Running Yosemite 10.10.5 on MacBook Air (early 2014), with Safari v. 10.1.2.
New Safari windows come up blank. Typing a URL into them doesn't load the pages.
Quitting Safari and relaunching causes System error:
Safari cannot be opened because of a problem.
Check with the developer to make sure Safari works with this version of Mac OSX. You may have to reinstall the application. Be sure to sure to install any available updates for the application and Mac OSX."
Crash report (and launching Safari from Terminal) shows this error:
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libcrypto.35.dylib
Referenced from: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice
Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap
Listing the directory shows that files were updated here (presumably because of iTunes update) that are proximate to this problem:
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Dec 14 08:52 AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Dec 14 08:52 AppleMobileSync.app
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 4119552 Oct 16 21:31 MobileDevice
drwxr-xr-x 45 root wheel 1530 Oct 16 21:31 Resources
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Oct 16 20:49 _CodeSignature
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 43936 Oct 16 21:31 reenumerate_ios_devices
(two December 14th files indicate recent update compared to older files)
Timestamps of those updated files coincide with iTunes being updated to 12.8.1.2.
Hypothesis: Updating iTunes to 12.8.1.2
updated /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework to a version incompatible with Safari 10.1.2. Workaround 2 (below) supports hypothesis.
WORKAROUND 1: Install/Use Firefox
WORKAROUND 2: Move /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework to the trash (or somewhere else)
WORKAROUND 3 (not yet verified but presumed to work): Install macOS Mojave.
Posted here in case someone has a direct fix for users who can't update to Mojave, don't want to lose capabilities that MobileDevice.framework provides, and can't (or don't want to be forced to) switch to Firefox.
Best Answer
Same happened to me--same error, same OS X and same Safari version. The following files in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ had today's timestamp on my computer. I restored these files from my backup in Time Machine. Safari is working again.