Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company’s Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple’s default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther.” Safari is also the native browser for the iPhone OS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system, first released on June 11, 2007, supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The current stable release of the browser is 4.0.5 for both Mac OS X and Windows. As of February 2010, Safari was the fourth most widely used browser, with 4.45% of the worldwide usage share of web browsers according to Net Applications.

Safari has managed to get its firm grounding in the web-browsing arena. Everything has its pros and cons and Apple Safari is no different. Apple launched Safari with the aim of becoming the No.1 web browser in the world, but this goal is still realistically a ways off. Apple Safari contained some flaws when it was released. Its beta browser version, which is inherently full of bugs and vulnerabilities, was downloaded in excess of a million times on people’s desktop PCs and laptops. Things didn’t turn out quite as proposed. Safari faced eight security vulnerabilities from the beginning and then released an update patching three critical security flaws in the browser. So that it is recommendable to have Symantec Norton Personal Firewall 2006 (Win) (EN) on your computer, or another form of security, before using the browser. The second flaw is its graphical user interface. Apple Safari had chunky font rendering and its design did not match with the original background. Safari also lacked customization capabilities. All plug-ins crop up on the screen and there is no proper management. All these reasons expose Apple Safari’s weaknesses, but no browser is without faults, and should Apple successfully patch these mistakes, then it will be unstoppable.