The Mac Sucks!

A little while back, Apple caused a stir in the technical community by alleging that its Safari 4 browser was the fastest browser available for Macintosh and Windows. Since then, a lot of articles have been written comparing the Safari browser to various others. The June 2009 PC World issue (on page 10 for those following along at home) is an article entitled “Browser Speed Showdown: Chrome is Golden” in which the page rendering speed of the Google Chrome 2 Beta, Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, and Apple Safari 4 Beta are compared.

In the comparison, the page load time for each browser is timed for several popular web sites, such as amazon.com, apple.com, and others. An average page load time is computed as well. The results of the comparison appear below:

According to the article, for each test they cleared the browser’s cache and then loaded each page 10 times per site, per browser, to factor out fluctuations in network traffic and to build a sample size large enough to identify trends. In addition, they threw out the two best and two worst scores for each test to reduce the influence of fluctuations and provide more consistent results. The measurements did not rely on the browser’s indication that it was finished rendering the page, but waited until all visual elements were loaded and ready to use.

The fastest result for each site appears in bold in the table, and the fastest overall average also appears in bold. As you can see, for the web sites tested, the Chrome 2 Beta beat all the other browsers in every test except one. It was also interesting to note that Firefox and Safari, which are normally considered “faster” browsers by many users, actually tied for last place in this particular test.

However, as PC World noted in the conclusion to its article “Many users won’t notice any performance difference in the browsers we evaluated. With fast broadband service, you likely spend little time waiting for pages to load anyway… All four of the browser we tested are pretty fast, so you should focus on which one seems most compatible.” It might also be useful to examine the feature sets of the browsers to find one that works most like the way you do, since page rendering speed isn’t that different among them.

Security researcher Charlie Miller made good on his threat that Apple’s Safari web browser would fall first in this year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own security challenge. This is the second year in a row that Miller has hacked into a fully-patched MacBook by exploiting a security weakness in Safari. Later in the conference, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox also fell to attackers, proving that none of the web browsers is particularly more secure than the others. All of them have flaws which can be exploited.

Naturally, the folks at AppleInsider spun the story to imply that Apple’s security (while falling first) is nonetheless vastly superior to everyone else’s. In spite of their inherent bias toward Apple’s products, AppleInsider makes some interesting points. Their article is worth reading. Some of their commentary elicits a response, however.

AppleInsider argues that OS X looks more vulnerable than Linux in security contests because fewer researchers target Linux because it’s “hard work” to find a usable Linux exploit. AppleInsider then goes on to claim that Apple’s use of open source components is what makes OS X appear vulnerable. At first blush, this is a contradiction. If it’s hard work to find an exploit in open source Linux, why would Apple’s use of open source make it easier to exploit OS X? The answer is something AppleInsider conveniently omits: Apple takes longer to update its open source components than typical Linux distributions. Because of this delay, vulnerable versions of open source components remain part of Mac OS X for a while. Known, documented exploits for those components are recorded in bug databases for those open source projects (typically on the Internet where anyone can get to them). Finding a “Mac exploit”, then, is as simple as finding an open source component Apple hasn’t updated yet.

AppleInsider also reports that a study showed there were 678 patches released by Microsoft between 2002 and 2007, while Apple released 815. AppleInsider says that the use of open source enables Apple to “issue more security patches and operating system updates than Microsoft does”, implying that this is a good thing. It’s not necessarily indicative of better security. A counter argument would be that this shows far more bugs in Apple’s products than Microsoft’s, implying more security weaknesses in total, and overall weaker security. That’s not necessarily true, it’s just another way to spin the same data.

AppleInsider did take the opportunity to quote Jeff Jones, the director of Microsoft’s security group, who claimed that contests like Pwn2Own just show security experts what they already know, which is that “any machine can be broken under the right circumstances” and that it’s not worth reading too much into the Pwn2Own results. It’s interesting to see Mac fans quote Microsoft security guys as experts while trashing Microsoft’s product security.

At the end of its post, AppleInsider implies that because Apple didn’t write the open source components of Mac OS X, it’s not fair to count bugs in those components as OS X bugs. It would only be fair, they argue, if you counted bugs in the Windows versions of those same components in Microsoft’s totals. At first glance, this is reasonable, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Apple leverages open source software to get OS X functionality to market without the associated development effort and cost. There’s nothing wrong with that. But by including open source software as part of the OS X distribution, they effectively assume responsibility for the bugs in that code just as if they’d written it themselves. If there are any open source components in Windows (none come to mind), then it’s just as appropriate to count bugs in those components as Windows bugs.

