There’s also an improved privacy control panel, for more granular control over what sites have left behind on your system, along with boosted stability and responsiveness. More minor tweaks include an update to AutoFill which keeps your details private, filtering for Find commands that can limit results to those only at the start of sentences, and drag-and-drop downloads to pull items out of the Downloads window onto the desktop or elsewhere.

Finally there’s full-screen webpage support, along with support for HTML5 media caching, MathML, Web Open Font Format, CSS3 Auto-hyphenation, CSS3 Vertical Text, CSS3 Text Emphasis, Window.onError and Formatted XML files. Apple has even thrown in a few security updates.

Safari 5.1 is a 47.47MB download for Snow Leopard users and 36.06MB for Windows users, and can be grabbed here. If you’re running OS X Lion, which was released yesterday, you’ll already have it.

Although Apple’s primary intention appears to be encouraging those taking a MacBook to get online and thus give the Find My Mac feature an opportunity to “phone home,” it should also find favor among users who want to give temporary internet access to others while not necessarily opening up all of their files to access. Since OS X Lion has Auto Save and Resume functionality, even after a restart all of the user’s files and apps would be reopened just as they’d left them.

With the growing number of web-based apps in common use, the browser-only feature could also replace the use of local accounts for families: rather than giving every Mac user their own account, each person would simply log in this new way, use Gmail and other web apps, and then sign out without leaving any trace on the computer itself. That should minimize maintenance tasks as well as prevent “where did I save that file?” confusion.

OS X Lion is expected to hit the Mac App Store for download in July, priced at $30. For more information, check out our keynote summary from last week.

The new iOS 5 will add single sign-on a la Facebook style. A new Twitter pane can be found in the settings menu where it’s now an integrated app similar to Camera and Photos. This means you can tweet directly from Apple’s native apps.

You can also tweet from Safari, YouTube videos, and from Maps. There’s also a Contact integration and support for adding locations.You can automatically pull in Contact photos from Twitter profiles.

As for the Safari upgrade, that entails the addition of a Safari Reader button. It pops up in the address bar just like it does for Safari on desktops. It basically reformats the page so that it’s easier to read on iPhones and iPads. It also makes it easier to email the contents of a story, complete with a link.

The new Reading List allows you to pull in various articles for reading later, much like third-part service “Read It Later.” The list can also be synced across iOS devices such that if you don’t finish reading something on your iPad you can finish it later on your iPhone.

Older browsers to have their support phased out starting this fall, include Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3, and all of their predecessors. Google says that these browsers simply cannot support the HTML 5 needed for new Google Apps to work. For instance, the desktop notifications in Gmail and the drag-and-drop file uploading in Google Docs.

Google will continue to support up to three of the most recent browser versions on a rolling basis for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Whenever a new version is released, support for the third-oldest version will be dropped.

[via Google Enterprise Blog]

This service automatically checks websites you browse against Google’s blacklist. It’s integrated into Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. What this feature aims to do is add another layer of defense against malware installations. Google keeps a database of known malware URLs. Every time you click a link, Google checks it out and lets you know if everything’s okay. If it’s bad, you’ll see something like this.

If you use one of these browsers, every page you browse to is checked against Google’s database, and if it finds a match it’ll throw you an error. If you want to turn this service off or on, here’s the way to do it in Chrome or Firefox.

Chrome – browse to chrome://settings/browser

Firefox – Edit > Preferences

[via Chromium Blog]

We also decided it would be fun to take up hobby farming and use some of our land to have chickens, goats and a big garden where could grow a lot of our own food, organically of course. Considering I grew up immersed in technology not farming I had some studying to do for best practices, tips and tricks etc. So naturally I turned to technology and most importantly the Internet. Now to the point of the story.

