Technology For Agents

Apple has announced that their web browser found on all Macs has been released in a public beta for Windows. You can get more details at the Apple Safari download page.

I went ahead an installed the browser and wasn’t necessarily impressed. The browser crashed within 5 minutes of usage by visiting a movie trailer website. Upon attempting to launch an in-screen video, the browser froze and shut down. Later that day, an article posted by Scott Fulton over at BetaNews commented:

It took security engineers perhaps less than two hours yesterday to introduce Apple’s surprise entry in the field of Windows browsers to the big, cruel world of exploits and vulnerabilities, following its introduction yesterday morning at WWDC. As a result, much of the clout Safari had received as the secure browsing alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox — as long as it was on a Macintosh — was burned off like fire to a flash fuse. - Scott Fulton

Basically what I took from his article was the Apple design the Safari web browser to be super-secure on the Mac, but not necessarily on Windows. So if you are the kind of agent like myself, that likes to fool with new technology, be sure to hold back on installing Safari.

The released is noted to be a beta release, though the last thing you would want to do is compromise your main workstation.

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