Safari

Opera has ported its Opera Touch mobile browser from Android to iOS, and claims that it’s the perfect choice for iPhone X and iPhone XS/Max owners.

The company says ‘zero-step search’ and a Fast Action button make the browser ideal for larger-screened phones without a Home button …

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A new report from BuzzFeed News highlights how the “Siri Suggested Websites” feature in Safari can surface “debunked conspiracies, shock videos, and false information.” Essentially, when users would type things such as “QAnon” or “Pizzagate” into the Safari search bar, the browser would suggest related “low-quality information.”

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As WWDC continues, Apple today has released Safari Technology Preview 58. This is the experimental browser that the company first introduced in 2016 as a way for developers to test upcoming Safari features.

Today’s Preview 58 is available on macOS 10.14 Mojave, as well as macOS High Sierra, and includes Safari 12 enhancements…

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A security researcher has successfully exploited a Safari vulnerability to take control of the Touch Bar on a MacBook Pro. Samuel Groß demonstrated the exploit at the first day of this year’s Pwn2Own ethical hacking conference …

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If you’ve ever been in the situation of knowing that you have the info you need in one of your gazzilion open Safari tabs, or you know that you saw it on a webpage recently but can’t remember which, there’s a couple of really easy shortcuts for searching …

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One of the things I like about Apple is the company’s strong commitment to privacy. By making its money from hardware and chargeable services, it doesn’t need to rely much on advertising, and it can therefore afford to take a strong stand on the issue.

Indeed, the legal tussle with the FBI over the San Bernardino shooting was probably one of the best pieces of PR for the company. It demonstrated that Apple felt so strongly about protecting the privacy of its customers that it was willing to take on the might of the U.S. government.

Taking on the advertising industry is likely even better PR, but while I generally applaud Apple’s attitude, I think in one particular case, it is actually taking things too far: Intelligent Tracking Prevention in High Sierra …

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Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) may have been sold to users on the basis of faster-loading webpages, but the company’s underlying motivation is to lock publishers into Google’s ad network. For users, it makes it harder to see which site you’re being taken to, and trickier to share links to specific pages.

Apple is now addressing the second issue in iOS 11 by having Safari convert AMP links back into the original URLs when shared …

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A noteworthy change is headed to a mobile Safari browser near you. The inertia scrolling properties currently used within mobile Safari will be updated to be faster and more consistent with other apps, including Apple-made apps, in iOS.

Currently Safari features slower inertia scrolling properties, something that the browser has featured since its inception back in 2007. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP), which seeks to speed up web page access times by providing a stripped down version of HTML, features different scroll inertia due to inconsistencies in the way Safari is currently designed.

In a future Safari update, its scrolling behavior will be changed to be more in line with scrolling performance throughout the rest of iOS, effectively reducing the rate of scroll deceleration.
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Earlier this year, Apple proposed a new GPU on the Web Community Group to work towards more powerful graphics on the web. The WebGPU standard Apple proposed is much more object-oriented than WebGPU and allows developers to create and store objects that represent state. Additionally, it allows for objects that can process a broader set of commands. This reduces the work needed to perform during a drawing operation.

Now, Apple has shared a WebGPU prototype and demos to show developers what the new standard is capable of…

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Security researches competing at the annual Pwn2own conference yesterday uncovered two zero-day vulnerabilities in Safari. Two teams successfully exploited the bugs they found to achieve root access to macOS, while a third attempt failed.

Eleven teams are competing for a total $1M prize pot, with three of the ten attempts to date targeting Safari …

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A report shared earlier today by Elcomsoft’s CEO Vladimir Katalov claimed your iCloud account may have been storing more Safari history than it should, pointing to a database of “deleted” browsing history that could be extracted in plain text to reveal URLs. But the data is outdated and we’ve learned from sources that the problem has been fixed for the majority of users for almost a year and for the rest quickly after the issue was discovered.

The data that Apple does store is kept for good reason…
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