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Earlier this week, Jobs announced the release of a version of the Safari browser for Windows. Safari has been available only for the Mac since its release and Jobs chose to tout the release of the Windows version as the beginning of some kind of new browser war.

What irritates me about Apple is that though it is a proprietary software company, it is elevated to some kind of divine status. It's difficult to comprehend.

Take the release of the Safari beta on June 12. Of course, one expects bugs in beta software but Apple was still arrogant enough to boast on its site that one of the reasons "why you'll love Safari" is its security.

Expanding on the theme, the website boasts, "Safari was designed to be secure from day one." Sure. And I was born to be Miss World as well.

Jobs was careful not to make any claims about security when announcing the release - he only claimed that the browser would run much faster than Internet Explorer. To anyone who's played around a bit with browsers, that's like saying running is faster than walking. I have yet to use a browser - and I have experimented with lots of them - which is slower than the kludge which masquerades as the default browser on Windows.

It appears that I wasn't the only person irritated by these claims about security; some hackers did a bit of investigation and found that there were more than half a dozen bugs in the Safari beta, including some which could ensure that your beautiful Mac could be 0wned.

I'm currently engaged in testing Windows Vista (of which you, dear reader, will hear much more next week) so I was able to have a look at Safari. There is some funny behaviour - but I have no complaint about that. It's what you expect in beta software.

Some other things do annoy me, though. Why does Apple supply links to specific companies within the browser - links to eBay, Amazon, Yahoo! and various organisations that claim to provide news? Are there commercial deals behind this? How about a bit of disclosure?

Seriously, if CNN, the New York Times, Google News, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, National Public Radio, and CNET are all that are proffered as "news" sources, then there are serious credibility issues involved. Of course, if these are paid arrangements, then why not disclose them?