What is Digg?148 Comments
- Ulvund, on 10/12/2007, -21/+107Too bad default Firefox for Mac is so damn ugly.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -10/+60Camino!
- Harrison88, on 10/12/2007, -28/+54Go Firefox!
- msikma, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25Camino is an excellent browser ( http://www.caminobrowser.org/ ). It doesn't have the flexibility that Firefox provides through its extensions, but I really do think that Mac users should check it out if you can live without them. I for one am annoyed by the foreign feeling that Firefox has. It isn't perfectly integrated into the system and doesn't adhere strictly to Mac human interface guidelines.
- rcran, on 10/12/2007, -7/+24People say Safari is this huge speed hog, but I never noticed ANY performance change when it is open. AND firefox seems far slower than Safari (G4 Powerbook - Tiger 10.4.8)
- jasoncart, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Discovered Camino about a week ago. Damn its fast.
- c5kirk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17No, that isn't true. It's called Activity Monitor and it is built in.
- rick2k, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26Isnt it the other way around?
Safari > firefox.
firefox on osx is TERRIBLE how can anyone see otherwise! I love firefox and all but not.. just not on a mac. - slantyyz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17That's funny, because I prefer Firefox over Safari on my Mac (I almost never use Safari) but I'm also constantly frustrated by how much of a pig Firefox can be.
- jake8689, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12i use both firefox and safari on my intel and run the same and nothing slows down.
- kagayaki1, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19You know, objectively, Safari is a lot faster on my Mac. Firefox is pretty fast on my work computer, though.
Too bad I can't run Safari on a PC to do a true comparison - I'm sure it'd still fly right by Firefox. - aegis9975, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15People forgot about Opera, but really, overall its better to have a variety of browsers in the market. The main thing is that browsers and web designers follow openly accepted standards. The worst thing would be to go back to IE controlling 98% of the market (granted they still control a massive chunk).
- Wilcox, on 10/12/2007, -16/+25Lynx Browser!!! http://lynx.browser.org/
- serpicolugnut, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11I'm calling BS on your theory, because I just performed a similar test, and here's my results.
First - equipment - Macbook Pro (1st gen), 2.16ghz, 2GB RAM
OS X 10.4.8
Firefox 2.02, and latest Safari.
I've opened 5 tabs in each browser, and loaded the exact URLs in each.
Here's Activity Monitors readout:
Safari - 1.5%CPU, 11 Threads, approx 484MB Mem
Firerfox - 2.6%CPU, 11 Threads, approx 84MB Mem
Yeah, Firefox is using 400MB less memory than Safari. If you have a lot of memory hog apps (A/E, PS, etc) open, this could slow your system down.
But you know what? This was after Safari had been open all day (nearly 8 hours). Once I quit Safari, and reloaded all the pages in the 5 tabs, here's what it reported:
SafarI - .2% CPU, 7 Threads, approx 56.50 Mem.
So, the longer Safari stays open, the more real memory it consumes. I venture to guess that if you left Firefox open for that long, you'd get similar results (Firefox's memory leaks have been well documented).
So, the moral of the story is - use what you want to surf the web, and once you are done surfing and start working on other things - quit the browser. Wow. Such an inconvenience! - tdowling, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I use it for the OS integration and the built-in RSS reader. I keep wanting to try others, but I always end up going back to Safari after a few days. It really has no complaints from me.
- DrBokgi, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15Mine too. Firefox is clunky and slow on my mac while Safari (with a couple modifications) runs without hiccups.
- mr804, on 10/12/2007, -14/+22FUD
- motherwell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Safari suffers from a 'RAM leak.' The longer you leave the app open, the more RAM it takes from the system and doesn't give back. You can open the Activity Monitor and view this first hand.
- pmuse, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Get a good firefox theme - I use Pinstripe 4.9, and the stop/reload button extension, and something to aquafy the widgets and your set. I couldn't use firefox on my mac cause of how ugly it was, but I'm using it now due to these things.
- mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I find the only web browser that doesn't crawl on my 800mhz iBook is Camino, so even though I would prefer Firefox, it's not very usable for me.
- right75, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I enjoy using Firefox on my Mac, but when I want better performance I switch to Safari. I can tell a slight difference, although I have never analyzed what Activity Monitor (or "top", or your other favorite performance monitoring tool) says is using more system resources.
The reason I continue to use Firefox over Safari (and the real reason I haven't completely switched to Safari) is that Firefox has the cool "find-in-page" highlight feature, where it will highlight words on the page in yellow, which makes it much easier to find occurrences of things I might be searching for within a page.
But all this is beside the point; we're all free to choose whatever browser we like best, regardless of what works more efficiently.
Now, Firefox versus Internet Exploiter is another story... - Lou3000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I agree that I see some slowdown in general browsing with Firefox. It also seems that about every 3rd time I use Firefox, it completely falls apart and I have to restart.
I continue to use Firefox though just because of the number of options and extensions. - Tilneys, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Rubbish. Safari is way leaner and faster than Firefox, which is an ugly beast.
But I agree you need to restart Safari once a day ideally if used with CS3, Dreamweaver and other demanding apps. - dragazis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm going to say that Camino 1.1b is definitely nice as it integrates into the system better...interface, resource, and services wise, but when Firefox 3 comes out it's going to be interesting in terms of core functionality and features as Firefox 3 will support native cocoa widgets (form buttons, scroll bar, check boxes, etc), better resource and thread handling, Cairo graphics rendering, Quartz support (interestingly enough taken from Camino http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:3.0_Mac_Performance). For those who complain about Firefox's look in OS X, why not just get a theme? There are quite a few good Mac oriented ones.
