole application!

i have high hopes for mac chrome.

Tabs do NOT belong on top. Thank GOD that Apple put them back where they belong.

Anybody who thinks that tabs "were just fine" on top doesn't really use tabs and doesn't really understand why putting them on top was a horrible horrible horrible mistake and problem.

Thank God SOMEBODY at Apple is actually paying attention. Unlike the people at Apple who removed the ExpressCard slot from their 15" MacBook Pro.

BUMMER.

Tabs on top...?
Tabs on bottom...?

Make it a preference item.

Too bad about ZFS.
BUT... ZFS has to work 100%, the FIRST time! Especially if it makes it's debut in OS X Server.
So, I can imagine the amount of testing involved is pretty monumental.

I couldn't agree more. On BOTH counts!

I liked the tabs on top a lot because it saved screen space.

Tabs on top also BOTHERED me a lot because I was always switching tabs by accident (or closing them!) when I only waned to click the title bar: a simple and common act according to system-wide convention.

So it was a wash--I could take them or leave them. Having the option would be nice, or better yet some third method (Chrome's way seems OK, or something yet to come).

Brilliant.\

AND puts it in the SAME place and makes it look exactly the same as the SnapBack button (only grey)!

I think this is a very good argument. Leopard isn't going to be getting a UI makeover and Safari 4 Beta's Tabs on Top, for better or worse, stuck out.

On the other hand, Snow Leopard still has three, maybe four months in the cooker depending on when in September it ships, so I still like to think they'll sneak in a refined UI, i.e., the replacement of Aqua elements, window controls, buttons, and scroll bars with something more akin to iTunes 8. They unveiled Leopard's new UI just before it was originally set to release before being delayed (for the iPhone), during which time it saw even more changes. John Gruber, who put out the original rumor about this "Marble" UI now thinks it won't make it into 10.6, but he's been wrong before.

If Apple introduces last minute changes to Snow Leopard (which would make some logical sense considering they don't want to give Microsoft three to four months to copy such a UI), I could imagine Tabs on Top becoming new UI standard for applications that benefit from tabs, namely Safari and word processors/text editors, along with (maybe) the Finder. Developers would obviously have the option of using Apple's method or their own implementation.

(Sorry to be shouting) I AGREE 100%!! IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE THAT THEY GOT RID OF THE 'RELOAD' BUTTON FROM THE TOP LEFT!!

It was a Beta for a reason. Plus chrome already had it upwards. I think Apple didn't wanna copy that look and stay original.

I guess others have mentioned it too..... well, I'd like to add my voice of displeasure. C'mon Apple, put the reload button back where it belongs. It just doesn't feel right to be pressing Apple-R each time.

View>Show Progress Bar

of the final Safari 4?

As long as the Mac OS X UI doesn't go all BLACK, like the rumor sites were showing screenshots of a while back. That would truly suck.

I vote for Tabs below. There are reasons why a window has a title bar! Lower Tabs defeat them all.

BTW: Whatever happened to Finder window tabs?

WTF is with the page load status? It gives ZERO indication of progress? It just shows that it may or may NOT be doing something. This is a pointless step backward. Gimme back the blue fill!

I personally didn't like the tabs on top. Maybe it's b/c I got use to them below or maybe not. I was also glad to see some kind of background added to the address bar when the page was loading with a change in color as the load status changed.

And I'm really impressed with the speed difference from beta - wow.

While the relocation of the reload button is more about relearning its place, we may be prejudging the removal of Safari 3's inline loading bar. For starters, at least Safari 4's new loading indicator has a color change when moving from one page to another. That alone is a nice improvement over the simple spinner in the Beta version. But what we're not considering is, if Apple strips Snow Leopard of Aqua, they may come up with a better way to show loading progress throughout the system.


Giving users that type of design decision leads to confusion during customer support calls. Similarly, what if a college campus (where Macs are prevalent) decides to go with Tabs on Top while some of their students use tabs on the bottom? Now students have to relearn things on the spot when they're trying to do (often frenzied) research.

I seriously like the tabs on top that much....

Out of a billion people, 900 million favor Windows vs 75 million Mac and 25 million Linux and other OSes.

Where are the Pro apps and Pro hardware?

Is it me or Apple is slowly forgetting their "pro" market? Come on... After iLife 09 with tagging and face recognition... Aperture is still 2.0?
And Final Cut?

And MacPro??


I hope these apps and hardare get a refresh before or along SnowLeopard and that their "Grand Central" design is in the works... I know Apple is not "talkative" about their projects, but I really expected some news at a Developer Conference about the pro apps.

It's not that I don't like the iPhone 3GS (which I will purchase) but some things have been left in limbo for some time now...

Add to that AppleTV and the iTunes video store in many countries. Seems like Apple is stuck in some deals, but other companies will catch up (Sony, Microsoft (Zune XboX), maybe even Hulu)..

I know I am off topic, and I'm sorry for that :-) But I "had" to write it...

Although ZFS has been around for almost five years at Sun, sometimes it's
still treated as a research project.

E.g. to answer (real or perceived) threats from storage competitors like NetApp,
Sun is now playing with de-duplication, a marketing checkbox item for some,
but for others like ZFS principal Jeff Bonwick a thing to get right (i.e. done at the
block level). There is still an unresolved Sun/NetApp patent lawsuit which
may be taking Apple hostage, even though (old) Sun indemnifies ZFS users
against patent trolls.

As well, others are still experimenting with checksum methods, not only for
various time/space tradeoffs but to address potential mathematical flaws in
the mappings. Apple would have to carry around all the experimental baggage
for the sake of compatibility if they rolled it out now.

Other bits: compression methods are overrated since the stuff taking up the
most space (video, photos, and audio) are already compressed. Further, Apple
may still be working on an in-place HFS+ to ZFS converter for the masses, now
made more complicated by new choices.

Lastly, I always (mistakenly) thought that Apple was going to expand into enterprise
server land via purchase of Sun, a make-vs.-buy decision which they could have
done with a fraction of their cash horde. Now we've seen that Sun's customer lists
are more valuable to Oracle than others, and that Apple has minimized the use
of Java for their gear. Apple remains the highest-volume shipper of Unix.
To me, it is amazing to see them do this via clever layering to keep their goodies
from disturbing the various NIH-syndrome components they utilize.

I want my tabs on top again. It looks wrong this way. Oh well, I'' just use Google Chrome when it's finally released for Mac.