Last year I wrote on my personal blog about how having the Internet in my pocket helped me detect early signs of labor in one of my goats. While on the scene I was able to use my phone’s browser to access a wealth of information useful to me as I assisted (if you can call it that) one of my goats deliver her babies. I was able to get information on what possible warning signs to look for as well as positive signs that healthy baby goats should exhibit. Luckily for me everything went smoothly.

This year was different however because this time around things didn’t go so smoothly, this time she gave birth to triplets. Triplets in goats aren’t rare but are relatively uncommon (like twins in humans) and even more so our breed. At four in the morning several days ago I heard some babies crying in the goat pen and knew delivery was happening. As I assessed the scene all three babies had been born but two weren’t looking so good. So I quickly accessed the Internet on my phone and immediately starting searching for what to do about the symptoms I was seeing.

It turned out there was a wealth of information on “weak kid syndrome” which is what I was seeing. I read a long list of detailed instructions on what to do in order to give your baby goats the best shot at living. One of them was severely dehydrated, suffering from low body temperature and on the verge of death and the other needed assistance getting its first few doses of food because it was to weak to eat on its own. Current status is all babies are doing great thanks in large part to the information I found on the web.

Had I not had this valuable resource of the Internet, a city boy like me would have had to tell his daughters some fairly bad news about their beloved goats. Had I not had the Internet in my pocket I wouldn’t have been able to act as quickly to take preventative measures to help the babies survival.

My point here is that there is no “app for that.” That’s not to say one couldn’t be developed but given my situation I needed the depth and breadth of the full internet. This I feel is why the Internet needs to stay open and not closed as far as the debate goes.

Apps are great and sometimes walled garden experiences with the web are great but sometimes only the full power and knowledge base of the World Wide Web will suffice.

SunSpider, for those unfamiliar, tests core JavaScript performance with a variety of tasks intended to replicate real-world behaviors. So, it generates a tagcloud from JSON input, a 3D raytracer, performs cryptography tests and code decompression, and other tasks that might be encountered in everyday browsing.

In SunSpider, a lower score is better, and the iPad 2 proved more than 4x as fast as the iPad overall. The original tablet scored 8594.9ms, while the iPad 2 managed 2121.7ms. Among the individual benchmarks the iPad 2 scored 263.4ms in 3D testing (vs 1202.2ms), 265.0ms in access (vs 1247.1ms), and 142.8ms in cryptography (vs 572.7ms).

Now, there’s more to browsing than just JavaScript of course, but this is a pretty first fantastic showing from the new Apple slate.

Click the image below for the full-sized results; the iPad 2 is on the left, the iPad on the right.

The rumor is coming from Three Guys and a Podcast, who have received the information from a trusted, unnamed source. As far as the source suggests, implementing iTunes’ organizational side-bar into Safari wouldn’t be that hard. In turn, the usage of Safari would jump up, if not out-right skyrocket, due to the combination of the pieces of software. According to Three Guys and a Podcast: “Moving iTunes organizational side-bar into Safari isn’t a monumental task” claimed a source, adding “Safari would skyrocket in use as a result of integrating the software titles together.”

Obviously, if Apple were to combine the two, and make it necessary for someone to use Safari to get to their iTunes catalog, then the usage of Safari would climb. That is, unless people didn’t like that plan, and refused to download the newer version of iTunes or Safari, or both. Granted, a huge exodus from iTunes isn’t likely, no matter how Apple implements the software.

The rumor suggests that Apple could be ready to make this transition official as early as Fall.

[via AppAdvice]

Occipital has recently developed a panoramic photo application for the iPhone, and in their development process, stumbled on the feature they didn’t know could be accessed. The company has set up a demo that anyone with the right hardware (iPhone 4, latest generation iPod Touch), and iOS 4.2 installed, can enjoy right from within their browser. Just head through this link with your iOS-based mobile Safari browser, and have at it. Thanks to the gyroscope and panoramic photography with the application, you’ll be having some Augmented Reality fun in no time, right from within the browser.

