Re: Detect Mac Browser

[simonm]

That pattern does look like it will catch most Mac users.

(However, I'm unable to imagine a good reason for doing this; the various Mac browsers are different enough that the OS is rarely the biggest issue, and Safari is more like Linux's KHTML than it is like MacOS 9's Internet Explorer.)

[Trimbach]

The poster doesn't mention this, but there are (sometimes) good reasons for doing OS-specific re-directs, but not for browser rendering reasons (shame on anyone who does that these days. In a world of nearly standards compliant browsers I'm hoping the days of browser detects are over). If you've got a Windows product and a Mac product why not direct your users to the appropriate version? Netscape does this when you go to download the latest version of Navigator... they do an OS-detect and show you the Mac version for download if you come in on a Mac, and the Windows version if you come in on Windows. Pretty clever, actually. :-)

[Nkuvu]

Yep, I must say that I was initially irritated when I read this. Because a lot of websites do this stupid "Check to see if your browser is IE or Netscape" and then dump you to a "We're sorry, you have a stooopid browser" page if not. The really irritating bit about this is that once past that initial check page, it works fine no matter what browser you're using...

So yeah, upon reflection I can think of reasons for OS detect. But more often I have encountered bad reasons for the OS detect.

[Arbogast]

Update:

The pattern seems to work for catching mainstream Mac browsers.

Turns out the code WAS to send Mac Users to a different Flash Movie, (as several Monks correctly suspected) that worked around APPARANT bugs in Mac Flash Player. Not bugs that would crash the Mac Player, but make older Macs run in a jerky, non eye appealing manner.
Therefore, there was a seperate Flash movie for the Apple player, so that both Mac and non Mac Users see the same movie.

Nobody was denied content, or sent to any site asking them to upgrade/change browsers, unless they needed to install Flash player. Older Mac users were given access to a Flash Movie that allowed them to see same quality content as others.