Some Mac users who have tried the three-day-old Safari 3.0 browser beta are hopping mad at Apple Incorporated because several notable applications won"t work after installing the application. Numerous postings on Apple"s user-to-user support forum recounted various misfortunes regarding the new test release. Only hours after Safari 3.0"s launch, users were reporting the browser not launching along with Cocoa, iTunes, Coda, Adium and other applications failing to start. Some users went as far as saying they would never use Safari again. Apple representatives did not post any official support information on the Safari 3.0 for Mac forums, which since Monday"s release has received nearly 1,500 messages.
A common characteristic was that the Safari installer had crashed part-way through the Safari installation, or the user had done a forced quit after the installer appeared to hang. In all cases, WebKit framework files were corrupted by the failed install. WebKit is the open-source application framework used by Safari, Apple"s Mail e-mail client, the Adium instant messenger and other Web-centric software. Some users got their machines back in working order by extracting the necessary files from an earlier operating system update, while others sniffed out that the older files were intact, but had been moved on the drive.