[via BGR]

The nearest alternative was Internet Explorer 8, which blocked 90-percent. NSS Labs credit SmartScreen URL filtering, included in IE8 and IE9, for the strong showing; only IE9 has SmartScreen application reputation protection, however, hence the difference in results.

Meanwhile, Apple’s Safari 5 languished with 11-percent of threats blocked, Chrome 6 did even worse with 3-percent, and Opera 10 failed to block any of the downloads. Around 636 URLs were included in the testing, and interestingly – as shown in the following chart – despite both Safari 5 and Firefox 3.6 each using Google’s Safe Browser feed, the two apps seemingly implemented it in different ways.

Take a peek at the transcript of the mail here if you’re unable to view images:

Q: Hi, I recently updated both my iPhone 4 and iPad to 4.2. I think my favourite feature is airplay. This is seriously amazing and makes sharing content seamless. I just purchased Apple TV and was wondering are you ever going to make airplay video work for videos in safari and 3rd party apps? I hope to get a response. :)



A: Yep, hope to add these features to Airplay in 2011.

If you’ll take a ride back to [AirPlay Hack Now Enables All iDevice Apps to Send Video] or even [TUAW Hacks Apple TV – Now iOS Devices Can Play 3rd Party Video Over AirPlay] if you’d like to hack your way into having these special abilities right this moment. But be careful! Even though Apple promises you the ability to do these things in the future doesn’t mean they won’t get mad and blast your iDevice into oblivion if they catch you hacking around now. Caution as always!

[Via MacRumor]

R3 Media Network

SlashPhone
O2 Launches Live Network Status Webpage
The Dell Venue Pro Has More Problems To Fix
MetroPCS Getting LG Optimus M On November 24th

Android Community
Unlocked Dell Streak now on sale direct from Dell
Withings Wiscale gets Android support
Motorola’s Tegra 2 Olympus leaks?
Sony Reader Coming to Android in December
2.2.1 Update coming to the Original DROID soon?
Motorola Defy [REVIEW]

SlashGear
Gliding snake research funded by US government [SNAKE]
Marvell Android tablet hands-on [Video] [FEATURED]
Digital Storm unveils new Sub-Zero gaming PC with peltier cooled liquid
Wrapsol offers 30% off on Cyber Monday
Dev-Team outlines jailbreak with 4.2.1 update
Jolicloud netbook now officially on sale [HOORAY CUTE]
Mobile Safari gets orientation API in iOS 4.2 for tilt-sensitive sites [IMA BARF]
Motorola Olympus Tegra 2 powered smartphone caught in wild
No iPhone 5 embedded SIM but T-Mobile interested say sources
Apple Black Friday teaser promises discounts in US & international stores [MILLION DOLLAR DISCOUNT LETS HOPE]
Google Chrome OS netbooks delayed, but beta software release on track?

To see more wrap-up posts, follow the following tags: [The Daily Slash] or [SlashGear Morning Wrap-up]

Video demo after the cut

The sample uses JavaScript and some CSS3, and basically allows the ball’s movement to be controlled by the direction the smartphone is being tilted in. You can try it on a mobile Safari browser at http://ad.ag/wjmtgt. Similar access to the iOS orientation APIs has been available for iOS SDK users – creating native apps – for some time now, but this is the first time that the same hardware access has been made available for web app devs.

The new functionality opens up the possibility of motion-sensitive web games, navigation of complex web pages by simply tilting the phone, and augmented reality apps that do not have to be locally stored on the iOS device. Meanwhile Apple has also added the WebSockets API, updated their HTML5 Form support and made other tweaks.

[via Pocket-lint]

Safari 5 made its debut in June, boasting a 30-percent speed boost over v.4 of the browser and twice the speed of Firefox 3.6.  Users also get a new Reader mode, which basically strips out all the extraneous ads, images and content from a webpage, leaving only the text behind in an easy-to-consume format.