A perfect example of a situation where an open source component’s bugs should be included in OS X bug totals and not in Windows bug totals is the Apache web server software. Apple uses Apache in Mac OS X Server. It ships as part of OS X. While there is an Apache for Windows, Microsoft does not include that in Windows distributions, instead bundling its own Internet Information Services (or “IIS”). In this situation, it’s fair to count Apache bugs as Mac OS X Server bugs. Apple had access to the source code, after all, and could in theory have taken the time to comb over it and fix the bugs before releasing Apache as part of OS X. It’s not fair to count Apache bugs as Windows bugs in this case, because Microsoft didn’t include Apache in Windows. (Yes, it may run on Windows and have the same bugs there, but it’s not PART of Windows like it’s part of OS X.) It’s similarly fair to count IIS bugs as Windows bugs (and naturally not as Mac bugs), because that’s part of the Windows distribution as Microsoft shipped it.

In any case, this article is straying from its intended point, which is to say that the CanSecWest Pwn2Own contest should not be taken as an indication that (because Safari on OS X fell first) Apple’s products are “less secure” than Windows or Linux. However, the contest results should serve to Mac fans as a sobering reminder that Mac OS X and Safari are not bulletproof. The products have weaknesses, those weaknesses can be exploited, and while Mac users may have had less historic reason to worry about malware than Windows users, that doesn’t mean they’re immune to it. As Microsoft’s Jeff Jones said, any machine can be broken… even a Mac.

TGDaily’s Christian Zibreg reports that Charlie Miller claims Apple’s new Safari 4 Beta on the Mac will be the first browser to fail at this year’s “Pwn2Own” contest. Miller said that Safari is “the easiest browser” to hack. According to TGDaily, “Miller has argued that Safari’s security-related weaknesses stem from a complex code that handles many features and multimedia file types, as well as a lack of workable defenses on the part of OS X.” TGDaily said that Miller hinted that other browsers are more secure than Safari, arguing that $5,000 isn’t motivation enough to try to crack IE8, Firefox, or Chrome.

As Zibreg reports, “if Apple’s Safari surrenders again within minutes, it will be a big blow for Apple who likes pitching its software and the operating system as rock solid.”

Considering that Miller is the same guy who broke into a MacBook Air in under two minutes during a high-profile hacking contest in Vancouver, the odds are that he can do it again.

Stephen Shankland of CNET posted “Safari 4 a big step up, but not as far as rivals” on Tuesday. In this article, Shankland outlines the major new features of Apple’s Safari 4 browser for Windows. He says that “a big user interface overhaul makes Safari look polished rather than clunky on Windows, builds in better search abilities, and makes good use of the fact that people often visit the same sites over and over.” At the same time, however, he laments that “the lack of something like the extensions architecture that Firefox pioneered still means Safari 4 is only better than Safari 3, not the competition.”

For those who haven’t looked at Safari 4, the new release goes for a more Windows-native appearance than Safari 3, which tried to bring the Mac OS X look to Windows. Apple has organized tabs at the top of the window where a title bar normally resides, as Google did in Chrome. Safari 4 also introduces a “cover flow” style view of browser history, allowing you to flip through a gallery of pages you’ve recently visited. They’ve also added a Chrome-like feature called “Top Sites” that puts previews of several of your most-visited web sites in a sort of 3-D view. It’s all eye candy, some of it seen first in other browsers, and typical Apple “dazzle ‘em with graphics” stuff.

The big claim to fame for Safari 4 is improved performance. On the Apple web site, Safari 4 is touted as “the world’s fastest browser“. On its web site, Apple claims that Safari “outraces Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome” thanks to faster JavaScript rendering and “the industry’s most advanced rendering technologies”. Lee Matthews of Download Squad too a look at those claims, which are being echoed in major media outlets, and says that “Safari 4 can’t beat Google Chrome“. Matthews shows that on the SunSpider benchmark Apple brags about, that Chrome 2 is faster than Safari 4, and that Safari 4 is only barely quicker than Chrome 1. Using the Google V8 benchmark, both Chrome 2 and Chrome 1 beat Safari 4 (as Matthews says) “like a rented mule, and Firefox 3.1 barely puts up a fight”. Matthews concludes that “based on overall numbers, however, Chrome 2 still wins the Javascript speed title”.

