Holy crap, just about had a heart attack! (Latest Mac update)

So I ran the auto update on my Mac the other day. It upgraded me to Mac Tiger 10.4.11 & Safari 3.0.

Okay, cool I guess. Except Safari 3.0 killed PithHelmet, so now I’m stuck with ads again.

I’m taking classes online, go to my school, sign in, go to my “classroom” and ERROR: YOU ARE USING SAFARI 3.0. OUR WEBSITE IS ONLY COMPATIBLE WITH SAFARI 2.0, FIREFOX, blah, blah, blah.

Oh noes! Firefox doesn’t fucking work on my machine. FUCK! I can’t go to school now?? Hello, I’ve only got three weeks left this term!!!

Well, google is my friend. I quickly looked up “safari downgrade” and found a link to the Mac support forums and some helpful soul had posted a link to some guy hosting all the old versions of Safari. Apparently Apple doesn’t have a way to downgrade from Safari 3.0.

Whoo, it worked! I’m happily browsing with Safari 2.0 again and I can log into my school!

PithHelmet’s working again too. I can even run both versions of Safari concurrently, though why I should is beyond me. I’m sticking with Safari 2.0.4 until everyone works out the bugs! School costs a fortune, and I ain’t running out and buying a Windows box just to go to school. Don’t have the money for it right now anyway.

Safari + mac = a world of pain. That is all.

Safari 3 has been nothing but great for me, I think you might have been able to solve it even easier by just enabling the Debug menu and have Safari identify itself as an older version. The school’s website probably just checks for a specific version of the browser, there isn’t anything inherent about the site that wouldn’t make it work with the latest version of Safari.

Just open up a Terminal window and run:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

will add the additional menu to Safari to allow you to change what “User Agent” it identifies itself as.

Sounds interesting. Can I easily undo this if it screws up? I don’t want to take too many chances with my computer until I’m between class terms.

Really? I haven’t had any problems with it. In four years of using a Mac.

Except, now that I think of it - the car configurator at bmwusa.com does not work.

99% of the time it’s fine. Sometimes streaming video on major TV & news network websites doesn’t work, and I can think of one website which will occasionally crash Safari. But mostly it’s pretty slick.

I don’t know who’s to blame now though, Apple or my school.

I’ve got to try this. I normally browse with Safari, even got Safari 3 beta a couple of months ago. Problem is that some sites (YahooXtra mail) say Safari doesn’t work and I’ve had to remember to use Firefox for them. I have remote access to work from home, but the designers decided that only Internet Explorer would work, and then only certain versions, so I’ve had to use User Agent Switcher for Firefox to pretend that my browser is IE 7.

I just downloaded the 10.4.11 and Safari updates last night, so will check with interest if I can get Safari to say it’s IE 7, and see if the remote access still works. It does work fine with Firefox.

Kiwi Fruit, let me know how it works please. I’m a bit chicken to play with Terminal right now. I really need a working browser right now but don’t want to risk messing something up I couldn’t easily unmess.

I upgraded my macbook and my FF still works fine (I have to use FF for school–their software isn’t compatible with Safari. I like Safari. I like my mac.) No problems here.

I’ve been having problems with Firefox since February. Somethings really broke with Firefox, but it’s not the recent Mac update.

Oh, and I got brave and activated the Debug menu in Safari, set Safari 2.0.4 as my User Agent and got the same error message. But, I just chose it again, and it worked! Yippee.

Now I just need PithHelmet to get updated to work with Safari 3 and I’ll be happy again.

Well, actually, I’d be happy if I figured out my Firefox problem too.

I wish I could help you, but my computer skills are about at the level of “I turn it on and it works.”

sorry. Good luck.

That’s how Macs usually work. My problem with Firefox seems pretty unique. It’s stumped people here, at the Firefox site and at Apple’s support forums.

Gah. those are not words one wants to hear. :eek:

Um…this might sound crazy…but…Internet Explorer?

prepares for rotten fruit to be thrown at him

Microsoft stopped supporting IE for the Mac awhile ago. It had some useful features though. Almost too bad.

I finally shitcanned it after I went back to school and couldn’t get on their network.

Huh. That’s interesting. I did not know that. I’d think they’d continue to support it, too.
That sounds like a silly business decision.

Yeah, the people who work at Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit seem to take pride in making Mac versions of Windows apps that are generally pretty cool.

Office 2007 is already out for Windows of course, but it’ll be interesting what new tricks they sneak into Office '08 for Mac in the spring.

That is an excellent tip. Thank you!

I tried setting the debug menu on. When I opened Safari I got the Debug menu and chose “Windows MSIE 6.0” as the user agent and it worked for my remote login.

The only problem is that each time you start Safari, you have to choose the User Agent that you want, but I’m happy for the moment.

Cheers.