Of these browsers – and the list is not exhaustive – Camino 2.1.2 has been left to languish since 2012 yet remains a fast browser that I still find myself using for specific projects. Let’s look at them by the date of their latest release. I also have a lot of different browsers installed: Camino, Chrome, Firefox, OmniWeb, Opera, Roccat, Safari, and Stainless among them. I have Snow Leopard on my 2007 Mac mini, upgraded with 3 GB of system memory and a fast 320 GB hard drive. You could well count it as the pinnacle of the classic version of OS X (OS X before it started getting iPhone-like features such as “natural” scrolling), and as such there are a lot of good browser options for it. It will definitely do so once OS X 10.11 El Capitan becomes a release product. And with the arrival of 10.10 Yosemite, Mavericks began its inevitable decline – and in coming months it could also fall behind Snow Leopard. Likewise, Mountain Lion share dropped precipitously shortly after 10.9 Mavericks arrived, the first free version of OS X, soon falling below Snow Leopard. Not long after 10.8 Mountain Lion was released, 10.7 Lion dropped below Snow Leopard’s slowly declining level. They also drop quickly when a new version is released, followed by a slower decline that can go on for years. New versions are adopted quickly on release and grow more slowly, reaching their peak as the next version of OS X arrives – although none has achieved the nearly 85% share that Snow Leopard once had, based on our site traffic. Whether our numbers are representative of worldwide OS X use or not, the trends here are fascinating. We recognize that our audience is more likely to stick with an older OS, whether due to older hardware, software compatibility, or just seeing no need to change. While OS X 10.6 is now several versions behind, it is hanging in there as one of the most used versions of OS X, as data from our site logs shows in the graph above. There are also fixes that apply to Safari’s AutoFill Web forms feature, Java applets, and a host of WebKit-related patches.OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard remains a Top 3 platform among Mac users even 4 versions later! And searching for items on a page now gives you an option to look for either text containing that term or text that starts with that term.Ī number of security fixes included in Safari 5.1 as well, many of which appear to specifically patch issues that exist on Windows. For example, unresponsive websites should no longer drag the entire browser to a halt. Under the hood, Apple’s also made improvements to Safari’s stability and performance. And when you log into your AOL, Google, or Yahoo accounts in Safari, you’ll now be asked if you want to set them up to work with OS X’s Mail, iCal, iChat, and Address Book aps. (You can disable this feature in Safari’s General preference pane). Safari 5.1 brings a taste of Lion to Snow Leopard with its new Resume feature, which automatically restores your open windows and tabs when you launch the browser. In addition, AutoFill has been tweaked to make it more private-you must now specifically select your contact information when filling out a form it won’t do it automatically anymore. Cookie settings can be customized, and you can set how sites can request your location information. Privacy’s another new focus of Safari 5.1: Apple has revamped the browser’s privacy preferences to let you see what data sites are storing and easily remove it.
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