Computerworld echoes Matthews’ findings, saying that “Safari 4 rivals Google Chrome in JavaScript race” but that “Contrary to Apple’s claims, the newest version of Safari is not the world’s fastest browser, benchmark scores show.” Computerworld’s tests show that the Safari 4 beta is “in a virtual dead heat” with the most recent edition of Google’s Chrome.” The Computerworld article indicates that Safari is only the “world’s fastest browser” on Mac OS X, where there’s no Google Chrome for it to compete with.

Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer browser tends to get beaten badly in these benchmarks, naturally says that these JavaScript benchmarks are something akin to drag racing and don’t prove anything. Their contention is that, in the end, it’s the user’s perception of a browser’s speed that matters, not its performance in synthetic benchmarks like SunSpider, Dromaeo, V8, or iBench.

Regardless of which is “the fastest browser in the world” it will be interesting to see how Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, and Apple continue to compete and differentiate their browsers.

Anthony Parkinson of AppleTell posted an article today entitled “Safari for Windows, not so good” about his experiences with Apple’s web browser on the Windows XP platform. Parkinson reports that Safari on Windows has a habit of crashing, locking up, and being slower than Internet Explorer. His article concludes with the following recommendation:

“Bottom line here is if you are forced to use Windows like I am, then I cannot recommend Safari at this time. It is just too buggy to be a good alternative to Internet Exploder. I understand some of it has to do with the image on the machine I am using and various other factors, but in my experience, Safari just plain sucks for Windows currently.”

Sounds like good advice to me.

Apple apparently hasn’t learned yet that Windows users and Mac users expect different things from a software vendor.  Right or wrong, Windows users have come to expect that Microsoft will only mark software updates as “required” if they correct problems with existing software, don’t add substantial new functionality, and don’t require payment of an additional license or service fee.  If you look in Windows Update, you’ll see this policy adhered to pretty much religiously.  The only possible exception might be when a product like Internet Explorer reaches the end of its life cycle and becomes non-supported.  They might (and I stress “might”) mark it as required at that point.  This how Windows users expect software updates to work.

Apple, on the other hand, views software updates in much the same way a drug dealer views the handing out of a “free sample” to a prospective junkie.  If you download and use iTunes, they seem to think this gives them carte blanche to automatically install Safari or MobileMe on your Windows machine, as if finding unexpected software on your system is a “bonus” and this “free hit” of the “Apple drug” will leave you wanting more Apple products.

Apple needs to learn that if I download and install iTunes, it means I want iTunes. I don’t want Safari.  I don’t want MobileMe.  I don’t want the latest QuickTime.  (Maybe I would want those things, but what I really want is the option to choose which ones I get and when.)  Yes, I’ve used the Apple updater and I know that it’s possible to pick and choose your updates.  But if you’ve gotten used to dealing with the Windows Update process and the way updates on Windows generally work, you expect applications (even those from Apple) to follow that same philosophy.  Just as I wouldn’t expect a former Windows application ported to the Mac to begin using “control-C” for copy on OS X like it does on Windows, I wouldn’t expect a software updater to throw new products at me by default.

I know Apple likes to do this on OS X, too.  I had a real mess at work in my Mac Administration after implementing a script to download and install all the recommended security updates each night.  Apple marked new version of QuickTime, which required the payment of an additional license upgrade fee, as required. My script, not knowing better, downloaded and installed that upgrade on our designers’ systems.  A week or three later, it applied an update to that new version.  Then the designers realized they’d been upgraded and, during a critical business time, couldn’t use the software as needed.  It would take 2-3 weeks to get payment processed for the new license, so we needed to remove the new QuickTime versions.  Apple provided an uninstaller, but only for the original upgrade and the subsequent patched version.  I ended up having to muck around with the code for the uninstaller to make it recognize “1.1.1″ in addition to “1.1.0″ (hypothetical version numbers).  Fortunately, that worked and the crisis was averted.  I then had to go back to my script and have it filter out automatic updates to QuickTime in the future.  All this because Apple felt that anyone who had licensed QuickTime in the past would “automatically” want to license a new release.

