MOTUnation.com

I apologize for not having time to go into detail right now, but I only have a day or two left before I am away from my home computer for a considerable length of time, and lost two hours last night in the latest catastrophe in a long string of computer problems that have plagued me these past two months.

I think I have finally narrowed the primary problem down to Safari browser, and it is quite serious as I had to keep using the hard reset button on my MacPro since none of my desktop apps would launch nor would anything Force Quit or the computer restart or shut down.

It didn't matter if I had all possible network connections -- including wireless -- disabled, turned off, modem/router unplugged, etc. I have another post that is still unresolved, about networking issues I have faced since a network provider change (simplified summary), but it seems the problems with freeze-ups and crashes are Apple's fault at some level, because it ought to be possible to unfreeze browsers at the very least when they aren't trying to connect to the internet.

It took many reboots before I was able to do so without Safari trying to restart and freezing my session before it had even started. This is due to sluggishness that didn't give me time to tell it not to restart previous apps. Mail was a problem too as even old text-only messages were 100% blank/white. Once I got Mail to finally force quit, it was easier to get the computer to restart without launching Safari. I am using Opera now, for safety.

Even more weird, Time Machine refuses to perform restores now. All diagnostics that I run on my computer come back fine, but they are indeed slower than before El Capitan.

I thought about going to Sierra right away, except I can't afford to get no audio work done this weekend so can't take the chance given that my first try on a separate boot drive was unsuccessful with the RME Fireface UFX being seen and usable.

My guess is that Apple is mostly testing on Sierra now and that there is something incompatible about their recent Safari updates and El Capitan, or maybe re-running a combo updater would be more successful.

Anyway, just thought I'd alert people to be on the lookout for freeze-ups with Safari that are really hard to get unstuck due to system-wide effects on the computer at the most basic core level -- something I'd really never experienced before until recently.

I just bought a new 13" Macbook Pro (retina) that came with El Capitan. The only problem I've encountered (so far) is that occasionally Safari (no plugs, no extensions) will freeze the entire computer. Nothing works (except the power button)! Totally lost taking a walk down memory lane. The only solution is to power off and back on again. Thankfully, this has only happened 4 or 5 times in the month I've had it.
(I don't plan to update to Sierra)

I have been using Chrome for six years now. There are some web sites that are incompatible—for those, FireFox works.

The one thing I noticed when I upgraded to Sierra was that Safari no longer appears to suck completely. I still have no reason to use it, however.

Opera had some nice features and could sometimes maintain downloads when other browsers failed. It was causing me grief on my Mac over El Cap and would no longer connect to certain sites so I have now deleted it from my system. No regrets.

Wow, I feel better now, realizing that I'm not alone in these problems. I've rarely in my life simultaneously had so many life crises and work intensity to deal with at once, and none of it (for once) due to any life choices or actions that I took on my part (I feel better when I'm responsible).

The main reason I started using Opera again a couple of years ago was that Firefox became unreliable, and I needed Opera for its download manager as I frequently buy from European vendors who are not compatible with Safari or Firefox, and don't allow multiple downloads of libraries, so having a browser-resident restartable download manager that is safe and trustworthy is a big plus.

I must say, this new version of Opera is a huge improvement, but based on Mike's feedback, I'll give Chrome another try. I only tried it once, when it was still in alpha vs. beta, and had to rebuild my Mac due to how much damage it did. Once bitten, twice shy. I have it on my Windows box at work, but it's kind of weird and incompatible with a lot of stuff, but for that, Firefox always works, like Mike said. Maybe I should give Firefox another try on the Mac as well.

At any rate, it seems clear to me now that I was right in blaming Apple for the problems. In fact, I'm now wondering if I have Ethernet problems at all with my new internet service -- but I haven't time until late OCT to try again, due to my schedule for the next two weeks and how the training sessions will keep me away from my home computer unless I'm willing to do with four hours sleep.

Not using El Capitan but I as well use either Chrome(95% of the time) or Firefox.For me Safari has sucked for a while now.........

Where FireFox works is with old web sites that run plugins incompatible with the latest standards or Windows centric where the developers have ignored current standards.

I can't stand FF for so many reasons including it's horrible search abilities with online PDF files. But there are sites where it works when others don't.

Safari got an update within the past few days, specific to El Capitan, but as I just installed it and then hit the other issues reported in new topics that I added to this forum tonight, I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

What I can add now though, is that the problems I reported here earlier are unlikely to be due to network issues that I have had since the stop/restart of services following my long-term housemate's surprise marriage and moving out a couple of months back.

At work this week, we tried starting Safari on an El Capitan system in one of the conference rooms so we could look at FogBugz cases, and the entire system froze up until doing a hard reboot. We then installed Chrome on that system as the same thing happened two more times with Safari.

I've changed the title again as the El Capitan specific issues are no longer speculative, having now been seen on four separate systems, two of which are maintained by professional corporate I.T. personnel.

Nevertheless, the even later Safari update from this week (maybe even from tonight?) may fix things. I'm not quite brave enough to try it yet, given that I am in the middle of disc data copies and fighting other computer issues.

I have just verified that the latest El Capitan update for Safari fixes the problems from the early-to-mid October update.

I did have a bunch of blank tabs that had no URL and couldn't be sent back to previous page loads, but a few others said "site suspended" so I think it's just an example of the usual volatility of the internet as many pages go away or change addresses over time.

Considering how long it has been since I have done more than a cursory culling and organizing/archiving of active tabs, this is no surprise. After all, it's been a month now since I have actively used Safari, and longer still since I went through ALL active tabs to re-load and verify.

The speed is also MUCH better now. Possibly the best it's ever been.

Even so, I'm going to reinstall Firefox and try Chrome (for the first time since its pre-beta alpha test release) when I have time.