Safari is "the Web browser" for Mac, first released as a public beta version back in early January, 2003. Since Mac OS X 10.3, Safari was the default browser included by Apple in their operating system. More than 4 years later, in June, 2007, Safari arrived on the Windows platform, where it's still in beta stage. Unoficially, it was also run on Linux using the Wine emulator, but it didn't work quite well... Regarding the security part, Safari is not weak at all, but PayPal just decided Apple's browser is not secure enough for them!


As wel all know, PayPal is an extremely popular system that allows money transfers over the Internet, serving as an alternative to traditional cheques and money orders. Now a subsidiary of eBay, PayPal had its own share of security problems, especially with phishing. Since these problems can happen to anyone, anytime, knowing how to protect yourself is the best thing to do, so PayPal published its own guide to "Safer Browsers", which can be read here.

To make a longer story short, they are talking about IE7's phishing filter most of the time, and have simply pushed aside Safari, without writing down a single word about it. Well, it may be that Safari still lacks some advanced security features found in IE7, Firefox or Opera, but some voices also claim that PayPal's heavy use of Extended Validation certificates may also be a problem, so Safari it's not that bad, after all.

In the end, it gets down to user's attention, because every time, before being detected, phishing sites grab a few victims for sure, and that's not because their browsers, or because PayPal's own problems, so no matter what browser you are using, feel free to look twice, think 3 times, and only then submit your valuable personal information!

As it was expected by everyone, Apple came up with something new today. It wasn't the iPhone SDK, and in fact it didn't even arrive exactly today. How's that? It's very simple - last night, Apple released the Bubble Bash game for the iPod!


Developed by the French company, Gameloft, Bubble Bash is an arcade game where you have to use the click wheel to aim and shoot a bubble cannon, with the purpose of clearing patterns of the same color, before the advancing wave reaches the bottom of the screen, while being challenged by additional threats, such as monkeys or parrots.

Available for a mere $5 on iTunes, Bubble Bash works on 5th generation video ipods, 3rd generation nanos, as well as the iPod classic.

This is not everything, because two more interesting facts should be mentioned today. First, if you're going to visit the iTunes Store to grab Bubble Bash, you may also consider grabbing the "Movie of the Week", an older title available for only $0.99 (this week, it's 2002's Academy Award winner "The Hours"), and second, you could consider visiting Amazon to grab the iPod touch 32GB. Why? Well, it comes with a free 1GB iPod shuffle as a bonus!

One of Apple's problems is that games notorious on other platforms reach Mac OS X very slow, or not at all, and exactly the same happened with Neverwinter Nights 2. Fortunately, the Mac OS X version of the game just reached gold status, and it should arrive in stores pretty soon...


Developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari, NWN2 is based on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition rules, and was released in late 2006 for the PC platform. Just like the original NWN game, this is a RPG where you can choose your alignment, allies, and enemies, as well as build custom mods and campaigns, to provide countless hours of gaming without any chance of getting bored.

For now, the Mac version can be preordered here for $49.99, but if you're not such in a hurry, you can wait until next week, when NWN2 for mac should arrive in stores... but in the meantime, if "Neverwinter Nights" sounds like something new to you, feel free to check the official page and discover all there is to know about this excellent game!

Yesterday, the Apple Store was down. As usual, everyone expected something big to happen, and they got what they were waiting for, a new product from Apple. In fact, this is more an update than a completely new product, but I think it's a pretty interesting subject, especially since we didn't talk about it here, so far. Oh, did I forget to tell you what is this all about?


Ladies and gentlemen, just a few hours ago, Apple updated its Apple Store site, to accomodate the first major update to its enterprise class Storage Area Network (SAN) file sustem for Mac OS X!

Xsan 2 allows now even easier setup of a SAN, and introduces MultiSAN, a feature allowing workstation users to gain simultaneous access to multiple SANs, and apart from being fully integrated with Apple's Mac OS X Leopard and Server Leopard, Xsan 2 is also certified to work with third-party RAID storage devices.

At last, it should be noted that Xsan 2, being fully integrated with Mac OS X, as I was just saying, is able to take full advantage of Apple's operating system facilities, such as Spotlight, for searching data on multiple SAN volumes, but it doesn't stop here, because iCal Server, Mail Server or Podcast Producer are also able to integrate with Xsan 2, supporting clustered file systems, to improve performance and scalability.

If you want to know more about this, then you should visit the official page, here. Good luck!

Speech recognition is one area of the software landscape that I checked a few times, but in each of those situations I ended up pretty disappointed. Last time, I remember it was Vista's speech recognition, and despite the fact it didn't work as one would expect, at least I had a good laugh. In fact, I laughed until I almost got sick! Now, getting back to our daily Apple-related topics, today the time has come for MacSpeech Dictate, a great speech recognition for Mac, and its latest version...


MacSpeech Dictate made its entry last month, at the Macworld Conference & Expo, as iListen's replacement. Now, it's already available for pre-order on the MacMall online store, on this page.

If you are wondering about this program, it's enough to say that MacSpeech and Nuance Communications (notorious for Dragon NaturallySpeaking) are now partners, and MacSpeech Dictate, winner of a Macsiumum Macworld Award last month, is the fruit of this collaboration.

According to Andrew Taylor, president and CEO of MacSpeech, "MacSpeech Dictate performs at the highest accuracy level on the market today.Using the new MacSpeech Dictate, user-spoken commands are recognized separately from dictation, liberating the user from the need to tell the software to change modes, simplifying the experience.", and if that's not enough to make you try this program, I rest my case here.

This software requires at least Mac OS X 10.4.11, and it only works on Intel-based Macs. New users will have to pay at least $199 (one headset at your choice, from a bunch of options available, is also included), while crossgrades from iListen start at $79(special price), but those that bought iListen in 2008, will only have to pay $29, if they crossgrade until the 15th of April.