Extensions, meanwhile, each run in their own, sandboxed slot, with Apple using digital signatures to try to ensure some degree of safety.  Already Amazon, MLB, Bing, Twitter, the and the NYTimes have created extensions (Google are conspicuously absent from the press release, replaced by their Microsoft rival).  You can download Safari 5.0.1 here for both Windows and Mac.

Press Release:

Apple Updates Safari 5

Users Can Add New Features Through Extensions

CUPERTINO, Calif., July 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today released Safari® 5.0.1, turning on Safari Extensions and introducing the Safari Extensions Gallery. Apple introduced extensions support in Safari 5 in June so developers could begin creating extensions with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards. With Safari Extensions Gallery, users can quickly find extensions that add powerful new features to Safari, from toolbars that display live web feeds to sophisticated programs that filter web content. Safari 5.0.1 allows users to download and install extensions either from the Safari Extensions Gallery or directly from a developer’s site.

“Safari 5 has been a big hit, and user response to the innovative new Safari Reader has been fantastic,” said Brian Croll, Apple’s vice president of OS X Product Marketing. “We’re thrilled to see so many leading developers creating great extensions and think our users are going to love being able to customize Safari.”

“Millions of our customers already use Amazon Wish Lists to store items they want to buy for themselves or receive as gifts,” said Gianna Puerini, vice president of Worldwide Design and Community at Amazon.com. “With Safari 5, we were able to quickly build the Add to Amazon Wish List extension that lets customers add items from any website to their Amazon Wish List with the click of a button.”

“We’re excited to continue working closely with Apple to bring visually compelling Bing experiences to Safari,” said Jeff Henshaw, general manager of Bing User Experience. “The Bing Extension for Safari brings Bing search intelligence to everyday browsing with Safari. When a user selects text in Safari, Bing instantly recognizes what they might need and pops up helpful, informative tips, from real time maps and driving directions to real time translations to direct web search results.”

“Using web standard technologies and Safari’s extension builder, we developed an MLB.com extension to give fans another way to consume up-to-the-moment baseball content, including live look-ins to games, right from the Safari toolbar,” said Noah Garden, executive vice president, Commerce and Sponsorship at MLB.com.

“Our extension for Safari is a great way for readers to get all of the latest breaking news and all the important stories, blogs and columns they want to see,” said Denise Warren, general manager, NYTimes.com at The New York Times Company. “While you browse other sites in Safari, our extension checks for updates and slides in new headlines and thumbnails, so you won’t miss a thing.”

“Creating our Twitter extension in Safari couldn’t have been easier,” said Jason Goldman, vice president of Product at Twitter. “By providing features like the ability to tweet about a page and view trending topics, we’ve created a simple way to deliver relevant, interesting content to people regardless of where they are on the web.”

The Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible from the Safari menu or at extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions from the gallery with a single click, and there’s no need to restart the browser. Extensions can be automatically updated and are easily managed within Safari. Users can enable or disable individual extensions, or turn off all extensions with one click.

Safari Extensions are built with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards, and can have all the power and functionality of advanced web applications. Every Safari Extension is signed with a digital certificate from Apple to prevent tampering and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer. Safari Extensions are sandboxed, so they can’t access information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer. For increased stability, Safari Extensions run solely in the browser.

Safari 5 also features Safari Reader, which presents single and multipage articles on the web in a new, scrollable view without distracting content or clutter. The Nitro JavaScript engine runs JavaScript up to 30 percent faster than Safari 4.* Built on the open source WebKit engine developed by Apple, Safari 5 includes more than a dozen powerful new HTML5 features for creating media-rich experiences, like full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video.

Pricing & Availability

Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS® X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari. Safari 5 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® 10.5.8 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard® 10.6.2 or later. Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 5 can be found at www.apple.com/safari. The Safari Extensions Gallery is available at extensions.apple.com. The Safari Developer Program is free to join at developer.apple.com/programs/safari.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted by Apple in May 2010 on an iMac® 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X 10.6.3, with 4GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider 0.9.1 JavaScript Performance test.

