Safari 5.0 too slow

I readily admit to having swallowed the Apple kool-aid. Between Helen and I, we own 2 Macs, 1 MacBook, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, and 3 iPods. I love Apple products for a lot of reasons, but mainly because they just work. There's none of the nonsense with which I had to put up when I was living in the Windows world.

Unfortunately, Safari 5.0, the new iteration of Apple's web browser, doesn't work. After installing it on my Mac at home, I'm experiencing an incredible diminution in speed with which pages load and scroll. Google took a timed 30 seconds to open! Google! Frequently, pages don't load at all.

At first, I thought something had gone wrong with my computer or DSL service. But then I noticed that my MacBook, which I had not upgraded from Safari 4.05, was running fine. So I installed Firefox on the Mac and, guess what?, it runs fine.

A quick Google search on Firefox (took like a second to open) revealed that this is a widespread problem:

The new Safari 5 just isn't cutting it. And, despite what you might read online about Safari 5 and its various problems, there aren't any easy solutions to speed it up. Safari 5 is just a bit groggier, cumbersome, and slower than its predecessor.

Apparently, the new Safari 5 is supposed to have a "30% performance increase". Well, I just don't see it, and neither do many members of Apple and Mac forums across the globe. Safari 5 just seems to be slow. It takes longer to load regularly speedy pages like Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon. Even the simple-as-can-be Google takes considerably longer to load in the newer, slower Safari 5.

Clearly, something is awry here. Some say that it has to do with plugins, cookies, or your cache, but I've tried all these simple fixes, and I'm not seeing any results. And, on top of it, I typically "reset Safari" on a day-to-day basis anyway, so this shouldn't be anything new. Safari 5 is slow, especially with the fundamentals of web pages, getting through to links, and logging in to basic social networking sites.

Apple's reputation for quality is at stake here. Safari 5.0 is an unacceptable product. They need to figure out what's wrong and get a patch out now. Unfortnately, at the moment, I can't find anything on the support cite to indicate Apple is even aware of the issue.

Comments

[Tekkie]

Absolutely agreed. They added a whole lot of features to version 5 instead of really patching what was actually an important performance setback.

Your Google issue is one of those matters Apple didn't commit in Safari 5 even though they were actually fixed. Only later they addressed it, but Google's cloud (Wave, Analytics) was initially broken with Safari 5 for quite some time.

For a more detailed technical insight see http://tekkie.flashbit.net/browsers/safari-5-is-a-disappointment

[Mark DeForrest]

This kind of sloppiness is becoming more common from Apple of late, across a variety of its platforms -- e.g., the new iPhone "death grip" problem. As Apple has become a more diffuse company -- computers of various sorts, media players, phones, iTunes for purchasing music and movies, etc., slips in quality are inevitable as focus diminishes. I hope that they get back on the ball though and work on improving quality. After all, as you point out, Apple's big selling point is that their tech stuff "just works." And I say this as someone who is not a major Apple fan.