this is the personal blog of brandon quintana.

The new Firefox 1.5.0.2 release provides native Intel support for Macintosh computers with the Intel Core processors as well as stability and security updates for all users. I had already been using Firefox 1.5.0.1 on both my Powerbook G4 as well as my Mac Mini Intel Core Solo so it shouldn’t be too much of a difference for me.

On the Powerbook I ran the software updater located under the help menu to see if it would detect the new version. It did so and began downloading an updater. It attempted to install an updater but failed and said it had to download a full version and install it again. After this was complete, I was running Firefox 1.5.0.2 on my machine and I notice really no difference from the previous version.

With the Mac Mini Intel Core Solo machine I ran the same updater from within the browser. Since Firefox 1.5.0.1 was PowerPC only, the Mac Mini was using Rosetta emulation when browsing the web. The updater worked with no errors and updated to 1.5.0.2. I noticed that it didn’t seem any faster than the previous version and it should have because it was supposedly native. I checked what version and it had updated Firefox to the latest PowerPC version. I decided to go to the Firefox website and download the full version. After I installed this, the web browser was much more responsive and after checking the info it was indeed Firefox 1.5.0.2 for Intel.

I use Windows, Mac OS, and Linux and I like the fact that Firefox is available on all platforms. It may not be an identical user experience in each platform, but it’s pretty similiar for the most part. Since I’m a web developer I use the Web Developer extension and it’s handy that I can use it on all platforms. Because of this, I’ll probably be sticking with Firefox for a while.