Clearly, for a number of people, Apple’s products appear to be addictive.  They buy a Mac, then get an iPod, use iTunes, run Safari, buy an iPhone, sign up for MobileMe, etc.  For them, perhaps these “gently forced upgrades” are more a bonus than an unpleasant surprise. For the rest of us, they’re a nasty shock.  Apple needs to learn how to approach customers differently, at least those who aren’t among the Apple-addicted Mac Faithful.

I wouldn’t base that remark solely on one
user’s experience, so take this with a grain of salt…

According to “Skipper” on osx.tribe.net, he’s been using Safari 3.0.3 for
some time on his iMac G4 with Mac OS X 10.4.9 and thinks it’s
severely flawed because, when he visits certain video sites (like VEOH,
Stage 6, or Boxsweeper), Safari unexpectedly quits. When he switches
over to FireFox, the same thing doesn’t happen.

Readers of his posting offered several comments, like being able to
watch MPEGs but not WMVs in Safari, whether Skipper had the latest
version of flash, and removing Windows Media Player from his Mac.

What’s interesting to me is that if he has only been
experiencing this problem in Safari and not FireFox, why he bothers to
use Safari on these sites at all. A simple click on the Dock (assuming
he’s put the icon there) would bring up FireFox and lead
(presumably, based on the post) to trouble-free browsing. Why stick with
a browser that’s causing you trouble?

For that matter,
with so many good browsers out there running on OS X, why is Apple
bothering to create Safari in the first place? They don’t need it
for the platform to be successful. They used to bundle IE and Netscape
with Mac OS 9. Why not save all that development effort and bundle
FireFox, Opera, or some other browser with OS X? Is this another example
of Apple’s extremely arrogant “Only we can make good OS X
software” attitude? Is Apple that self-centered that they MUST make
their own OS X (and iPhone) browser?

What’s funny is
that Apple HASN’T developed many of the products that people
associate with them and with OS X. What’s my evidence? What are my
examples? Glad you asked:

• Final Cut Pro: This was originally created by Macromedia as
  “KeyGrip” but Macromedia couldn’t release it for
  contractual reasons. When Apple saw a Windows and Mac version
  demonstrated, they purchased the development team as a defensive move.
  When they couldn’t sell the team, they continued the development and
  released Final Cut Pro in 1999.

• iTunes: The software that forms the basis of iTunes
  was developed for a 1999 Casady & Greene product called SoundJam
  MP. Apple purchased it in 2000, gave it a new user interface and the
  ability to burn CDs, removed its recording features, took out the
  skinning support, and released it as iTunes.

• Keynote: While developed internally as an
  application for Steve Jobs to use in his Macworld presentations, Keynote
  is said to be patterned after the Lighthouse Design Concurrence
  presentation software that Jobs is believed to have “appreciated
  greatly” in his days at NeXT.

• Safari: Safari is based on KHTML, an
  HTML layout engine developed for the KDE (Linux) project. It’s the
  same engine used by the Linux Konqueror web browser. Its JavaScript core
  is based on KDE’s KJS JavaScript engine.

• Multi-Touch Screen Technology: Used in the iPhone
  and iPod Touch, this technology is also not an Apple invention.

And of course there’s the fact that OS X is based on the BSD UNIX
operating system, which Apple certainly didn’t develop, and that
there are many, many utilities available through the OS X command line
that Apple has “borrowed” from the open source community to
enhance OS X functionality with little or no development on their part.

I’m not saying it’s wrong for Apple to acquire
third-party products and improve them. That’s done all the time.
I’m also not saying there’s anything wrong with them
commercializing open source software, which companies like Red Hat have
done to great effect. All I’m saying is that Apple gets a lot of
kudos for “creating” things like iTunes, Final Cut, and the
like when in fact they weren’t created entirely by Apple. That, by
the way, is one of the points of this site… to remind those who are
stuck inside the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion field that it really IS a
Reality Distortion field. Above are five products I could quickly and
easily identify as not entirely Apple inventions, which Apple often says
ARE their own invention. If you believe that they are, well, your
reality is a distorted.

Again we remind you that Apple boasts about its
products’ security. They boast about the superiority of Safari over
other browsers. Yet, as we point out again and again here, their
products are no better than the competition. Another case in point – The Register points out that it’s easy to steal music
from MySpace using Safari.

