Apple Releases Safari 3.1

[AdvancedSetup]

Apple Releases Safari 3.1

Press Release Source: Apple

Apple Releases Safari 3.1

Tuesday March 18, 8:30 am ET

The World's Fastest Browser Now on Mac and Windows

 

CUPERTINO, Calif., March 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple® today introduced Safari 3.1, the world's fastest web browser for Mac® and Windows PCs. Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers, and is the first browser to support the latest innovative web standards needed to deliver the next generation of highly interactive Web 2.0 experiences*. Safari 3.1 is available immediately as a free download at http://www.apple.com/safari for both Mac OS® X and Windows.

 

"Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "And best of all, Safari supports the latest audio, video and animation standards for an industry-leading Web 2.0 experience."

 

The incredible performance of Safari, combined with its elegant user interface, lets users spend more time surfing the web and less time waiting for pages to load. Safari features an intuitive browsing experience with drag-and-drop bookmarks, easy-to-organize tabs, an integrated Find that shows the number of matches in a page and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information.

 

Safari 3.1 is the first browser to support the new video and audio tags in HTML 5 and the first to support CSS Animations. Safari also supports CSS Web Fonts, giving designers limitless choices of fonts to create stunning new web sites.

 

Pricing & Availability

 

Safari 3.1 is available immediately as a free download at http://www.apple.com/safari for both Mac OS X and Windows users. Safari software updates are delivered seamlessly through Apple's Software Update application, which automatically checks for updates.

 

Safari 3.1 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® or Mac OS X Tiger® version 10.4.11, a minimum of 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire®. Safari 3.1 for Windows requires Windows XP or Windows Vista, a minimum of 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor.

• Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection
  and other factors. HTML and JavaScript benchmarks based on VeriTest's
  iBench Version 5.0 using default settings running on an iMac® 2.4 GHz
  Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows XP, with 1GB of RAM.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

 

2008 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Safari, Leopard, Tiger, FireWire and iMac are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I just installed it now, will let you know if I rate it.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Mmmm well it appears to be a tad faster and importing bookmarks was easy enough but I can't seem to find how to change the browser bar colour from this bloody awful grey.

If I can't find out how to alter it then it's history.

It's depressing me as we speak.

 

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z144/Wolfeymoles-Pics/greybar.png

[DSTM]

Read this,and there may be a problem with Security,re Safari 3.1 Browser.

I uninstalled.The colour is a shocker.

My add and Remove says 62.47MB That seems excessive.

Did a search and found 7 files left behind after Removing.

 

Technorati: Discussion about “But they keep telling us it's so safe and it's the best?”

Edited March 28, 2008 by DSTM

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Safari browser allows Mac to be easily taken over at hacker convention, Vista, Ubuntu machines survive the day

 

It has not been a good couple weeks for Apple and Safari. First Opera knocked it from its position as sole 100 percent compatible Acid3 browser. Then it tried to force iTunes users to unintentionally download the browser as part of an iTunes update, which included a pre-checked install option for Safari. The move was met with broad criticism, including from Mozilla's CEO, who commented that Apple was bordering "on malware distribution practices." Finally, Safari users who updated to v3.1 reported many bugs and crashes.

 

Now the browser, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs once called the "most innovative browser in the world and the most powerful browser in the world", has had more bad news. At the CanSecWest Show, an annual security conference, it was found that the Safari browser was surprisingly insecure, allowing successful attacks on Mac computers.

 

CanSecWest sponsors an annual hacking contest, which seeks to recognize vulnerabilities and give a comparative analysis of OS security. A Mac, Vista machine, and Ubuntu box survived the first round, which only allowed pre-authentication attacks – a successful attack would have yielded a $20,000 prize. However, on the second day, the flood gates were opened and hackers were allowed to use default-installed client applications.

 

The Mac fell within minutes, hijacked by security researcher Charlie Miller. Miller compromised the computer through security flaws in the new Safari 3.1 browser, which he declined to make public. For his takeover via the new vulnerability, Miller netted a sweet prize of $10,000. Surprisingly, the hackers were unable to gain control of the Vista or Ubuntu machines that day.

 

On the third day, hackers were allowed to exploit popular third-party applications. Hackers found the Vista machine surprisingly hard to crack in what they thought would be an "easy pickings" day. The improved security is likely owing largely to SP1, perhaps because of NX support for heap memory. In the end it was taken down by a cross-platform Flash Player attack. The Ubuntu machine survived the day.

 

Some point that the Mac and others may be even more vulnerable than the show indicates as some have noted that a pre-authentication vulnerability might command a price of $50,000 or more elsewhere, making an exploit at the show unprofitable. According to eWeek's security analysts, "Safari is prone to a remote code-execution vulnerability because it fails to adequately handle regular expressions with large, nested repetition counts. Inaccurate compilation lengths are calculated, and an overflow results."

 

Miller didn't even have to use new vulnerabilities also known for Safari. The first is a simple overflow attack using zip files. The second attack allows injection of content in a window belonging to a trusted site.

A recent independent analysis confirmed that Apple patches its vulnerabilities slower than Microsoft. The analysis followed a controversial Microsoft report by Jeff Jones, known for trashing Firefox for its bugs. The report indicated that 36 vulnerabilities in Vista were fixed over a total of nine patching events, and 30 unpatched vulnerabilities remained, while a total of 116 vulnerabilities were fixed in OS X over 17 patching events, with 41 unpatched vulnerabilities.

 

Apple's patches last year indicated Apple's slower than acceptable patching pace. It included patches for four vulnerabilities known since 2006 and two known since 2005. The oldest of these, a vulnerability in Apache, had a fix released by Apache in 2005.

 

Security experts point out that despite Apple's poor security, its machines remain less attacked than Windows machines. Many believe this is simply a matter of market share. With Mac sales on the rise, there may soon be a large increase in Apple-targeted malware and takeovers with the Safari browsing taking the brunt of the attacks.

 

 

Sourced from Daily Tech