Beware installing Safari 4!

I have a G4 mirrored door Mac running 10.4.7. I have "automatic updates" checked for weekly. So when I got a message that it wanted to install Safari 4 a couple days ago, I assumed that was a good idea and did it. Safari 4 on my machine has slowed everything down to a snail's pace...and of course if you go back to the Apple site and look at system requirements, it says it requires 10.4.11. But if it AUTOMATICALLY updates everything, you would think it would say to itself, "Oh, oh...this system doesn't support Safari 4. I won't install it." But no. Also, looking at system requirements for my Mac, there doesn't seem to be any reason it wouldn't install 10.4.11, but when I run "software update" it says there are no updates necessary, even though the finder says it's 10.4.7 and 10.4.11 is out there. I am not foolhardy enough to override it and install 10.4.11 on my own, nor am I keeping Safari 4--I just copied the older version to a USB drive and will replace 4 when I get home. Just a warning to others!!

I would download the 10.4.11 Combo Updater from Apple and update. There are a lot of improvements leave alone security patches in 10.4.11.

Yep, agree with dtravis.

Here is the PPC download for 10.4.11

It also installs Safari 3.

Yeah, I gave in last night and installed 10.4.11. So great...now it takes 30+ seconds (I counted) to open the splash page on AOL. It's like I'm back to dial up. Why is this an "upgrade"? Why sooooooo sloooooooowwwwwww?

I should also add one more thing--once Safari 4 is installed, that's it. You can't remove it. I went through a long forum on another site where a bunch of people ran into this--even 3rd party software that supposedly removes applications doesn't work. Obviously throwing it in the trash doesn't work--when you try to re-install Safari 3 it tells you "I can't do that Dave...a newer version of Safari is already installed..." even though you took the Safari icon and flushed it. So, whereas yesterday I thought my answer was simply re-installing Safari 3, that's impossible.

mamlukman said:

Thanks for you comment with my Safari 4 problem. I did end up simply going to 10.4.11, but that didn't solve my original problem--on my G4, DSL, Safari 4 is glacial...30+ seconds (I counted) to open up the splash page for AOL, and everything else in proportion. Safari 3 on the same machine with the same DSL was fairly fast--fast enough that I never noticed any delays. Also, when I take a look at network preferences, there is a dialog box (that won't go away) that says my settings have been changed by "an application" (presumably Safari 4). But I have no idea what it changed or why, or if that has anything to do with why everything has slowed down. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

These should always go back to the original thread instead of PM. There are a lot of folks around here better than I at a lot of stuff. This included. Always best to let the group see it.

Unlikely that Safari 4 is the culprit of the slow down. There is almost unanimous agreement that it is faster than Safari 3. It surely would not be the cause of a page loading taking 30 seconds. Tried that page on mine and it took 1 second.

One of the security updates caused this type issue. Check out post # 8 in this thread. Several folks with G4's that one of those two fixes worked for.

a week later....same result

OK, thanks to people in this and the MacWorld forums, I tried several repair/maintenance programs (Applejack, Main Street, Disk Warrior, etc.) and as far as Safari 4 goes, nothing. Then over the weekend I spent more time than I had deleting files, etc. then re-installing Tiger from the original disk (archive & install) and then updating it. Then re-installed Safari 4.

Result? Still over 30 seconds to load splash page of AOL (or any other page, actually!). Same DSL, same cables....only variable is Safari. By the way, I have 1.5 gb of RAM. dual 867 processors....

The only "solution" I can see at this point is re-installing Tiger yet again and trying to bring Safari 3 back to life. Any other ideas are welcome--I believe people who say its fast on their machines (some even have the same G4!) but for the life of me I can't figure out why.

I have a heavily modded G4 Digital Audio with 1.8Ghz G4 ATI radeon 9800 Pro and everything else maxed out. I will try Safari 4 there and get back to you. It should be close to your MDD in overall speed.

Thanks again to all those who gave suggestions. I tried them all, with no success. And, if you're wondering, I also checked what speed I was supposed to be getting out of Verizon DSL, then I measured the actual speed with two different programs--the actual speed pretty much matched the theoretical, roughly 730 down and 130 up. So it's not the connection or the Internet speed itself. I finally gave up, re-installed Tiger yet again, and went back to Safari 3.2.3. (Of course then I had to re-install my printer, scanner, etc. etc.--what a hassle.)

update to Safari 4 problem

It took me two weeks of looking through forums and messing with the computer, but I found my problem. Even after re-installing Tiger, updating the system, then re-installing Safari 3.2.3, Safari was extremely slow. Several people had discussed the issue about DNS 6 vs. 4 (I'm probably saying this the wrong way), but apparently the newer versions of Safari (apparently including 3.2.3) are set (or a better way to put it, go in an re-set your own settings in the network preferences file) to look for the DNS 6. In any case, disabling that and forcing Safari to go back to the old-fashioned DNS 4 solved my problem--I'm back to the speed I was at before installing Safari 4. Am I going to install Safari 4 again? Not on your life!

Well if you really want to go to safari 4 you could try to reinstall it now after you just reinstalled your OSX, it should work. I have safari 4 and i have no problems what so ever, in fact it works better then safari 3 because that would quit so much! But i am running 10.5 and i do have a macbook, them together might be why. Or you could install 10.5 and try to install. But that costs a bunch of money. Sorry if this post doesn't have much to do with this.

mamlukman said:

It took me two weeks of looking through forums and messing with the computer, but I found my problem. Even after re-installing Tiger, updating the system, then re-installing Safari 3.2.3, Safari was extremely slow. Several people had discussed the issue about DNS 6 vs. 4 (I'm probably saying this the wrong way), but apparently the newer versions of Safari (apparently including 3.2.3) are set (or a better way to put it, go in an re-set your own settings in the network preferences file) to look for the DNS 6. In any case, disabling that and forcing Safari to go back to the old-fashioned DNS 4 solved my problem--I'm back to the speed I was at before installing Safari 4. Am I going to install Safari 4 again? Not on your life!

Click to expand...

I don't think your slowdown was being caused by the DNS 6 versus DNS 4 issue but rather a re-directing of DNS. This problem will cause a slow down regardless of which version of Safari you have installed. (As you found out.)

The way to avoid the DNS issue entirely is by using Open DNS. Go to the Open DNS web site and read up on it. Link

If you would like to try Open DNS, I suggest making a backup - preferably a clone backup of your system using software such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. That way you can always get back to where you started from.

Open DNS could solve your problem with Safari 4. Do you intend to stay with an older version of Safari forever? What about when Snow Leopard is released?

Regards.

Yes, Safari 4 is bad on Tiger... and a possible solution

Hi,

I have 10.4.11 running on a turn-of-the-century iMac. I can confirm that Safari 4 works poorly on my machine. Much slower, and don't get me started about their trashing Safari Parental Controls (this has been discussed elsewhere, I think).

But: What about this:

Someone has made a fully stand-alone Safari 3:

Multi-Safari

Any thoughts on whether this is a good solution?