First, AutoFill. What’s it do? Well, as the name might suggest, it’s a feature in your Safari Web browser that allows you to get through forms more quickly. As you go through one form to another, it will remember your inputs for fields like Name, Email, Address, and even in some cases your credit card number. It may make your life easier for those 15 seconds, but in the long-run it looks like it may cause more harm than anything else. Jeremiah Grossman does a great job of explaining the situation, so here’s what he has to say:

“These fields are AutoFill’ed using data from the users personal record in the local operating system address book. Again it is important to emphasize this feature works even though a user never entered this data on any website. Also this behavior should not be confused with normal auto-complete data a Web browser may remember after its typed into a form.”

He goes on to add, “All a malicious website would have to do to surreptitiously extract Address Book card data from Safari is dynamically create form text fields with the aforementioned names, probably invisibly, and then simulate A-Z keystroke events using JavaScript. When data is populated, that is AutoFill’ed, it can be accessed and sent to the attacker.

What it boils down to, folks, is that simply un-checking a few of the options within your Browser’s settings won’t cut it. You need to deselect all of the options that are recognized within the AutoFill category. It should also be known that this feature is automatically activated, so if you haven’t even noticed it, now’s the time to take a look and see what your settings are. Grossman notified Apple about a month ago of the situation, but he still hasn’t heard anything. Hopefully that changes, and we get some kind of fix.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

OS X 10.6.4 should be offered to Mac users via the Software Update tool, though you can manually download it here if you have multiple machines to upgrade.  Meanwhile there’s a separate version for OS X servers, which improves file, directory, calendar and mail services, among other things.

General fixes and improvements

• improves compatibility with some Braille displays
• resolves an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive
• resolves an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening
• addresses issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers
• improves reliability of VPN connections
• resolves a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing
• resolves an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view
• resolves an issue with Parental Controls Time Limits for Open Directory or Active Directory users
• resolves a display sleep issue with MacBook Pro (Early 2010) computers
• resolves an issue with MacBook Pro (Early 2010) computers in which the right speaker may sound louder than the left speaker

There’s no shortage of HTML5 goodness, either, just as we’ve heard in rumors leading up to the new browser’s release.  Apple have squeezed in HTML5 Geolocation, HTML5 sectioning elements, HTML5 draggable attribute, HTML5 forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, HTML5 AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket, together with a new, free Safari Developer Program.  That uses standard web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript to create new extensions, and there’s a dedicated Extension Builder in which each runs, sandboxed and with a signed digital Apple signature.

Most interesting to end users, perhaps, is the new Safari Reader mode which, at the tap of a button, slices out any extraneous information on the page and leaves just the core text.  Safari 5 will be available for download at apple.com/safari

Press Release:

Apple Releases Safari 5

SAN FRANCISCO, June 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today released Safari® 5, the latest version of the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser, featuring the new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web without distraction, a 30 percent performance increase over Safari 4,* and the ability to choose Google, Yahoo! or Bing as the search service powering Safari’s search field. Available for both Mac® and Windows, Safari 5 includes improved developer tools and supports more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies that allow web developers to create rich, dynamic websites. With Safari 5, developers can now create secure Safari Extensions to customize and enhance the browsing experience.

“Safari continues to lead the pack in performance, innovation and standards support,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari now runs on over 200 million devices worldwide and its open source WebKit engine runs on over 500 million devices.”

Safari Reader makes it easy to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a new, scrollable view without any additional content or clutter. When Safari 5 detects an article, users can click on the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field to display the entire article for clear, uninterrupted reading with options to enlarge, print or send via email.

Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari 5 on the Mac runs JavaScript 30 percent faster than Safari 4, three percent faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6.* Safari 5 loads new webpages faster using Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching, and improves the caching of previously viewed pages to return to them more quickly.

