That's not to say Safari is perfect. No application is. It's nice to have all those tabs, for instance. But wouldn't it be nicer to save them between browser sessions, so you can pick up again with all those sites when you reopen Safari? Not possible. Want to use keyboard commands to cycle among the tabs you have open? Not happening. Or let's say you're a weather nut and you like having a browser add-on that sticks weather information in your browser window. Forget it, at least for now.

To tweak, or not to tweak?

True to its Apple nature, Safari doesn't offer much customization. You're not going to be filling up the toolbar with endless icons or downloading lots of add-ons. Nope, if you want to tweak the way tabs display or add weather forecasts to the toolbar or re-skin Safari -- well, let's just say you're in the wrong browser. Go play with Firefox.

The whole raison d'etre for Safari is to browse, in the easiest, least complicated way possible. And while it may seem obvious that ease of use and good user interface is a given for a Web browser, it's not. Just take a look at the latest version of Internet Explorer (IE). You're likely to get lost just trying to configure the darn thing before you even get started browsing.

If you really must tinker with Safari, third-party developers have made it possible to change the look and feel and add a few features. Three of my favorite freebies are SafarIcon, Safari Enhancer and Safari Bookmark Exporter.