May 2 - 12:10pm EDT   Apple's Safari browser recently tripled its number of Windows users in the span of a month, according to the Internet analytics group Net Applications. Although the earlier Safari 3.0 beta never achieved Windows marketshare over 0.07 percent, even with the help of a recognizable brand and several months of availability, this figure grew to 0.21 percent during the months of March and April, following the release of the official Safari 3.1 client. [full story]

April 24 - 9:00pm EDT   A little over a week after Apple offered a security update to Safari 3.1.1, security research site Secunia warned users about another, but "less critical," vulnerability that could allows malicious sites to "spoof" other websites. Reported by Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian, the security advisory notes that Safari 3.11 has a flaw that can be exploited by malicious people to display a fake URL in the address bar. "The problem is that it is possible to hide the actual location of a page in the address bar via a specially crafted URL containing a number of certain special characters in the 'user' field before the '@' character," the report noted. It affects both Mac OS X and ... [full story]

April 21 - 9:10am EDT   Users of Apple's Safari browser will be able to continue making PayPal transactions, according to a representative from the latter company. PayPal has been critical of Safari, noting that it lacks direct anti-phishing safeguards, or EV SSL certificates. News emerged last week, however, of a internal security white paper, which suggested that the company might block such "unsafe" web browsers entirely as a means of protecting its customers. Permitting access through unsecure browsers is "equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seat belts," the paper argued. [full story]

April 18 - 11:25am EDT   Users of Apple's Safari web browser may be blocked from making PayPal transactions in the future, according to a white paper from the latter company. While the company has already taken Safari to task for lacking specific anti-phishing protection, or EV SSL (Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, PayPal's CIS officer now argues that the threat of phishing may be too great to allow users to send money through "unsafe" web browsers. "In our view," writes Michael Barrett, "letting users view the PayPal site on one of these browsers is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seat belts." [full story]

April 16 - 8:40pm EDT   Apple today released Safari 3.1.1, an update to its cross-platform browser, while The Mozilla Foundation released FireFox 2.0.0.14, an update to the open-source browser. Safari 3.1.1 is available for Mac OS X Leopard/Tiger as well as Windows systems; it includes improvements to stability, compatibility and security. Specifically, the update addresses the flaw that allowed Charlie Miller to win $10,000 in the Pwn2Own contest at CanSecWest as well as another security issue affecting latest builds of Tiger (10.4.11) and Leopard (10.5.2) and two security issues affecting Windows XP/Vista. A little over two weeks after the flaw was utilized to hack into Mac OS X, Apple says ... [full story]

April 16 - 2:15pm EDT   Quark has announced Quark Publishing System 7.4, the second maintenance release of its industry leading collaborative workflow system. Based on Java, this release of QPS adds as support for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, full text search and LDAP support. In addition, the new QPS Web Hub now runs with Apple's Safari browser as well as Firefox. QPS user names and passwords can now be managed through a company's active directory to consolidate user management. Full Text Search allows users to search document content within any assets that are stored in QPS. There is also the added ability for users to check in multiple assets at the same, and Russian and Polish interfaces are now ... [full story]

April 14 - 7:00pm EDT   iPhone developers testing the latest v1.2.0 beta firmware have found that future implementations of the iPhone OS allows users to press and hold their finger over an image in Safari to save it to their Photo Album. According to Gizmodo, the method works with all new versions of the v1.2.0 beta, and is ideal for saving friends photos from Facebook or a similar service, allowing the photo to serve as a background or other interface element. [full story]

April 12 - 7:25pm EDT   Late last month, Cisco's WebEx division announced expanded Mac OS X support across its suite of business process collaboration applications, saying that Mac use has doubled in the last year. The online collaboration services--including WebEx Meeting Center, WebEx WebOffice, WebEx Event Center, WebEx Training Center, WebEx Sales Center and WebEx Support Center -- now offer cross-platform support for Mac OS X Leopard and Safari 3, as part of Cisco WebEx's ongoing attention to multi-platform support and its growing customer base of Mac users. [full story]

April 11 - 6:55pm EDT   Flying Mac today unveiled FarFinder, a remote file access for the Mac that allows users to browse and retrieve their files from their Mac using a standard web browser. In addition to working on a desktop or laptop computer, FarFinder can also be used through Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch. Since files can't really be downloaded to the iPhone, FarFinder will email the file to a desired address. FarFinder is currently available at a special price of $20. [full story]

April 11 - 4:55pm EDT   Nokia may be withdrawing its efforts to actively contribute to the WebKit browser engine, according to an exchange on the official developer list. After noticing that the Finnish cellphone producer had been inactive for at least eight months in developing a version of the code for Symbian Series 60 phones, contributor Eric Seidel has been told by Nokia representative Bradley Morrison only that the company is closing off discussions of any outstanding bugs rather than fixing or improving code. [full story]

March 31 - 9:55am EDT   Apple's anticipated iPhone 2.0 firmware will add some form of YouTube support within Safari, accounts say. Apple recently began distributing an updated version of the iPhone firmware to accompany the latest version of the SDK, and YouTube is now said to be accessible through a plug-in for MobileSafari.app. Traditionally, iPhone and iPod touch users have had to access YouTube from a separate, custom application, which also only links specially-formatted videos. [full story]

March 28 - 11:55am EDT   The defenses of MacBook Air were hacked within moments in a recent security expo contest, reports say. During the CanSecWest conference's "PWN 2 OWN" competition, participants were expected to hack into one of three notebooks, and read the contents of a file using only an original zero-day attack. An award of $10,000 plus an Air is said to have gone to Charlie Miller, who broke into the computer within two minutes. This was accomplished by redirecting a web browser to a site with exploit code by Miller. [full story]

March 27 - 11:40pm EDT   Forum roundup: MacNN forum goers have compiled a list of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard tips and tricks. The list includes adding Bluetooth devices, customizing the 3D dock, enabling double-finger right clicks on MacBook computers, among others. Some users have also contributed tips for several Apple applications, such as enabling debugging and the tab bar in Safari, in addition to several other hints about Mac OS X services such as Dashboard. [full story]

March 27 - 12:15pm EDT   The Apple-originated WebKit, an underpinning of software such as the Safari web browser, has become the first public rendering engine to get a perfect Acid3 score, its developers claim. Acid3 is a test site produced by the Web Standards Project, and is used to gauge the conformity of a web browser to both standards and technologies, such as JavaScript. Most browsers fall well short of a 100/100 ranking, such as Firefox 2 -- which scores approximately 53 -- and Safari 3.1, which reaches 75. [full story]

March 27 - 9:55am EDT   Apple has quietly changed the licensing terms of the Safari web browser, reports indicate. While the Mac license remains unchanged, the Windows license has been altered from "allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time" to "allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on each computer owned or controlled by you." The revision date on the license is March 26th. [full story]