Safari 5 adds more than a dozen powerful HTML5 features that allow web developers to create media-rich experiences, including full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video. Other new HTML5 features in Safari 5 include HTML5 Geolocation, HTML5 sectioning elements, HTML5 draggable attribute, HTML5 forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, HTML5 AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket.

The new, free Safari Developer Program allows developers to customize and enhance Safari 5 with extensions based on standard web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The Extension Builder, new in Safari 5, simplifies the development, installation and packaging of extensions. For enhanced security and stability, Safari Extensions are sandboxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.

Pricing & Availability

Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS® X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari. Safari 5 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard® 10.6.2 or later. Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 5 can be found at www.apple.com/safari. The Safari Developer Program is free to join at developer.apple.com/programs/safari.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted by Apple in May 2010 on an iMac® 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X 10.6.3, with 4GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider 0.9.1 JavaScript Performance test.

We’ll obviously have full coverage on the SlashGear frontpage, but join us at http://live.slashgear.com/ to follow along with all the news as it happens!

After the cut… iPhone HD, Safari 5 with lashings of HTML5, iPhone OS 4.0 and more!

The iPhone HD is tipped to have a higher resolution, 960 x 640 IPS display making for the crispest graphics on a smartphone to-date, together with a choice of black and white casings.  It’s also expected to be slimmer and more squared off than the existing iPhone 3GS, with a higher resolution main camera – complete with 720p HD video recording and an LED flash for the first time – and a front-facing camera for video calls.

Of course, while that seems as good as locked in, there’s no shortage of other rumors to contend with.  Steve Ballmer may not be on stage, but the persistent talk of a Verizon iPhone continues to circulate.  Still, that’s not expected to arrive until later in 2010.  Meanwhile there’s talk of Safari 5 making its debut – though sometime during WWDC, rather than necessarily at the keynote – complete with new RSS functionality, faster JavaScript, the addition of Bing Search to the options, improved HTML5 support and new developer tools.  Considering HTML5 is already going to be a big part of the WWDC developer sessions, the new browser looks increasingly likely.

Finally, we’re expecting news on when exactly we can expect iPhone OS 4.0, bringing with it multitasking, background processes for certain key functionality like streaming audio and navigation, new media playback controls, file sharing and more.  Full details on OS 4.0 here.

As always, our liveblog system is auto-updating thanks to some nifty push technology, so you’ll always see the latest news as it’s added and it won’t bog down your browser.  We’ve also added in a push comments system this time around, so that readers can add their own feedback to the keynote.  We’ll be kicking things off just before 10am PST tomorrow morning (1pm New York; 6pm London), Monday June 7th 2010, at http://live.slashgear.com/, so join us for all the news!

That has repercussions for any browser based on WebKit, which currently includes Safari on Mac and Windows, various mobile browsers and not least Chrome itself (which uses WebKit as its rendering engine).

Right now there are binaries available for Mac and Windows, and we can probably expect to see test builds of browsers showing up over the next few months as developers get to grips with it.  The potential outcome is a more stable, crash-resilient and faster performing browser, which given so many people now live in the web, can’t be a bad thing.

Hello everyone,

This is a heads-up that we will shortly start landing patches for a new WebKit framework that we at Apple have been working on for a while. We currently call this new framework “WebKit2″.

WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process. This model is similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients to use it.

Some high-level documentation is available at http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2

Currently WebKit2 is available for Mac and Windows, and we would gladly accept patches to add more ports.

We’re more than happy to answer any questions you might have, and we hope that this will be a topic of discussion at the WebKit Contributors Meeting.

Thanks,
Anders Carlsson and Sam Weinig.

[via Twitter]

Three different hackers took away $10,000 apiece for hacking the three browsers, despite having no physical access to the machines they were running on. While full details were not made public, the hacks generally required the user access a certain compromised website that took advantage of a hole in Apple, Microsoft or Mozilla software.

