Is Safari a Good Browser?

I don't really know anything about Safari, but I'm planning on buying a new Mac and I want to use Safari for the swipe and stuff, but is it not a good browser? Do most people opt for Firefox instead? If so, that is unfortunate because no gestures

Lastly, is Safari a secure browser, or does it not protect against malware downloads like some other browsers do

Any general information on Safari would be appreciated, and these questions acknowledged. Thanks!

 

Safari is a good browser. I use it 99% of the time. Some web pages are not compatible but most are.

 

Safari is pretty on par in terms of features and security to Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. Its really your choice, Firefox, Camino, Shiira, Opera, Safari are all great browsers.

 

Safari has one big issue, namely how it handles cookies. Safari stores and searches cookies in a linear way, so if you do not clear your cookie jar every once in a while, websites that check for cookies might cause your computer to slow down as they have to linearly search through every cookie. In case you're wondering, most websites check for cookies. Multiple times every page.

That aside, Safari has a very nice way of handling RSS feeds, much better than Opera, IE or Firefox in my opinion. It is also native with OS X, meaning that you can preview PDFs and other stuff without external plugins.

 

I saw a write-up that said Safari left a number of security loopholes. I didn't pay it much mind because the way the reviewer wrote, he sounded like a Vista fanboy. There were a few valid points. Safari, as shipped does not allow you to selectively disable javascript on sites you're not sure about. And if the reviewer is to be believed there is a buffer overflow javascript attack that can be used against Safari. No worry. There is supposed to be a javascript disabling plugin for Safari and you can of course turn off the big switch that disables all javascript and go web surfing like it's 1999.

That's why I prefer Firefox. Yes, Safari can instantly create Dashboard widgets of your favorite page. Use it for that and then go back to the safety of Firefox with Adblock and Noscript. There are no known exploits or viruses targeting OS X right now so the decision to stay with Safari is nowhere near as foolish as the decision to surf with IE on windows. And the pinches do look like a nice feature. Just so you know, you can hold control and roll your mouse wheel for zoom on plain old OS X without multitouch.

Bottom line: Firefox with Noscript is a tad bit safer than Safari but the risk isn't that great right now so do whatever works for you and be careful about the sites you visit. I found a link to that guy's review. It is to be taken with a whole wheebarrow of salt. I'm an OS X user and no way is somebody gonna scare me over to Vista because someday somebody might write an exploit or virus against OS X.

 

hey, I'm viewing this page on IE so I'm sure whatever Safari has is probably safer than this. I just want to keep my new laptop clean and I just want to take precautions to ensure this. What steps can I take to keep my macbook clean from any malware?

 

First of all, today the threat is only theoretical. There is no Mac OS X malware in the wild. Yet. Years of dealing with this BS on windows has taught me some habits that should serve us well if some malcontent writes and releases a nasty bug someday...

1) Turn on the firewall on setting #3 so you can still see all your network shares. Use setting #2 if you are at a Starbucks or Hotel free hotspot. Don't bother with setting #1 as it means you have no firewall. This also protects you from a teenager sitting there pounding your telnet port with failed login attempts to try and guess your password.

2) Go into firewall advanced settings and turn on stealth mode.

3) Don't install any antivirus software. Especially not Norton. The cure is worse than the disease. This is especially true since there are (as of right now) no virii running around for Mac OS X.

4) Drag IE to the trash bin if it's on your Mac, newer Macs ship without this particular vulnerability (optional - but strongly recommended)

5a) Use Safari sparingly on sites you trust and Firefox with Noscript and Adblock for everything else
or
5b) Use Firefox with Noscript and Adblock for everything

6) The next time you're in a free wifi hotspot, head on over to grc.com and run "Shields Up" You should show up invisible. No, don't buy anything, you don't need it. Just let the site probe your ports. Sorry I can't give you a direct link to Shields Up. You gotta dig through the adverts to find it. If a Unix box has been compromised, there will be a process running which allows a hacker to log in remotely on a port like 31337 and execute arbitrary commands as root. In the good old days, they were content to deface your web pages or cause a kernel panic. More recently, they do things like trying to steal your identity and buy thousands of dollars of stuff as you. A friend of mine found out when he went to refi his house and went to find out why he got denied. His experion report was 120 pages. Unix was actually hacked before Windows so the techniques are very well known. It's no use doing it behind a router because the router (if it's not a piece of junk) should block everything anyway. You want your report to look like this:

I cheated by running it behind my router but I wanted to show you what a favorable report looks like. Simply having ports open isn't the end of the world but it does mean you have some firewall tweaking to do if you don't want to catch worms that spread machine to machine without any action on your part. Well, ok, there are no Mac worms right now but closed ports means you can't catch them even if somebody writes them someday.

7) Keeping up on your Leopard system updates should afford protection.

8) Never open email attachments for ms office in ms office. Use preview or neoofice.

9) Drag MS Office to the trash bin (optional - but my personal preference) MS Office is a fine product and if you find you must use it, at least disable running macros. A great many malware programs are written to exploit MS Office. Luckily MS Office on OS X doesn't get to run whatever it wants to run as root like it can on a Windows box, but turn off macros anyway.

10) Don't enable screen sharing for everyone, only for admins or for your own account.

11) Don't enable windows file sharing unless you need it. I have it enabled because the only way to allow windows file sharing through the OSX firewall is if it is turned on on my end. Wierd but true.

12) Don't set up a wifi router with the default settings where the admin account username and password are "admin admin" or "linksys linksys".

13) If you use "back to my mac", turn it off when you're at home. It should be off most of the time anyway or somebody who figures out your dot mac password gets to own your machine remotely.

14) OK, now let's get downright paranoid... Don't enable the root account on your machine. Remove execute permissions from the 20 or so suid root applications that ship with Leopard. Ok this last one is over the top but the thought did cross my mind.

Remember the threat is very minimal right now so don't go getting all hot and bothered about this list. If you think your machine might fall into the hands of the FBI or NSA, this list won't help you. If you want to keep the 14 year old next door from hacking your wifi and combing through your shared drive, most of the items on this list can be useful.

I'm a very careful paranoid user which is why I never caught a virus on my windows boxes. My kids got lots of them because they didn't practice safe computing: Don't click on stuff you don't really need. Don't download stuff you don't really need. Don't download and run stuff you haven't googled first to see if there are any reports of problems, crashing, malware, etc.

hope this helps...

 

Nice r0k! That definitely helped, I will definitely keep that in mind when I get a mac.

 

That's a long list of stuff! Most of the time I will be using the mac is at my university...so I guess it would be good do take some of the precautions you mentioned. thanks

 

Those are pretty basic internet etiquette by now, pretty much applies whatever OS you're on .

 

Safari does like to hog memory and cpu speed. but overall its fast and good to use. I like it better than ie7.

 

Well... it's not a great browser.
But seeing as FF 3b4 kills my WoW FPS with even one tab open... I have to stick to safari. Though since I have gotten the FF 3b4 seed, I'll have to compare memory usage. FF3 is still a heck of a memory hog while Safari is very light.

But I dunno. Safari does kind of suck. You can't even use it as a FTP client... :-/

I find it odd that Apple forces all Leopard users to be Safari beta testers (thats right... you're running a beta).

 

I ran across an interesting quote about the state of Windows that helps shed some light on why Safari is still a reasonable choice even with its shortcomings...

The article was about GRC but I found this quote to be in line with my opinion of Windows security. Full article here...

 

I actually like safari. Sure, apple could beef it up and add some more features (I hope not too many. I like my browser lite) but overall its a decent browser. I've had bad experiences with firefox and its ilk. I'm perfectly happy with safari right now.