Safari 5.1, Netflix, OS 10.6.8

Why not just revert your Safari? If you're on 10.6.8, you probably value stability, and Safari 5.1 won't cut it for you.

This takes about a minute, but make sure you're backed up first.

Open Terminal:

At the prompt, paste this:

sudo tar -xvf /Library/Application\ Support/Apple/.SafariArchive.tar.gz -C /

Enter password, acknowledge warning (nod sagely), hit return. Terminal goes mad reporting progress.

Previous version of Safari is restored at this point.

Then at the prompt, paste this:

sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.Safari51SnowLeopard.*

This deletes the receipt for Safari 5.1.

Quit Terminal and reboot immediately. Previous version of Safari should be installed and working perfectly.

(Thank you, that sage engineer who decided that 'obsolete' stuff should be archived on the machine)

Daniel;

This is mark@sbc -- the AppleID used for my original post has fallen foul of the ill-conceived, Machiavellian, intransigent, user-hostile, tangled mess of festering puss that passes for the AppleID database, so I now have a different username... deep breath.

I'd suggest that you simply (ha!) install the most recent version of Safari. Since Apple have now decided to be as obstructive and bloody-minded as possible about the simplest things (such as this), your best bet is to download and install 'Safari 5.1.7 for Snow Leopard' from <http://support.apple.com/downloads/#internet>. This will create a receipt, and should cause Software Update to offer you the latest version for your system (presumably 10.8.x) when you next run it after this.

I had this problem repeatedly and for a long time. An upgrade to Lion fixed everything. Before Lion, I was able to solve this by unchecking the "atuomatic graphics switching" box in System Preferences > Hardware > Energy Saver, but after Lion, I was able to re-check this box and everything works as it should.

This worked great for me.

To mark@sbc - thanks!

I had no idea that osx created such backups. I'm going to have to go through some of these directories and "ls -a" to check out all these hidden files.

[Note: this is at /Library/Application Support/Apple - not, if you start playing around as I did, at /Users/...yourUserName.../Library/Application Support]

To mark@sbc (or anyone), how do you know about this? Can you recommend any particular documentation for learning about the nooks and crannies of osx?

Glad it worked! No special source for this.

I'd got used to things in Snow Leopard being pretty much as I wanted them -- fast, slick, predictable, productive.

When the update to Safari 5.1 happened I was frothingly angry, as under 10.6.8 it's a total dog -- lots of things just fail to work properly and I particularly loath 'full screen' in this context (fine for writing novels, and iPhoto, GarageBand, etc., but for something as mundane as web browsing I don't want to feel that isolated).

I've often suspected that later versions of MacOS have deliberate annoyances in them to which fixes are promised in the next (paid for) update, but this was such an obvious Lion-shove that I reacted strongly against it and googled 'Safari 5.1 revert". Masses of results -- I wasn't alone. Close to the top was the MacOS Hints forum with the procedure above on this page:

http://hints.macworld.com/index.php?topic=browsers

And you're right -- it's remarkable how much of the MacOS is largely undocumented.

Hey mark@sbc

your terminal command helped me resolve this issue. thanks. Now, for various reasons, i need to reverse this process. i tried simply checking for software updates but nothing is there. this was my first time using terminal and have no idea how to reverse it.

Im running a brand new MBP-Retina with 2.7 GHz Core i7 - 10.8.1

Any suggestions would be a great help,

Thanks

Daniel

Hey Man thanks for the reply!

I tried your suggestion but the safari installer said that you must be running 10.6.

I made a start up disk with Mountain lion on it after it was released is there a way to run it and only reinstall safari?

Thank you for helping me and my incompetence

Daniel

Hmmm. That could be tricky -- but in your place, I'd be look at any system install disk with Pacifist. It may be possible just to run the Safari installer. Sorry not to be much help.

Slightly OT, but I've been messing with latest version of Safari under ML on a couple of new iMacs, and it's very impressive -- quite excellent, in fact. Whether this applies to older machines upgraded with ML I've no idea, but if it's like Lion, probably not. It's really irritating that so much is done so well, yet lots else is such a mess. So far, a good job overall, though.

I am having the same problem. I wish I had a solution for you. I tried reinstalling Silverlight, but it did not change anything.

Unchecking the "atuomatic graphics switching" did the trick for me. Thanks for the heads up on that one.