When it comes to
protecting digital content holders from the hordes of naughty file
grabbers, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more zealous partner than
Apple. So we were surprised to learn that Apple’s Safari browser makes
it easy to download MP3 files hosted on MySpace that are supposed to be
limited to streaming only.

MySpace programmers have taken
pains to obfuscate the location of the MP3 file music artists embed into
their MySpace profiles. Until now, pirates had to use programs like
Ethereal or Burp to divine where a tune was stored. But thanks to a
Safari feature called the Activity Window, that cumbersome process is no
longer necessary.

We read Dave Shanley’s writeup of the technique and were
able to replicate the process, although with a few minor
modifications.

They then go on to explain the process in
detail, explaining how to steal an MP3 of a tune from a MySpace site
using Safari, in spite of the protections placed on it by MySpace.

Who would have thought that Safari would become a copyright
infringement tool? Only those of us who know Apple’s penchant for
putting locks on the door but leaving the garage wide open…

On August 20, the insidesocial.com web site’s
Click column featured “The new iMac — I just can’t get past this lousy
keyboard” by Steven Rosenberg. Before you Mac Fanboys start tuning
out, thinking this was a review by an anti-Mac zealot, note the
following comment from the author: “I am a regular Mac user.” In other
words, not a regular PC user.

Here are some of his
comments regarding the new iMacs:

“The whole thing costs
$1199. For that price, it should have 2 GB of RAM, not 1 GB, but I
quibble.” (Doesn’t sound like such a quibble to me.)

“Where Apple loses me — and anybody who can type — is with this lousy
keyboard, with chicklit keys that are way too far apart. They screwed up
the MacBook with these awful keyboards, and now they’ve taken the
desktops down with it.” (I couldn’t agree with you more, Steven. If I
have any serious typing to do, I don’t do it on a Mac. I get way too
many missing characters and cursor jumps with Apple’s keyboards.)

“I can barely type with this thing…[snip]… It’s just
depressing. First the damn thing is way overpriced, then I can barely
type a sentence without seven mistakes.”

“And p.s., Apple
– if you’re going to do an aluminum PC and aluminum keyboard, what’s
with the WHITE PLASTIC mouse. You’re messing with my feng shui.” (This
cracks me up. I didn’t realize Apple hadn’t updated the mouse to go with
the new look. I guess an aluminum mouse would have added another $100 to
the price.)

“For our iBook G4, we still use an old Apple
Extended Keyboard with the MacAlly adapter that converts the old Apple
keyboard ADB signal to USB. The Apple Extended remains one of the great
keyboards of all time.” (You know, I can’t argue with that one. I really
miss that old keyboard. I haven’t had a Windows keyboard that was as
comfortable as that one. I may have to look into that adapter and an old
used Apple Extended for my Windows boxes… Hmmmm…. )

“File under ‘holy crap’: Movable Type does NOT like Safari. I can’t
automatically insert a link, or do bold, italic or blockquoted material
without hand-coding it. Can’t they just give it up and load FireFox on
these things?”

Steve Jobs touted the speed of Safari 3 on the Windows platform as
one of its best features over Internet Explorer and FireFox. 
Problem is, the folks over at Wired took a look at it and figured out
that FireFox
2 is still faster than Safari 3 , especially on Ajax-intensive web
applications like those from Google (Gmail, Google Calendar).
 

In Wired’s tests, Safari 3 took 2-4 seconds LONGER to
load pages than FireFox 2.  Internet Explorer even beat Safari 3 on
2 out of 3 tests.  Once again, Apple seems to be making claims that
don’t stand up to detailed scrutiny.

Wired Magazine’s “Cult of Macintosh” writer Leander Kahney makes some
interesting points in his article “Who in Their Right Mind Would Run Safari on
Windows?“. Among these are:

“…the
initiative seems to rely on a domino theory fueled by infatuation. Apple
is hoping there are Windows users so in love with their iPods and iTunes
that they will also download Safari. Then they’ll fall in love with
that, and the next thing you know they’ll be down at the Apple Store
fishing for their credit cards.” (If that sounds perfectly logical to
you, consider that the FireFox browser hasn’t exactly convinced many
people to dump Windows for open source solutions like Linux, though it
MAY have made them more willing to consider such solutions.)

