Having used Windows computers for many years and have since been converted to Apple Mac, we have experienced both operating systems for a good amount of time. We currently run Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on both MacBooks and an iMac, but also have Windows 7 on two touchscreen computers. Both operating systems suffer from crashes although Mountain Lion has a better track record so far, and certainly is not plagued by the viruses and malware you’ll find with Windows.

We have experienced a few crashing problems with Mountain Lion since it launched, and this includes Safari crashing sometimes when you open a new tab via clicking a link and selecting “open link in new tab“. It is worth noting that when you do this a second time by reopening Safari right after a crash, it doesn’t happen.

The Apple discussion forums are filled with issues being reported by users, which is expected with any new OS and this includes Mountain Lion. There are two clear crash problems affecting a lot of users, and this includes the above Safari problems and also Mountain Lion crashes when resuming from sleep. Some people solved this issue by turning off their Wi-Fi on MacBooks before closing the lid, and also some iMac users found that making sure Bluetooth is turned off stopped a crash when the computer sleeps.

Have you had any crashing with Mountain Lion or default installed software? You can see the forum entries here for Mountain Lion crashes after it resumes from a sleep, and also some other Wi-Fi issues are being discussed in this posting.

If you have not installed Mountain Lion yet then you might want to read some reviews, which can be seen via this article and clearly show the overall Mountain Lion performance is extremely good for the majority.

The good news is that there are other mobile web browsers available for the iPhone and iPad, so you don’t have to just use Safari. We found a page over on the pcworld.com website, which provides a list of 10 alternative web browsers for those that are dissatisfied with Apple’s native Safari. The app that pcworld.com has rated the highest is the Atomic Web Browser, which they have rated 4.5/5.

Atomic Web Browser not only enables users to set up advanced privacy controls and activate an ad-blocker, it will also allow them to choose from a number of color themes, customize the search engine bar and even enable the servers to identify Atomic as another web browser such as Firefox and Internet Explorer. Atomic is based on the Webkit engine, so it does bear similarities to Safari.

However, it is said to be noticeable faster in some cases. Another Safari alternative is iCab Mobile, which according to Rob Griffiths from Macworld.com is the ideal web browser for browsing link-heavy sites. The app works in landscape and portrait modes, and can be locked in either mode if preferred. If however you want a mobile web browser that supports Flash video, then Skyfire is the one for you.

The downside however is that Skyfire does not support Flash games or applications. Another popular alternative to Safari is Opera Mini, which is said to offer six times faster web browsing. The Opera Mini web browser also enables users to see all of their open web pages, as well as quickly switch between them. Meanwhile, the Apollo app will enable users to browse the net and Facebook chat at the same time.

If you want a web browser that will enable different users to browse the web on one iPad while keeping each person’s tabs, history and bookmarks, then the Switch multi-user web browser is the one for you. Each iPad user gets an individual user account, so every time you open the Switch web browser everything will be just how you left it. You can see what other web browser alternatives are on the list over at pcworld.com.

Which mobile web browser do you use on your iPhone / iPad?

Andrew Wray over at TiPb has compared the two devices side by side when running Safari to see how they both compare. When using the original iPad having all nine tabs open really see’s the device come to a virtual standstill. As you run out of memory the iPad switches off background tabs which can be very frustrating.

Doing the same on the new iPad had none of the same issues, and the annoying lag which would occur before Safari could load the web page was thankfully nowhere to be seen. Scrolling with Safari is really smooth, and now when switching between tabs the whole page hasn’t got to be reloaded. Check the video out below of the two versions of iPad running Safari.

Web browsing is just one improved feature of the new iPad 2, watching movies and playing games will also prove to be a much better experience. But if you already have the original iPad is it worth upgrading this year? Have you upgraded? If so was it worth it?

The contest is ongoing as we speak, with the likes of the iPhone and Windows Phone 7 operating systems set to be put to the test by cunning hackers, but the headlines so far is all about Apple’s Safari browser, Microsoft’s IE8 browser and Google Chrome.

In what’s sure to be an embarrassment to Apple, it has been confirmed that French security company Vupen managed to completely expose Safari 5 running on a MacBook Air notebook in a mere five seconds. To prove the hack had been successful, the team installed a calculator application and then wrote a file to demonstrate that Mac OS X had been opened up, according to Zdnet.

Elsewhere, IE8 was also the victim of a planned attack, as researcher Stephen Fewer managed to use three vulnerabilities to take down IE8 completely, and even get out of protected mode successfully.

But the victory went to Google it seems, as Chrome remains unhacked due to participants failing to show up at the event, likely due to Google issuing a patch update to the software, despite Google themselves offering a bounty of $20,000 USD – as reported from Computer World.

As we mentioned earlier, iOS, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry OS is next on the agenda, so stay tuned to see if teams will be able to hack into those systems or not during the event. Let us know your thoughts on the results so far.

Are you surprised that Safari was exposed in a matter of seconds?

Apparently three different hackers won $10,000 each for successfully exploiting these browsers, however a duo of hackers managed to hack Apple’ iPhone running Safari, despite all of the successful hacks none of these hackers had physical addresses to the machines they exploited.

For obvious reason full details were not revealed, however the most interesting hack was for the iPhone’s Safari web browser, this hack was created by Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Philipp Weinmann.

Their hack involved creating a special website, when iPhone users visited this website Iozzo and Weinmann were able to pull the iPhone’s complete SMS database, however they also claim that the same exploit could “extract the iPhone’s contacts, email, photo gallery and iTunes media files”, for their success they took away $15,000.

Source: SlashGear