I love my iMac and wouldn’t trade it for any other computer on the market.  The Mac operating system - I’m running OS X Tiger - is rock solid, user-friendly, and full of features that the folks in Redmond still haven’t thought of.

Any Mac browser puts Windows Internet Explorer to shame.  But the web browser options on OS X Tiger all have something missing - at least in my eyes.

This is my take on the three most popular web browsers out there - Safari, Firefox, and Camino. I use all three at times, but I don’t love any of them; each has its flaws.

Safari.  I love Safari.  Of the choices available, it is my favorite web browser.  However, it is not without its share of flaws. (See this compatibility list.)

1. Compatibility.  Every once in a while, something just doesn’t display properly in Safari.  My wife’s eBay e-mails don’t have a clickable “Respond Now” link, for example.  They work in Firefox, but for some reason Safari just can’t handle it.  So while Safari is my personal “browser of choice”, every once in a while I have to run Firefox - just to do something on the internet - because Safari can’t handle it.  How can Apple be proud of that?
2. Lack of plug-ins.  Firefox has a great library of third party extensions.  They add new search boxes, and dozens of other features - everything from fetching Google Pagerank to controlling iTunes.  But Safari doesn’t have quite as much. The only good plugin resource I’ve found is pimpmysafari.com.
3. A bad RSS reader.  OS X Tiger added the great new “feature” of an RSS reader - built into Safari.  Unfortunately, I don’t like the reader’s feel or look. (My favorite RSS reader so far is Sage, a Firefox extension.)

Firefox.  (Download here.) I swore by Firefox in my past life as a Windows guy.  And when I upgraded to a well-designed, stable, and more user-friendly operating system that is OS X, I was excited to get my hands on Firefox for it, too.  But it is not without flaws.

1. Not a native OS X application. That doesn’t sound like much, but Firefox is bulkier than it needs to be.  There are G4 and G5-optimized versions out there, though - you can get the G4 version at fox.lazycat.info and the G5 version from BeatnikPad Journal.
2. Takes longer to load pages.  Firefox is just slower than Safari. I don’t have specifics, although #1 likely contributes to it. A factor in this is that Firefox does not take advantage of the Mac’s Quartz display technology.  This will likely be improved over time.
3. Not as stable as it should be.  When I first got my Mac, I eschewed Safari for Firefox. But after it crashed on me daily, I started questioning my loyalty.  You may not have these problems - I often flipped between a dozen browser tabs, sometimes more.  I’m not sure what the stability cutoff is, but my wife still uses Firefox with three or four open tabs on her Mac.  To each his (or her) own, I suppose.

Camino.  (Download here.) This seems like the ideal alternative - a free, open source, native Mac Application.  It is written in Cocoa.  But while it is pretty good, it is not quite “there” yet.

1. Not a full release.  Camino is currently in public beta test.  It is now at version 1.0b1.  That does not bother me personally, but it does mean that this browser is not yet ready for prime time.
2. No integrated RSS reader. I already mentioned that I’m not a fan of Safari’s RSS reader.  In my eyes, the only thing worse than Safari’s RSS reader is having no RSS reader at all.  That’s where Camino fits in.
3. Few third-party extensions.  Despite being loosely affiliated with the Mozilla folks, Camino is built differently than Firefox.  And, therefore, Firefox extensions won’t work with it.  Taking advantage of this huge code base would certainly boost Camino’s popularity - but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

I know there are other browsers, but these are the big three that I know of. If you use anything else, please let us know!

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Alexander Barbara is a 29 year-old former submarine Lieutenant turned entrepreneur. Read more from him at Wealth Junkie and My Switch To Mac.