Uninstall Saft. For good. Really.

Shanx — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:38:56 +0000

If you're here, you know what I'm talking about. The Safari plugin sounds like a neat little tool but is a pesky customer on any computer. Not the way to win hearts. Deleting it doesn't work, not do the instructions on their website.

Here is how I did.

First, close Safari. This is VERY important, as it does not work otherwise.
Start Terminal. (Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal, or type Terminal in Spotlight).
Under Terminal type "sudo –s" without the quotation marks to log in as root.

Then enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Go to the blue (or gray) apple at the top left of the screen, then select Force Quit. From the menu of items, click on "Saft" and click on the Force Quit button.
Then, in the same Force Quit window, click on "Finder" and click the "Relaunch" button.
In the Finder window, on the top right bar (the Filter spotlight bar), type "saft" without the quotes. Delete with delight any file called Saft. Note: This may reveal a few other files that may contain the word "Saft" such as threads.py in my case (a Python file). Naturally, you want to NOT delete these. Just get rid of the Saft files.
Empty the trash. If there is a file that won't delete because it's in use, then Force Quit "Saft" again as in Step 5 above, and then Empty Trash again.
Go back into Terminal, and type "sudo –s" again without quotation marks. Then enter:
```
 defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
```
This will set the Finder back to the way it was before. Then type "exit" and it will exit out of the root.
Now navigate to the folder: /Library/InputManagers. Note that this is NOT the "Library" folder in your Users folder. This is the Library folder from the root. Inside InputManagers is the "saft" folder — get rid of it.
Empty Trash (again). If it says Saft is in use, reboot the machine and empty it then. Or if you use some excellent utility like MainMenu you can "Force Empty Trash".

Go back to your happy, problem free Mac!Â

Apple Safari 3 Beta for Windows

Shanx — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:33:10 +0000

Finally, we can (hopefully) test Safari on Windows too, but it remains to be seen how this compares with Firefox and its battalion of extensions and the ever-blazing Opera.

Apple is on to some exciting things. After the iPhone and the new eagerly awaited of the Max OSX, it even announced Safari 3 Beta for Windows!

The install was painless. Especially if you choose the no-Quicktime option (which Apple has no qualms about plugging shamelessly with almost every download it offers). I was also asked during the installation for 'Bonjour' — a tool that supposedly allows better sharing of things such as printers.

The immediate uninstall

When I started the browser, it came up in some weird language. Greek, or Russian, or a specific kind of Celt. Who knows. I tried to reinstall, and it insisted on removing Safari first, which is ok, but it also required me to close Firefox, SecureCRT (for SSH) and WinSCP (for SFTP). I like my browsers to be independent of each other thank you. Opera never bothers with what else I am using.

The second and final uninstall

After the re-install, it showed up yet again in the strange language. Nowhere on my system is this language set up. All my browsers are set up to show only English, but support Japanese and Chinese. I guess it's "beta" for a reason. It surely has a long way to go if it wants to be anywhere near decent contention to FF and Opera. Below's a snapshot of what this gunk looks like on my machine:

Turns out these junk characters are not really a language at all. When I try to type something in the location bar, it comes up in this junk lingo. I try and rummage through these nonsensical options to see if one of the menus or submenus may have "English" as an option, but no luck.

Conclusion