Safari 14.1.2
Apple has released Safari 14.1.2 for macOS 10.15 Catalina and 10.14 Mojave with patches for three WebKit vulnerabilities. The update improves checks, memory management, and state handling to prevent maliciously crafted Web content from executing arbitrary code. You can download Safari 14.1.2 only via Software Update. (Free, release notes, macOS 10.15 and 10.14)
Safari is notoriously slow on my computer. This version seems glacial.
Firefox for example works normally on same websites
It’s not available only via software update – you can download it directly from Apple. For example, the Mojave updater:
http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/44/05/071-47373-A_9A3CD8EVNY/jpiompzkddnter5tm1094w57tg63ok0axz/Safari14.1.2MojaveAuto.pkg
Interesting! Where did you find the link for that direct download?
It’s a link to an Apple CDN server. Sounds like someone was sniffing packets
Sort of an LOL comment, links are here:
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15675/apple-safari
Fascinating! I wouldn’t bet on that link working forever, although perhaps MacUpdate has ways of detecting if it breaks. Apple almost certainly wouldn’t be happy about that link being published if they knew. If nothing else, it’s a security concern if people think they can download Safari from any source other than Software Update.
On the other hand, many other downloads are publicly available at Apple - Support - Downloads such as the June 2nd Catalina security update and even entire MacOSes. I’m probably missing something, but since the Safari updates are being downloaded from Apple servers I’m not sure why it’s an issue to circumvent the Software update mechanism. I realize some updates are computer specific but many are not. In that case I’d much rather download an update once and apply it to multiple computers than download it onto every one.
That Support Downloads page used to have just about everything. Nowadays it only really seems to get security updates—nothing else has been posted there this year. The last Safari version posted there was from 2015.