How Not to Run a Beta

[Apple, Safari]

Since Steve hasn't replied to my other suggestion, I figured it
was time to give him twice the reason to visit this humble blog.

Like a million^* other fine folks, I downloaded the Safari 3 Public Beta, anxious to see what the future held for web browsing.

I deleted my old copy of Safari to make room for the 'new hotness' (a critical error I later discovered) since my stock PowerBook G4 is not blessed with much available disk space. I surfed over to Apple.com and downloaded away. Double-clicked the installer and after a few clicks (thanks to the almighty Legal Department) was ready to join the Third Age of Browsing.

Well guess what? I get an error saying my system "Does not meet requirements." I check back to the splash page, perhaps this release Intel Macs only? Nope, "Safari for Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later" is the claim, OK let's download and try this again – nope, same problem. (What is it they say about repeated behaviour and expectation of different results?)

Several searches later over at support.apple.com for help I find out that many people are having problems installing. (Many people are having problems running it as well, but that is another matter – let's burn that bridge when we come to it.)

Finally after reading about people wishing they could run v2 along side of v3, it dawns on me that maybe what I downloaded was not an installer for a new program but an updater of the old version. I post that question and get a reply from another support seeker that yes indeed I have discovered my problem.

Sick of being an unpaid tester, I decide to return to status quo, only to remember I deleted v2, so I surfed some more to find a link to the older version. Wow – Apple sure is proud their new version, I can hardly find a mention to v2 or even v1. VersionTracker tells me that there is no v2, only updates to v1.x. I try a few downloads but these spank me and send me away telling me I am not running 10.3.x – silly me I thought 10.4.9 would be all that 10.3 was only more. Wrong again. At this point I am thinking, "how badly do I need a browser other than FireFox?" until I remembered that our time-reporting system works only with Safari on the Mac side (something to do with Java I have been told).

At this point, I remembered that the v3 download had an installer and and an uninstaller, maybe that will be my solution, let's go grab the Public Beta one more time (this is the 3rd download for those keeping track) and try that. More disk mounting and clicking of legal things until I get the same message, "Does not meet requirements."

At this point mid-month time-cards now need their approval, perhaps there is something new over at the support page. Hey look, a link to a v2 via RapidShare. Let's try that! Success!!

So, lessons learned:

• let other people test software, you have better things to do with your time
  
• don't throw things away that you don't know you might need
  

^*Does my 3 downloads and never using it count toward that million? If so, could there be a more meaningless statistic? Shame on you Apple, you were supposed to be the company that made computers easier.