FireFox or Internet Explorer

[Bibbler]

Well, I in February 2006, Viruses disappeared from my computers. I bought a Mac Mini Dual Core - I also have 2 iBooks, AND LAST NIGHT, I bought a BRAND NEW MacBook. I bounce back and forth between Firefox and Safari for my browser....

I tried Mac years ago in the mid 90's and was not impressed. But the new Macs running OSX are LIGHT YEARS ahead of anything Microsoft makes. Light years. OSX makes all the difference. It's the smoothest, Fastest, and most elegant OS I have ever seen.

Macs market share has risen from 2.2% in 2004 to over 8% today (and over 10% of the home/consumer market) and there is a good reason for it. It simply blows away the competition.

[wejones]

Well, I in February 2006, Viruses disappeared from my computers. I bought a Mac Mini Dual Core - I also have 2 iBooks, AND LAST NIGHT, I bought a BRAND NEW MacBook. I bounce back and forth between Firefox and Safari for my browser....

I tried Mac years ago in the mid 90's and was not impressed. But the new Macs running OSX are LIGHT YEARS ahead of anything Microsoft makes. Light years. OSX makes all the difference. It's the smoothest, Fastest, and most elegant OS I have ever seen.

Macs market share has risen from 2.2% in 2004 to over 8% today (and over 10% of the home/consumer market) and there is a good reason for it. It simply blows away the competition.

If the market share gets up much higher though, the hackers will start going after Macs. At the current levels, it isn't worth their effort.

[Bibbler]

If the market share gets up much higher though, the hackers will start going after Macs. At the current levels, it isn't worth their effort.

OK, that may be true to some extent, but there is more to the theory (called Security through Obscurity).

Remember, OSX is based on BSD Unix, as a matter of fact, OSX is one of the few Unix Distros on the market to have been certified as an official Unix 03 Certified OS.

Unix is MUCH more secure than Windows. Viruses and Malware are few and far in between and a high percentage of the world's servers are UNIX (or Linux) based. If you want to install a piece of software on OSX, you must enter your username and password, and you may only do this if ROOT has given you permission to do so.

In addition, the latest release of OSX Leopard has additional security features namely, App Layer firewall, App Signing, Sandboxes, Secure Guest Accounting, and Library Randomization.

So while I am not so naive to say that Macs will never suffer from Malware, it is obvious to me that they will never suffer the fate as Windows. The system is simply better, more thought out, and much more secure. Since Apple controls hardware and software, the system does indeed just work. I have never in almost 2 years (and 4 different macs and an iPhone now) had OSX Crash (although some 3rd party software has, namely Firefox, - the OS itself never has)... Ditto for my wife and 3 kids who have also switched.

I spent years building my own systems, fighting malware, and looking for device drivers. No more...

Different strokes for different folks Bill. It's all about what works for you. In my case, I have to put up with Windows 8 Hours a day and it's nice to come home and relax in from of my computers with trouble free "computing" here in the shack.

[Sadoun]

Bibbler

I have recently (1 year now) started using a MacBook Pro with OSX Leopard. I love it and it works great.

I am having a problem with Firefox on it. I don't remember what I have done, but now Firefox would not open anymore. When I click on Firefox it open a blank screen gets stuck. I have to do a Force Quit.

This happened before I upgraded to Leopard. After upgrading, I still have the same issue.

I uninstalled Firefox by dragging the Firefox file from the Application folder to the the trash. Then I removed the icon from the bar.

I then re-downloaded and installed Firefox again. Same problem.

Any suggestions?

Another issue I am noticing is the wireless connection with the wireless router keeps breaking up. I have exchanged the router, but problem insists. Is there a solution for this?

[Sadoun]

Well, I got my FireFox to work fine again on my Macbook. All I had to do is

I just removed my pref folder /user/library/application support/firefox

Reinstalled FireFox and Bang it started like a charm.

[Bibbler]

How about the wireless problem???

Maybe you should ride over to the Apple Store and talk to a genius over there. It's a real neat place to visit anyway

I personally prefer to visit there to hang out and get help, however, I buy my hardware over at Microcenter over on Bethel. Their prices are a lot better due to rebates they offer (and they do have a nice Apple "Store in a store")....

[Sadoun]

BIbbler

It seems the wifi signal is now stable after I fixed FireFox. Isn't that cool or what? Two birds with one stone.. :-)

Yes, I bought Mac products from the Bethel store. I visited APPLE store at Easton a couple of weeks ago and bought the new iLife08 software. It is a nice store.

Firefox is running so fast, it is amazing. It is much faster than IE by a bunch. Even though the Sadoun website is designed with the IE users as the majority browsers, I find the site opens much faster with Firefox.

So I highly recommend Firefox for browsing our website. If anyone has any comments, or suggestions, let me know.

[rainman]

Finally got around to installing firefox boy what a difference over internet explorer it seems to be a lot smoother and quicker.

[MrBillM]

Mozilla was an internal name used by Netscape for, among other things, their Mascot. It derived from "Mosaic Killer (killa) i.e. Moz-illa since their target was Mosaic, a previous product and the most popular Browser at the time.

In 1998, Netscape released their source code for open use. Mozilla.org was created and produced browser software using the open source code.

Firefox is a product of Mozilla. The relationship to Netscape is evident to anyone who has used both.

Regarding the eternal Windows versus Apple debate. YES. Apple is more secure, as is Linux, for the reasons stated. However, they do demand more user interaction for that very reason. That may be fine with us geeks (I loved DOS), but Windows has correctly determined that the majority of users don't want that level of involvement and has targeted their O.S. to that majority market. As good as Apple is, It is too expensive. The majority of people who buy it are simply trying to be different. They'd be better off buying a PC for a lot less money and running Linux. Different, but richer.

[N9WOS]

There is one BIG problem with firefox. That is called faster fox. AKA prefetching.
Anyone caught running it on the network will have their IP blocked from the internet.
faster fox can flatten a 1Mbps internet connection for minutes, when they view certain sites.
It is pretty obvious when a computer has it enabled. A particular computer will hammer a particular website for minutes on end. Downloading everything that it can get it’s hands on.
Faster fox with any of it’s forms of prefetching enabled, is something I frown on.