My take on Safari 4.0 beta

Apple’s new web browser is super fast, but the ambitious interface changes are mostly a disaster (so far).

The new tabs implementation is ambitious but totally unrealistic – I would list off ten things about why it’s less practical than Safari’s previous tabs implementation. And the lack of the blue progress meter in the URL had better be a bug and not a feature. The “top sites” is an interesting idea but executed really poorly; just try dragging an existing tab into one of the twelve panes. Plus it didn’t come close to guessing right about which twelve websites I use the most. I haven’t been able to figure out how to change them simply by poking around, and my rule is that if I have to “look up” how to do something like that, then it’s a REALLY bad implementation. Historically I’ve been able to poke around any new consumer-level Mac application and figure out every feature without having to ever look up how to do something; and that’s me bragging about Apple’s abilities, not my own.

In short, Safari 4.0 beta feels a lot like Firefox: plenty of bells and whistles but an interface that’s too geeked up and pleased with itself to be practical for real-world use… hence the reason why you literally couldn’t pay me to use Firefox as my main browser. While the Firefox developers could care less about making their browser usable for anyone but the geekiest of users, it’s a little disconcerting to see Apple release something that’s so similarly geeked up and impractical. Here’s hoping that what we’re seeing with the Safari beta is merely what an Apple app looks like after the new features have been added but before they’ve been made usable – because in its current form Safari 4.0 is just barely usable. Just how absurdly impractical is this product by the usual Apple standards? There’s literally no “stop loading” icon anywhere on the screen until you point to that circular excuse for a progress meter on the right side of the URL bar, which only then turns into a “stop loading” button you can click on. This is supposed to be intuitive design? Ninety percent of Mac users will never, ever find it and instead think that a page simply can’t be stopped while loading.

I know that some folks have offered a way of forcing Safari 4 to go back to Safari 3’s tabs implementation via the Terminal, but if it comes to that then I’d rather just uninstall it (and props to Apple for including an uninstaller). I understand what “beta” means, so I’m not quite ready to give up on it yet. But if they don’t release an updated beta with the progress meter restored within the next couple of weeks then I’ll probably uninstall it in favor of going back to Safari 3.

Seeing as how the interface/usability of other Apple apps like iPhoto and iCal have been in decline for the past year or two, here’s hoping that the absurd interface changes in Safari 4.0 beta are simply done in the spirit of “let’s throw things at the wall and see what the beta testers allow to stick” and not further evidence that Apple has forgotten how to make software that’s usable.