“…Safari sucks. A lot of Mac users won’t run the browser (I’m
one of them), so why would anyone run it on Windows?” (True. I use
FireFox on OS X when I’m browsing anywhere other than Apple’s sites -
which seem to work better with Safari – big shock…)

“On my Mac, Safari is buggy and unreliable. It’s always crashing, and it
doesn’t offer basic features like remembering all the tabs you have open
after you quit (or more likely, after it crashes). Until now, it didn’t
even warn you before closing multiple tabs, although the new version of
Safari fixes this. Firefox is getting a little bloated these days, but
it’s a better browser. For Windows users, the browser market is already
far too crowded — who needs anything other than Internet Explorer or
Firefox? Safari is one browser too many.” (Wow… and this is from an
Apple supporter and card-carrying member of the “Cult of
Macintosh”!)

“Wired magazine contributing editor Fred
Vogelstein for one would love to run Explorer. (Vogelstein is also the
only person in the world who runs Windows XP full time on his new
MacBook).” (I doubt Vogelstein is the only one. If I had a MacBook,
I’d probably be doing the same thing.)

“…Apple has
every reason to dangle Safari in front of Windows users. But right now,
I can’t see any good reasons for Windows users to take the bait.”
(Agreed.)

Sadly, I could make the
same argument for the Apple TV. Aside from its connections to iTunes and
YouTube, there’s nothing that makes it a better product than the TiVo
except its lack of a subscription requirement. Its video isn’t better,
its offering of movies isn’t better, it requires a computer in addition
to the box, and it’s simply a mediocre device. But people are buying
into it anyway, which is unfortunate if you ask me. The only good thing
I can see coming out of that is a “wake up call” to TiVo.

Today’s Wired article “Apple Goes on Safari with Hostile Security
Researchers” paints a picture of the company that Mac fanatics are
likely unable to recognize. A few interesting quotes from this article
are:

“Security researchers have long
speculated that Apple has benefited from security by obscurity, escaping
attention from malicious hackers because Windows-based computers
dominate in homes and offices. But Apple’s new Safari for Windows puts
it right in the hackers’ crosshairs. The browser gives hackers another
way to attack Windows and security researchers will now likely spend
hours hunting down holes in the code. But Apple’s culture of secrecy and
slick marketing put it at odds with a community that values openness and
honest — a lot of computer security experts aren’t fond of the computer
maker.” (And let us not forget that since the browser probably shares
the same base code on Windows and Mac OS X, this means holes will be
found into Mac OS X as well.)

“Indeed some in the
security community think Apple’s stance towards security is as bad as
Microsoft’s was in the days when it was called the ‘Evil Empire’…”

“When asked over the phone if Apple treated security
researchers well, Black Hat founder Jeff Moss relayed the question to
researchers at the Computer Security Institute conference. Howls of
derisive laughter came pouring through his cell phone.” (Yes, Mac
fans, that’s a room full of SECURITY EXPERTS laughing at Apple and its
approach to security!)

“Apple has a mixed reputation
in the security community. It’s been criticized for how it handles
reports of vulnerabilities, how it reports the severity of bugs in
automatic security updates and how long it takes to patch
flaws…[snip]…Apple has been accused of fixing bugs silently, or
fixing a security bug and reclassifying it as a ‘usability bug’ rather
than crediting researchers. By releasing a beta version of Safari to the
public, Apple expects to get feedback on bugs and vulnerabilities, but
some researchers are loath to provide it unless they get proper credit.”
(This could really turn around to bite Apple. If lots of exploits are
found and not reported, there will be many ways for “the bad guys” to
use Safari against Windows and Mac users, which will not help Apple’s
reputation.)

“Security researcher David Maynor said he
found six Safari bugs in one day using commonly available tools that
Apple engineers should have used themselves.” (I guess our own “Month
of Apple Bugs” wasn’t such an unusual occurrence!)

“Just one day after Apple released the Safari beta, security researchers
published detailed accounts of critical vulnerabilities in the browser,
ranging from attacks that simply crashed the browser, to one that
allowed a website to run commands on the computer of a visitor running
Safari.” (Ouch! That didn’t take long…)

With Safari not yet available in a “finished” or “production”
form, it looks like the Apple PR Machine(tm) is going to need to work
hard to convince people that Safari is a tool worth using on Windows.