A browser doesn't seem like it should have that adverse of an effect on one's system performance. Aside from the power users who surf for hours at a time and leave their browser running for days on end, one's browser shouldn't be dragging the rest of the class down.

Macenstein, on the other hand, has used a few pseudo-scientific tests to determine otherwise. While the debate still rages as to which browser is the 'best,' or the fastest, or the least detrimental memory hog, Dr. Macenstein has apparently outed Safari as a fairly selfish system resource gobbler, able to slow at least some operations by 76 percent. The tests performed by the monster of all things Mac included a fairly tricked out G5 PowerMac, as well as Quad Core Mac Pro just for good measure. Just to round the tests out, Macenstein eventually added Camino and OmniWeb to the original test sequence of Safari and Firefox. These browsers were all tested separately against opening/saving a fairly hefty PSD in Photoshop, as well as rendering a project out of After Effects (remember: those two apps still have to run emulated in Rosetta on the Mac Pro).

The cliff notes results? In nearly every test, Safari (running in the background) was found to deal a significant blow to performance and efficiency, causing the three aforementioned operations to take noticeably longer. To make things even more bizarre, Safari was actually found to not affect performance when exporting a video for the iPod with QuickTime.

At the end of the day, no one is really sure why Apple's browser is making so many waves in the performance pool, but a healthy comment thread on the post is already hard at work. For anyone serious about Safari, here's hoping Apple is already aware of the issue and has brought their browser in line for Leopard.

I have to admit right up front that I'm not as familiar with the Mac dev community as I'd like to be. I don't know a lick about developing, and I get a bit intimidated as I know it's one of those trades that has a completely different set of constraints and connotations to manage; there's nothing like trying to swim in the big kid's pool while still wearing floaties. Though, for the record: that's just an analogy; I don't wear floaties when swimming in real life. I got rid of those months ago.

That said, I'd like to pass along Cocoa Blogs, a new venture from Scott Stevenson, whose name I only know from its mention on a number of Mac developers' blogs I've stumbled across from time to time. As you might glean from the title, Scott waxes on Cocoa, one of Apple's major (and dare I say preferable?) programming environment for Mac OS X, as well as the world of development and its community. He also wrangles a number of Cocoa developer resources and notable blogs for skills both advanced and new.

While much of the language in Scott's code-oriented posts and links might as well be Latin to me (and no, you don't get points for noting that up to 80% of English is Latin-based), this looks like a great new resource for Cocoa developers in all walks of life.

[via Gus Mueller]

Mac Hints & Tips is a killer site that catalogs (of all things) over 6,000 hints, tips, workarounds and other handy pieces of Mac OS X trickery. Compiled from Mac user groups, Apple websites and various other published and unpublished sources around the globe, this highly bookmarkable (and subscribeable) resource is run by one mere mortal by the name of Paul Taylor, who is seeking donations and subscriptions to keep the site and monthly PDF truckin'. Paul currently allows users to sign up for a yearly membership to gain access to the entire database of tips, searchable by keyword or application name, and he also accepts good ol' fashioned donations (though we've all seen how well those go), but he's trying to get the word out to see if the community can toss a few more dollars into the bucket o' hosting bills. To see whether Mac Hints & Tips could be worth your time and a donation or a membership, Paul keeps archives of the past three months available on the main page (in both HTML and PDF), in addition to the current issue.

Check out Mac Hints & Tips, as I know I've found it to be an invaluable resource over the year or so I've been a reader, and it would be great to see such a killer resource get credit where it is most certainly due.