As for the iPhone, hackers Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Philipp Weinmann created a special website that, when visited on the Apple smartphone, automatically pulled out its SMS database.  However they also claim that the same technique could be used to extract the iPhone’s contacts, email, photo gallery and iTunes media files.  The pair took away $15,000 in prize money.

The SP is an all-in-one media program, and it allows users to take internet videos with them wherever they go, by utilizing their favorite mobile devices. Also, the videos can be uploaded and shared via Twitter and Facebook, which means all of your friends can get pummeled by your latest Miley Cyrus videos, even if you know they’ll hate your for it later. However, out of nowhere, it looks like RealNetworks has a legitimate announcement from the SP’s release. They’re saying that the RealPlayer SP has virtually “universal playback.” RealNetworks says that the videos can be played back on “nearly any device”, including BlackBerries, iPhones, a wide range of Nokia S60 devices, the Palm Pre, and iPods and iTunes. The Xbox 360 is even included in the list. It does all of this by automatic conversion to formats like MPEG-4, Windows Media, QuickTime, and obviously RealVideo.

The Player can download and transfer multiple videos simultaneously, has custom device profiles, and a plethora of settings to optimize video quality. It can create audio-only tracks from videos for playback on audio-only media devices, and sharing on Facebook or Twitter is done with just one click. The Beta was launched back in June, and since then the RealPlayer SP has been downloaded by over four million people and more than 22 million videos have been downloaded using the SP. It’s supported by the latest versions of Google Chrome, IE 8, and Firefox, but not any Safari love (yet?). And you can have all of this goodness for free if you want the basic player.

[via TechRadar]

Safari 4 is also more crash-resistant, thanks to a new way of handling plugins.  According to Apple, plugins are the number one cause of browser crashes; by splitting them off as a separate process, should the plugins fail the browser itself will continue to run. 

Other changes include Cover Flow review of the browser history and full Spotlight search.  Safari 4 is available to download now, for Leopard, Tiger and Windows systems.

The exploit was performed on a fully-patched Apple MacBook, and presented users with a single link which, when clicked, allowed Miller to take control of the notebook.  Full details of the hack have been acquired by the TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative, which will coordinate with Apple to patch the vulnerability.

Another security researcher going by the pseudonym “Nils” later demonstrated a second Safari hack, as well as breaking through IE8 and Firefox’s defences.  He took away a Sony VAIO notebook running Windows 7, together with a cash prize.

[via Guardian]

In addition there’s Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages, and Tabs on Top, which Apple claim will make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.  As well as storming past Safari 3 and IE7, Nitro runs JavaScript more than three times faster than Firefox 3, as well as loading pages three times faster.

There’s also HTML 5 support, full-page zooming, a new “Windows-native” skin so that non-Mac users won’t be frightened, and integrated developer and debug tools.  Apple Safari 4 is available in public beta to download now from http://www.apple.com/safari.

Press Release:

Apple Announces Safari 4 – The World’s Fastest & Most Innovative Browser

New Nitro Engine Runs JavaScript More Than Four Times Faster

CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple(R) today announced the public beta of Safari(R) 4, the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac(R) and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.* Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow(R), to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”

Safari 4 is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.*

Apple is leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards such as HTML 5 and CSS 3 for an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone(TM) and iPod(R) touch are all built on Apple’s WebKit, the world’s fastest and most advanced browser engine. Apple developed WebKit as an open source project to create the world’s best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. The industry’s newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.

Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:
– Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of
previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
– Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses
and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to
sites they’ve seen before;
– Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy
as paging through album art in iTunes(R);
– Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab
management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
– Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by
displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites,
bookmarks and browsing history;
– Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations
from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
– Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the
quality of the site’s layout and text;
– built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for
peak performance and compatibility; and
– a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard
Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so
Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista
applications.

Pricing & Availability

Safari 4 is a public beta for both Mac OS(R) X and Windows and is available immediately as a free download at http://www.apple.com/safari.

Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard(R) version 10.5.6 and Security Update 2009-001 or Mac OS X Tiger(R) version 10.4.11, a minimum 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(R). Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at http://www.apple.com/safari.

* Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection
and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac(R) 2.8 GHz Intel
Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript
benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML
benchmark based on VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

The first public beta of Google Chrome was released in September and received many raving reviews. Under the hood, Chrome uses the same rendering engine as Safari called WebKit; Google added custom-build V8 Javascript engine and Firefox’s anti-phishing technology to it.

The browser war will get interesting again with Google pushing its own browser and when it comes to marketing cash, Google has plenty of money in the bank to spread Chrome’s gospel.

While the patent likely has implications for other mobile browsers, such as those found on HTC and RIM devices, Gottfurcht’s lawyers are upfront about their specifically targeting Apple and their market-leading handset.  “We haven’t looked at anything other than the iPhone,” lawyer Stanley Gibson, a partner with the Los Angeles law firm Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro revealed.  “That was the device that we looked at. Obviously it’s very popular.”

Apple have declined to comment on the situation, stating that they do not comment on pending litigation.  If EMG’s patent is upheld, however, it could have implications not only for the iPhone but for any other device capable of viewing mobile-formated content.

In the recent Apple financial earnings call, Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance to discuss the company’s performance and answer some questions from press and analysts.  Quizzed about the possibility of a low-cost Apple device, he told those listening that “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk”; however he also reiterated the company’s wait-and-see stance on netbooks.

Of course, without full details of what was spotted on the search engine server logs it’s difficult to do anything other than speculate.  The mysterious visitors could be a new, in-development Apple product or it could be a netbook hacked to run OS X – such as this Gigabyte M912X or this MSI Wind - and browsing using Safari on a smaller display.  The likelihood of each depends on where the visits came from (inside Cupertino would make the former mildly more likely, perhaps) and what other facts are known.

[via Electricpig]

“A problem with this linear history is that users can visit a large number of web pages, which are confusing to view in a linear history, and the forward and back buttons are inefficient and cumbersome way to navigate through multiple web pages. Further, the problems of a linear history are not confined to pages accessed via a web browser, but also apply when a succession of data of other types is accessed over a period of time.” Apple patent 20080235632

In fact, Apple don’t limit the non-linear system to just webpages.  In their explanation of the system they suggest it could be applied for managing “a succession of data of other types … accessed over a period of time”.  As a paradigm shift it’s analogous to the switch from traditional voicemail (dial in, listen to messages in the order they were left) to Visual Voicemail on the iPhone: users can pick and choose their entry point into their history, and see the movement in a threaded, contextually-linked layout. 

As with any patent, there’s no telling when – or if – we’ll see any actual development based on this in real products.  However an introduction in Safari with wider reaching for future versions of OS X and other apps is a real possibility.

[via hrmpf]

As many sites have reported, Snow Leopard is not build with many new features – it is mostly improvement on the operating system’s core. On the screenshots however, we see Exchange support on new Address Book.

Safari 4 brings in new feature like “Save as Web Application” which allows users to save web pages as double-clickable application from any web pages.

[via The Apple Core]

New enhancements include being able to save images from safari as well as the ability to search your contacts. They also apparently fixed a lot of the bugs that were found in the second beta release.

There are also some other new features included such as more settings for your calendar and a lot of new mail settings. Vincent is apparently also toying around with PWNAGE with the iPhone Dev Team reporting that these days cracking the latest firmware is as simple as doing “a simple byte search”. So, it’s nice to see things moving along in both the official and unofficial iPhone development worlds.

[via iPhoneBuzz]

The Safari license agreement states that “users are only allowed to install the Apple browser on “a single Apple-labeled computer at a time”, meaning that those running it on Windows are violating the license.”

How do you like them apples?

[via PCPro]