Xblog: Just How Great Is Safari?

Just How Great Is Safari?

Christopher Smith — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:52:00 -0700

Apple’s launch of Safari for Windows has been… interesting. As Corey pointed out, Safari doesn’t exactly make a compelling case for why you’d want to use it over the others. Then, on top of that, a hand full of exploits emerged within 24 hours of the launch, some within a couple of hours. Either Apple doesn’t know squat about secure programming on Windows or Safari has had all kinds of exploits lying in wait for broader exposure to the security community (probably both). Apple has now released patches which hopefully close out all the newly discovered exploits, but at this point Safari feels less secure than IE, which is saying a lot. But wait, it gets better…

So, one of the things I thought would be fun about using Safari on Windows is I could see what the web looks like from a loyal Mac user’s perspective (I empahsize loyal, because as far as I can tell most Mac users just use Firefox or Camino).

So, for starers, you gateway to the web is a massive promo page for Apple and Apple partners. I hope the people behind this stick to criticising Yahoo’s home page on aesthetic grounds only. Anyway, at the top of the page was a link to Celebrating the Best in Mac Software. Well, how could I not check out all the great software I was missing out on by not owning a Mac?

That’ when it got interseting. So, their highlighted category is “Leopard Application”, of course. Interestingly, neither winner nor runner-up got a web link. How odd. Anyway, going to the “developer” section (guess why), the runner up was rooSwitch. Not knowing what that was, I thought I’d check out the website. I clicked on the link and…. got a broken web page.

That’s right, rooSwitch was one of those sites that didn’t render properly in Safari. Yup, they got an away from the makers of Safari… and Safari can’t render it. Basically all the text on the page was invisible.

I’ve since downloaded Apple’s “Security Updates”, and now Safari renders the rooSwitch page correctly. Great, so it was a security problem?!

[voice mode=”Colbert Report] So horrible Apple product launch?…. or worst Apple product launch? ;-) [/voice]

"Just How Great Is Safari?" by Lemony

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:49:24 -0700

Dude, it’s a beta.

"Just How Great Is Safari?" by MCJE

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:38:53 -0700

I keep trying Firefox, but have kept coming back to Safari. Why? .Mac seamlessly synchronizes my bookmarks. I can quickly go to my top nine bookmarks with keyboard shortcuts. It has a quick startup time, unlike Firefox. It has Cocoa integration with the rest of the OS. In my experience, Safari generally parses pages better than Firefox. The Safari 3 beta has improved Ajax for web apps like Google Spreadsheets, though it doesn’t mesh perfectly with programs that are based around the old renderer, like Apple Mail.

Now for the complaint. I bought Macs for security. I’m not going to get into whether Macs are more secure because of their BSD-derived software or because crackers don’t care about Macs. Half a dozen exploits for Safari 3 for Windows are reported to also work on Safari 2, the version shipping with every Mac. Apple’s patched the Windows version, but has not patched the Mac version, which has eighteen times the number of users the Windows version has (according to Apple’s own numbers).

So I’m using Firefox right now, waiting to see what other bugs get shaken out of the Safari tree. The Firefox “GrApple Eos” theme is nicer than the brushed metal though…