Google Maps sometimes will take an interminably long time to load in Safari. I have found that changing Safari's User Agent to Google Chrome consistently fixes this problem, resulting in snappy loading of Google Map web pages.
Changing the User Agent is a cumbersome process, involving making sure the Develop menu is visible in Safari's menu bar, retrieving Google Chrome's User Agent string from the Internet or a saved file, and then entering the string in the User Agent dialog window.
This hint covers how to use AppleScript to simplify this.
The following AppleScript automates this process. Copy and paste the code into AppleScript Editor and save the script either as an application or to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari and run it from the Scripts menu.
set getUptodateUserAgent to true -- or false to use a previously saved user agent
-- Make sure that Safari's Develop menu (containing the User Agent menu item) is visible in the menu bar
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDevelopMenu Yes"
-- Make sure that a window is visible in Safari so that the User Agent menu item is enabled
tell application "Safari"
activate
set miniaturized of windows to false
if documents = {} then make new document with properties {URL:""}
end tell
-- If a previously saved user agent is to be used, retrieve it from the Preferences folder
set preferencesFile to (path to preferences as string) & "GoogleChromeUserAgent.txt"
if not getUptodateUserAgent then
try
close access file preferencesFile
end try
try
set googleChromeUserAgent to (read file preferencesFile from 1)
on error
set googleChromeUserAgent to ""
end try
end if
-- If a new user agent is to be used (or if a previous user agent could not be found), get Google Chrome's most up-to-date user agent from www.useragentstring.com, and save it in the Preferences folder for future use
if getUptodateUserAgent or (googleChromeUserAgent = "") then
set googleChromeUserAgent to do shell script "curl 'http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/Chrome/' | egrep -o 'Mozilla[^<]+' | egrep -m 1 '.+'"
try
close access file preferencesFile
end try
open for access file preferencesFile with write permission
set eof file preferencesFile to 0
write googleChromeUserAgent to file preferencesFile
close access file preferencesFile
end if
-- Change to the Google Chrome user agent in Safari
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
set frontmost to true
tell menu bar 1's menu bar item "Develop"'s menu "Develop"'s menu item "User Agent"'s menu "User Agent"'s menu item "Other…" to click
delay 0.5
tell window 1's sheet 1
tell scroll area 1's text area 1 to set value to googleChromeUserAgent
tell button "OK" to click
end tell
end tell
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110322215325391