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Using Safari Slows Your System?
sandoz writes "Macenstein has up an interesting article with some evidence that running Safari seems to slow down unrelated programs. While the speed with which a browser renders a Web page is an important measure, the difference between browsers is usually a matter of a few seconds at most. To my mind, a more important measure of speed is how a browser affects the overall speed of your system." Some responses to the article suggest that memory handling in WebKit may be the culprit. The Safari developers have already responded to this article on the webkit.org blog. They explain why the slowdown might be occurring and how it's (probably) already been fixed in the nightly build. And they request more minimal test cases.
Safari doesn't slow anything else down, not even a little bit.
Why, the other day I had a runaway X11 process start sucking 100% CPU. It did this for twelve hours before I even noticed something was going wrong, and that was only because I finally looked at my CPU usage meter.
I love my Mac Pro.
On one hand it is stupid that Apple would turn off a feature like tabbed browsing by default. On the other hand, it is perfectly consistent with Apple's simplicity first mantra. But still... It took Apple 10 years to add right click functionality to the OS (not to mention another 10 years to add a second button), and even then they turned it off by default. Now it is on by default in the OS, but you have to turn the hardware on (MacBook) since it is set to single mouse click by default. Annoying.
What's annoying about it? The ENTIRE OS is built on the assumption that the user has a one-button mouse. The ENTIRE OS works perfectly. Everything.
If you happen to find a multi-button mouse handy, it's easy to install one, or (with the newer hardware revs) turn the feature on on the trackpad.
You can keep whining about one-button mice, but this problem simply hasn't existed at any time in the last 10+ years.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Why? Because a whole lot of computer users don't understand right clicking, and those that do can very easily check a box in System Preferences. Or plug in a mouse.
That's why.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What OS task cannot be accomplished with a one button mouse?
You can go all whizzy about the inattainability of perfection, but I'm an engineer, not a philosopher. The one-button behavior of mac OS X is bulletproof. It never doesn't work.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You can't do mouse chords with 1 button. My favorite Opera mouse gesture is right then left click to go back.
If you want to get technical about it all I need the mouse to do is move the cursor around. I could use the keyboard to click. However, what would be the point? Better yet, how could either of us argue which is "perfect". Be careful when slinging absolutes around.
"My favorite Opera mouse gesture"
And Opera is a component of MacOS X...how?
Your mouse gestures work great in Opera, don't they? Well and good. You like that feature, and it's available for you to use. That's not the same thing as REQUIRING them in order to make the OS work.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!