008 - Safari oblivion - Firefox to the rescue

I did something legal and lost both new and old Safari

Today (March 1st 2009) I downloaded Safari 4.0 beta for Tiger, to run on the iMac G4 (800 MHz) and iBook G4 (1.33 GHz) - both running Tiger 10.4.11 and security update 2009-001.

The conclusion now is that the on both machines, I have no working Safari browser! The beta crashed on both machines, and the old Safari did not work on either - I started Firefox and downloaded Safari 3.2.1 for Tiger to be reinstalled.

The good tip is to have more than one browser installed on your machine! Should the browser you updated fail, you'd have an easy road to the net. (There is ftp on any machine, to download new versions, or you would have more than one machine or friends with machines, and a memory stick..)

Safari.crash.log

See next - Safari discussion group:

This note at Safari discussion group

I have added this note to the Safari discussion group at Apple's site. Some quite good comments there: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9084774&#9084774

Solution

1.) Delete the Safari.app (it's probably a mix of 3.2.1 and 4.0 beta?)

2.) restart the machine

3.) install with Safari3.2.1Ti.pkg (downloaded with Firefox) 

4.) run it for a day, install another browser, then go ahead with Safari 4.0 beta

Cause of problem - and a suggestion for Apple

Prior to installing the 4.0 beta I had moved the original Safari.app to a subdirectory and even renamed it. The Installer got confused - without warning me and do appropriate action - and the unInstaller also got confused (see Apple discussion thread).

Apple should enhance their install software (script) not to err (so fatally for some who would not have an alternative browser) - since it's completely legal to move and rename applications.