[whitedog]

You say "homely," I say "usable." WMP is a visual mess, in my opinion. It's a bit like the early versions of OS X, where some of the shiny, curvy surfaces were visually overwhelming, distracting you from the content of the windows.
Yes, well we are talking Windows here. Windows users are accustomed to the look and feel of WMP. It will take them some time to get used to the Spartan look of Apple applications - though I guess iTunes has broken the ice, which is no doubt what Steve Jobs is counting on. But I thought the Apple aesthetic was that functional, or "usable," doesn't have to be ugly. Safari is about as plain as a web browser can be. That's why I use Safari Enhancer to spice it up a bit. And iTunes, since version 7, has been anything but elegant. Now that grim, gray look will be everywhere in Leopard. Yes, I know, there are operational improvements that go along with the change in appearance, like flippy-arrows to collapse the the categories in the side bar - made necessary by the proliferation of categories; and the addition of Cover Flow as a view option. Operationally Leopard is a significant improvement on Tiger. But some theme options for the side bar background color would not be a bad idea. As it is now it's chilling.
As a for instance, I have taken great pleasure in showing off my new Mac Pro to a Windows using friend. The case is elegant and very well made. When we browse the PC cases for sale at Fry's there simply is nothing that compares favorably to it. To a one they are tacky and cheap. Open a Dell catalog and you see more of the same. Though some people think the Mac tower form factor is getting long in the tooth, it is an example of near perfect industrial design, inside and out. The same goes for the iPod and the iPhone. Some may question the iPhone's feature set (no third-party apps or games), no one has said it's anything but the most beautiful smart phone on the planet, both the physical phone itself and the interface. That's Apple at its best.
I don't think I'm the only one who has not warmed up to OS X's gunmetal gray GUI elements - thus the market for ShapeShifter. I've not complained before because, well, Leopard was on the horizon and it had to be better, right? But it turns out that the grim grays are even more pervasive in OS X 10.5 than they are in 10.4. I know it's heresy to say so, but I'm not impressed with that aspect of Leopard. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif And though I may catch all kinds of heck from the Apple faithful for speaking up, it's about time someone pointed out the Emperor has no cloths on. All that gray is cold and formal and lifeless.

[Jon_jon]

With all due respect but if there is something Safari 3.0.1 beta isn't, that is "a solid upgrade". The whole thing is horribly wrong. I cannot quite believe Apple has released a beta like this one.
While it kind of works on my iMac I had to uninstall it since msn messenger would crash every second or so. And further what's that "imported IE bookmark"-thing?
On my PC (at work) Safari is the worst thing I've ever come across in terms of software. Just try clicking on the bookmarks button. Yeah, it crashes. Just try adding a bookmark. Yeah, it crashes. And the list goes on.
And while I'm a mac user (except at work), the friends I convinced giving it a try (before I knew it was so bad) are now saying Safari sucks and so does Apple. Right.
Next time the lads down at Apple try to convince PC users that Macintosh stuff is great, I think they should make a real effort instead.
Bah.
Jon

[nelson92]

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At home, I had the same issue Adwiz had, where new pages would not load until I hit reload.

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Similar issues here but I had the same issues in Safari 2 so nothing much has changed.

[nelson92]

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Im not really sure about Safari on Windows? I do not really see a demand for it on the windows side?

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It's simple really. Like the iPod many if not most iPhone users will be running Windows on their home computer. Now as the iPhone will be using Safari this will enable these people to run the same browser on both iPhone and PC. It will also allow web developers running Windows to check Safari compatibility issues
without having to get a Mac for the purpose.

[bigpics]

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Im not really sure about Safari on Windows? I do not really see a demand for it on the windows side?

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It's simple really. Like the iPod many if not most iPhone users will be running Windows on their home computer. Now as the iPhone will be using Safari this will enable these people to run the same browser on both iPhone and PC. It will also allow web developers running Windows to check Safari compatibility issues
without having to get a Mac for the purpose.

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And a million downloads in 48 hours indicates a bit of interest.... ...still it's interesting so many users are reporting horrible behaviors (it is beta software, granted, but there is a sense that's it's pretty alphaish from these reports) while all the reviewers I'm seeing aren't having them. Olde hardware? Geeks with lots and lots of processes from many small companies?
Whatever, this article from ComputerWorld may be of interest:

Apple picks a fight it can't win

By announcing a Windows version of Apple's Safari browser, Steve Jobs uncharacteristically entered a mature market not created or controlled by Apple, writes Mike Elgan.
Here's a sample:

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Apple sent its first emissary, the beta version of Safari for Windows, into the Windows world, and it was unceremoniously kicked into the well.
Hours after Jobs announced Safari for Windows (and despite Apple's claim that Safari is "designed to be secure from Day One") security experts published information about some 18 security holes found in the new browser. Bloggers and message board posters lunged at the news, and heaped vicious scorn and ridicule on Apple and Safari.

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And those were some of the nicer things he said. However he also said that Palm is an example of a successful company making its own way....

[laserbrain]

I agree, I also get a lot of crashes. A few of my widgets crash constantly because of this beta. I could start safari at first, then I checked the "enable parental control" box, and after that I couldn't open safari at all. Managed to resolve the issue by unchecking safari under parental control in the control panel though..

[labboc]

Cool new features not mentioned:
1. right click then hit "inspect element"
2. debug menu, user agent, MSIE, for those anoying sites that insist on you having IE
3. start entering text into a form and the window gets the dot in the center of a close box to indicate unsaved data and asks you if you want to close.

[whitedog]

Cool new features not mentioned:
Just where do you see those features? The Debug menu has to be activated by third party utilities; I don't see anything new when I right-click on a web page element; and the dot in the close button has been a part of OS X for years.

[GazelleIntense]

not sure I see any big speed difference on my new alum imac.

[BigFatDuck]

my only complaint, though rather major, is that when i had this installed on my powerbook g4 EVERY SINGLE TIME i would try to open a pdf in the browser it would crash.
for this reason alone i have decided to skip the version 3 beta and wait for the final version in Leopard, and I stopped recommending the browser to my windows friends until it gets it's kinks worked out. on that note, while obviously the beta is intended to get a bunch of bug reports and help tune the software, i really think this time around apple should have waited until it had a more solid browser to offer windows users. there are so many alternatives at the moment that first impressions are very important. if i have one bad day using a new browser i tend to ignore it as an option in the future and just go with something that's more reliable, at least until there is a new major must-have feature.

[whitedog]

when i had this installed on my powerbook g4 EVERY SINGLE TIME i would try to open a pdf in the browser it would crash.
I had some problems with the Safari 3 beta, too, but have managed to resolve most of them. PDFs weren't working because, as I discovered, Adobe Acrobat had reinstalled the Adobe PDF plugin and it is not yet Safari 3 capable. The simple solution was to remove it from my Internet Plugins folder. Now PDFs work fine.
Of course, if you don't have the time or interest to troubleshoot a new program like this, the best option is the one you chose - to revert to Safari 2. Fortunately Apple was thoughtful enough in this case to include a utility for restoring Safari 2.