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Major Problems With Safari

kuwan writes "There have been many problems reported with Safari on Apple's discussion boards. The two most prominent are that option-clicking on a link to download can replace your Home folder with the downloaded file, effectively nuking your Home folder. The other has been reported as a printing problem, but is far worse. The printing problem occurs because Safari deletes /tmp, which is a link to /private/tmp."

5 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. It's BETA software... by xyrw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Use at your own risk...

    Granted, I was using Moz while it was in Beta, but there had been testimonials... and if you're an early adopter you ought to have good backups anyway.

    Just my 2 cents...

  2. What do you expect. . . . by DansnBear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dont get me wrong, Im as big of an apple person as they come (I refuse to use a windows machine) but as the page stated (and jobs in his keynote) many times: It's Beta. . . use at your own risk. . . Im sure once it goes to a full release it will be the most kickass browser around, but untill then, I keep my copy of opera in the dock, right next to safari.

    --

    -= Who are The Headlocks? =-
  3. Specific and useful would be good here by nrich123 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Instead of useless scaremongering.

    I have done multiple control click downloads, and printed a gazillion pages with Safari b48- with no problems.

    So can you please tell us *exactly how to reproduce these bugs so we can avoid it, or stop yelling fire in a crowded theatee?

    Thanks.

    Of course, I wouldn't have installed beta software on an unbacked up production machine mysefl, but there we go.
    I don't have a production machine with less than daily backups.

    1. Re:Specific and useful would be good here by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Those who have discovered the bug experience the following: (1) option-clicking a link deletes ~/.

      For the record, there are very few reported instances of this happening, and none of them is crystal-clear. On Apple's support boards, I think I counted three people who said that this happened to them, but none of them have thus far been able to describe what they were doing when it happened. (Their accounts sound something like Ellen's "switch" commercial, if you can believe that.)

      For kicks, after I heard about this I DVD'd my entire Users folder and went about option-clicking everything in sight. I ended up with a bunch of files on my desktop, but I didn't have any problems even remotely like what has been reported.

      Should you be cautious? Hell, yeah. It's beta, for Chrissakes. If it sneaks out of your office in the middle of the night, rearranges your sock drawer, eats your children, and deletes all those unwatched episodes of "Wild On" off your TiVo, it's nobody's fault but your own. But is it a disaster just waiting to happen? Apparently not.

      --

      I write in my journal
  4. I call bullshit by ealar+dlanvuli · · Score: 5, Insightful

    None of those posts claiming their home directory was deleted contained any of the following information:

    1: The file being downloaded
    2: The download destination
    3: Their Username
    4: The settings they had in Safari.
    5: How to attempt to repeat it.

    Sounds like a nice distributed troll with a goal of ruining Safari's reputation. If anyone can provide those 5 peices of information to me, I will start to believe this might possibly be a legitimate rumor.

    --
    I live in a giant bucket.