Safari (web browser)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. It is built into Apple's operating systems, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS and visionOS, and uses Apple's open-source browser engine WebKit, which was derived from KHTML.
Developer(s)
Safari was introduced in Mac OS X Panther in January 2003. It has been included with the iPhone since the first generation iPhone in 2007. At that time, Safari was the fastest browser on the Mac. Between 2007 and 2012, Apple maintained a Windows version,[6][7] but abandoned it due to low market share. In 2010, Safari 5 introduced a reader mode, extensions, and developer tools. Safari 11, released in 2017, added Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which uses artificial intelligence to block web tracking. Safari 13 added support for Apple Pay, and authentication with FIDO2 security keys. Its interface was redesigned in Safari 15.
Architecture[edit]
On macOS, Safari is a Cocoa application. It uses Apple's WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (originally based on KDE's JavaScript engine, named KJS). Like KHTML and KJS, WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple improvements to the KHTML code were merged back into the Konqueror project. Apple has also released some additional codes under the open source 2-clause BSD-like license.[160] The version of Safari included in Mac OS X v10.6 (and later versions) is compiled for 64-bit architecture. Apple claimed that running Safari in 64-bit mode would increase rendering speeds by up to 50%.[161]
WebKit2 has a multiprocess API for WebKit, where the web-content is handled by a separate process than the application using WebKit. Apple announced WebKit2 in April 2010.[162] Safari for OS X switched to the WebKit2 API with version 5.1.[163] Safari for iOS switched to WebKit2 with iOS 8.[164][165]
Criticism[edit]
Security updates for Snow Leopard and Windows[edit]
Software security firm Sophos detailed how Snow Leopard and Windows users were not supported by the Safari 6 release at the time,[196] while there were over 121 vulnerabilities left unpatched on those platforms.[197] Since then, Snow Leopard has had only three minor version releases of Safari (the most recent in September 2013[198]), and Windows has had none.[199] While no official word has been released by Apple, the indication is that these are the final versions available for these operating systems, and both retain significant security issues.[200][201]