Safari 4 Beta

Is this the right user agent?

[GaryK]

I know this isn't exactly the right forum for this, but it is a user agent so hopefully you all will be able to help me with it.

Safari 4 Beta has been out for awhile now under a slightly different user agent than the one below. Is this one a new user agent for the beta? The difference is the inclusion of the token words, "Public Beta".

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; de-de) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16

[Pfui]

It's got me flummoxed, and I'm a Mac person! (Who is holding off installing it because it can be tricky to uninstall betas if need be.) I've seen the "Beta"-named UA for OS 4.11.X and 10.5.X, e.g. --

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16

-- but I've actually seen more WITHOUT the word "Beta." E.g.:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/528.16

FWIW, another site (dang; I forgot to save the URL the other day, sorry) reported these as the new UAs. For WIN first, then MAC. Note no "Beta":

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; it-IT) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/528.16

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/528.16

I guess -- we shall see. : )

[edited by: Pfui at 8:13 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2009]

[GaryK]

Hi. I saw an article on Slashdot today that linked to a reliable source confirming the public beta was released last week. Version 4 without the "public beta" token that you referred to, and that I've seen now for about six months, was also a beta. Just not as widely distributed as this new one is.

[Samizdata]

I am using Safari 4 Beta on a PPC Mac and it looks like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/528.16

Newer Macs will have "Intel" instead of "PPC".

The OSX version can also change, obviously.

And user-agent switching has been built in to Safari for years.

...

[GaryK]

And user-agent switching has been built in to Safari for years.

True, but I saw the same UA on a number of different sites of mine, all from different parts of the world. That's what led me to conclude it was legit. When did you download your version of Safari Beta?

[Samizdata]

When did you download your version of Safari Beta?

On 24 February, according to this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

...

[GaryK]

Interesting. I have no explanation for the difference in UAs then. The Safari build is the same. ApppleWebKit is the same. Only difference is the "Public Beta".

Each of these visited a different site and came from a different IP Address:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; de-de) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; it-it) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4 Public Beta Safari/528.16