After trying to make Apple’s new Safari 3.0 beta work for three hours, I give up. I will have to live without Safari for the next couple of months, because the old version got deleted by the new one and I have no way of bringing it back.

In the history of Apple’s software, this was the most disastrous updates I ever experienced. Granted, I should have waited. Beta software is called beta for a reason. On the other hand, there is not much that can be beta about it. Moving tabs is not really the feature I expect to crash my whole system and make Safari die.

I was fine with the previous version except of two things. Speed and the disability to remember my browsing. Firefox on the other hand lets me save sessions and it remembers the tabs I closed when I shut down the software. Why not Safari? As far as my perception goes, this was one of the longest awaited software updates since the release of OS X. Even with proper CSS support, Safari was outdated compared to modern browsers like Firefox.

Now I am sorry to say Apple killed it for me. I don’t know what made it incompatible with my system. Frankly, I don’t care, because I am deeply disappointed. I would have expected something more stable out of Apple’s development. I could have lived with a browser that crashes now and then, but I think killing a functional software, making it plain unusable, is not acceptable. Not from any browser vendor and particularly not from Apple.

Here’s a warning to all Tiger users. Do not install Apple’s Safari 3.0 beta. It will not work.