March 27, 2008 (Computerworld) Developers responsible for Apple Inc.'s Safari browser engine and Opera Software ASA's flagship browser raced yesterday to announce that in-development versions passed the new Acid3 Web test with flying colors.

A Mozilla Corp. executive, while acknowledging that the company's browser is not as compliant with Acid3 as its rivals, called the test "a puzzle game" and said Mozilla would press ahead with work on Firefox 3 rather than devote resources to improving its Acid3 score.

It seems that Apple just hasn’t thought through the mechanism for pushing Safari 3.1 for Windows through the Apple Software Update tool. Not only is Apple pushing this update aggressively and messed up the EULA big style, but it turns out that the browser is being pushed to unsupported operating systems.

Thanks to a tip I received from David Corley, who describes himself as a “an Irish ZDNet regular reader,” Apple is pushing Safari 3.1 for Windows to the Windows 2000 platform, despite the fact that this OS isn’t supported and also overlooking the fact that the browser won’t actually install properly on this version of Windows.

According to the Safari 3.1 for Windows download page on the Apple website, only Windows XP and Windows Vista are supported, but as the following set of images clearly demonstrate, Apple is pushing Safari 3.1 to Windows 2000 users, but the installer isn’t compatible and fails .

They were able to exploit a brand new 0day vulnerability in Apple's Safari web browser. Coincidentally, Apple has just started to ship Safari to some Windows machines, with its iTunes update service.

That he should have such an exploit just hanging around waiting to go suggests Safari, while it might be wonderfully compliant, isn't as safe as could be hoped. And these days, safety is arguably more valuable than standards compliance.