Keeping Safari a secret

> We couldn’t ship with the real Safari user agent string disabled, but we came up with the next best thing — automatically enabling it after a certain date.

Does that mean that if you set the date of your computer back before 2003, the user agent will become Internet Explorer?

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#6

Post by nsp » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 6:13 AM UTC

Does anyone know why Apple stopped doing this(or stopped doing it as thoroughly)? With the possible exception of the original, sites have consistently reported visits from iOS/iPhone:iPad user agents (and claimed that the ip originated within apple) well before launch. Recent example: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/01/01/developers-begin-seei...

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#7

Post by zalew » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 6:15 AM UTC

TLDR: for whatever reasons it was a very top-secret project, so they spoofed the user agent, the end.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#8

Post by donmelton » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 6:15 AM UTC

laurent123456 wrote: post #5

> We couldn’t ship with the real Safari user agent string disabled, but we came up with the next best thing — automatically enabling it after a certain date. Does that mean that if you set the date of your computer back before 2003, the user agent will become Internet Explorer?

If you were able to run a copy of Safari version 48, it would probably look like a Gecko-based browser before this date.

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#9

Post by barredo » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 6:16 AM UTC

laurent123456 wrote: post #5

> We couldn’t ship with the real Safari user agent string disabled, but we came up with the next best thing — automatically enabling it after a certain date. Does that mean that if you set the date of your computer back before 2003, the user agent will become Internet Explorer?

I just tried with Safari 6 on Mountain Lion and it does not.

Obviously this must have been a feature of Safari 1.0

Re: Keeping Safari a secret

#10

Post by laurent123456 » Fri, Jan 04, 2013, 6:17 AM UTC

donmelton wrote: post #8

laurent123456 wrote: post #5

> We couldn’t ship with the real Safari user agent string disabled, but we came up with the next best thing — automatically enabling it after a certain date. Does that mean that if you set the date of your computer back before 2003, the user agent will become Internet Explorer?

If you were able to run a copy of Safari version 48, it would probably look like a Gecko-based browser before this date.

But he seems to be saying that the code that enables this is still in Safari.