Pinstripe - http://kmgerich.com/2006/09/27/pinstripe-for-firefox-now-with-20-more-macintosh/
GrApple - http://www.takebacktheweb.org/
MacFox - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3174/ - GeneralAntilles, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14Firefox is ugly and slow on OS X. OmniWeb is the way to go for speed and features.
- gropo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6PowerPC users should install customized builds of Firefox for optimal performance. Definitely faster than Safari on my ancient upgraded G4 tower.
http://www.furbism.com/firefoxmac/ - Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9No.
So you might have to accept that they are, in fact, coming to a balanced conclusion based on using both browsers. - flashboy131, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7http://www.takebacktheweb.org/
best looking themes for Firefox on OSX - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8As far as I can tell, people use Safari only because of it's superior OS integration. For some, that might be a good enough reason to use this inferior browser (just like some use IE only because of certain office-related tasks)
- SuperSnake2012, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I have given most of the major Mac browsers a try on the Intel platform and I always come back to Safari. Firefox is slow and feels clunky on OS X 10.4.8 for Intel and I have issues with font rendering. OmniWeb is great, but I do not like how it blocks ads (wish it were like Adblock on Firefox where the ads are removed instead of replaced with a big box) and it is prone to crashing often. Camino is a nice browser, but it doesn't have integration with OS X features like Safari.
- LloydDobbler, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Actually, speaking as one of those fanatical Mac users myself, I've gone through Safari, Firefox, the decrepit IE for Mac, Camino, and Opera...and I still keep coming back to Safari. It's just a more integrated solution. Additionally,
a) Firefox is UGLY and I don't want to take the time to hunt down a better theme and figure out how to implement it, and
b) (most importantly) Firefox is actually SLOWER on my machine. Wait - okay, that might not be necessarily true. Firefox may actually be faster...but it hogs so much memory and CPU process time that I can't use it while, say Photoshop or Illustrator or MS Word is open. Which effectively limits my work.
Of course, I'm using a 4 1/2 yr-old 1GHz Titanium Powerbook, but hey - it runs beautifully all the rest of the time (and with Safari). All I've done is upgrade the hard drive. Not to turn this into a Mac versus PC argument, but that's something I could never do when I was using PCs for 11 years...
Regardless, I've made my objective decision. Safari = smaller footprint = more versatile (for me). - skribble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I was playing with Opera for OS X the other day. It's very nice. I'm holding out hope for Camino 1.1, the current beta is a bit lacking, but shows tremendous promise. Firefox is just so clunky when I use it... it reminds me of using Windows (which I do, and use firefox by default). for now despite it's faults Safari is my mac default.
- djay86, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6firefox does the same thing
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The only thing that frustrates me about Firefox is that the javascript handling is abysmally slow. In all other regards, it's ideal for my uses.
- KnightWhoSaysNi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't know about that.
Firefox and Safari are both pretty fast on my Mac. I don't notice any difference.
Safari looks a heck of a lot nicer, but I use Firefox for the extensions. - OmegaNine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6This is going to be nothing but flame wars.
@illegalcortex
So the comment they leaves at the top of the page (gets more views) - bledbetter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Eh, I don't see how this could possibly be accurate. Safari runs about 3x faster than Firefox on my Powerbook G4 (1.5ghz, 2 gb RAM). Maybe Firefox doesn't run well on PPC?
- muka3d, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7If you're worried about bloat and speed, just switch to Opera!
- rspeed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Want to speed up Safari and make it rock solid?
Delete the ***** RealPlayer plugin. - juan23, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Firefox is too much of a memory hog on my Mac. I use it at work, but the browser on my mac can't be to obtrusive.
- mrbillabong, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9yeah, i do think this to be a lie
- nejlepsi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In my IBook G4, firefox is slow, and safari doesn't render some stuff properly. I've only been really happy since I started using Opera.
- libertao, on 10/12/2007, -12/+15Simpler comparison: Extensions-->Firefox wins!
- tf5bassist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3when I worked for the Apple Online Store, we had to use Safari because all of the internal websites were engineered for Safari (big surprise, right?)... Well, after my machine would slow down like crazy after having peoplesoft, the online store, our tech specs reference guide, etc etc all open in safari from a memory leak, I started running ONLY peoplesoft/internal store/scheduling stuff in safari, and the external store, tech reference, research, email, etc etc in firefox... You would not believe how much faster the machine was running even half-way through the day.
Firefox kills Safari in memory load after a few hours. - masterkenobi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I get dugg down just because I speak the truth? Granted Safari's not as bad as developing for IE on the Mac (I'm glad that that browser is no longer supported), or Netscape 4 (remember those days?). Still, there are some horrible quirks about Safari that's a pain to develop around. If you're doing any form of DHMTL on there, it's a nightmare.
- jimvwmoss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Same here, makes no odds to the speed of either of them or the iMac, just some sites work better on the different browsers.
- PhilMcKraken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Seems like most of you read the headline and started commenting without reading the article.
(it IS a bit long).
I'll sum up.
the article is NOT discussing which browser is faster when surfing, it is saying that when open, Safari can slow down the speed of OTHER open apps way more than Firefox (and some other browsers. Opera is not mentioned though). In particular, they discuss Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. - Kareema, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9I wonder about Opera?
- Auronius, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Yeah, I just switched to Camino yesterday and so far there's a noticeable speed boost. Plus, it doesn't have that hideous brushed metal UI.
- pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd like to hear what Surfin' Safari has to say about this.
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