Safari issues. E*Trade advised me to use Firefox. Help!

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Safari issues. E*Trade advised me to use Firefox. Help!

I'm sorta new here and posed a similar question out of frustration and it's probably been removed. Here's the deal. I use a stock trading program called E*Trade Pro which is a JAVA scripted program you download from E*Trade. Until last Friday there's never been a problem. But over the weekend a new OS upgrade along with supposed 'improvements' to Safari were issued and automatically installed on both an iMac and a MacBook Air (11" w/i7 processor). On Monday (Mar 18, 2013) when I tried to fire up E*Trade Pro it simply woudn't download and open. When I called E*trade tech support and they told me they noticed over the weekend that there were JAVA issues that prevented the new upgrade from properly downloading and loading their software. And the latest JAVA from Oracle didn't help. E*Trade advised me to go to their website to get the trading software via Firefox which I did. And it downloaded and runs no problem.

But it gets worse. Tonight I was on DPreview's photography forums and noticed that now IMAGES won't even load. And when I switched to Firefox to doublecheck, again no problem there.

I've also had crashes which I've never noticed before. And a lot of difficulty loading pages.

I don't mind one issue to have to go around but this is totally unacceptable, Apple! (And it's the sort of thing that will continue to drive their AAPL stock spiraling southward!) Does anyone (including the geniuses in Cupertino!) help me with these issues??? Or at least provide an answer when these issues will quickly be addressed. I've never had an issue with Apple software but seeing so many in such a short period of time is indicative that something is seriously rotten in the land of Cupertino.

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Mar 21, 2013 8:27 PM

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Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Mar 22, 2013 3:48 AM in response to MacUserSinceLXXXIV

Apple barred Java from running on Macs in order to safeguard users by blocking Java 7 Update 11 and adding it to the banned list in XProtect.

This was the second time in two weeks that Apple had blocked Oracle's code from running on Macs. The threat was so serious that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had recommended that all Java 7 users disable or uninstall the software until a patch was issued. This time Java is blocked through Apple's XProtect anti-malware feature.

Java has come under fire as the means by which hackers have been able to gain control of computers. In April 2012 more than 600,000 Macs were reported to have been infected with a Flashback Trojan horse that was being installed on people's computers with the help of Java exploits. Then in August Macs were again at risk due to a flaw in Java, this time around, there was good news for Mac users: Thanks to changes Apple has made, most of us were safe from the threat.

Unwilling to leave its customers open to potential threats Apple decided it's safer to block Java entirely.

In order to block older versions of Flash, Apple has updated its "Xprotect.plist" file so that any versions that come before the current one (version 11.6.602.171) cannot be used on a Mac. Users who have older versions of Flash installed will be greeted with an alert that says "Blocked plug-in," and Safari will prompt the user to update to a newer version.

Macs running OS X Snow Leopard and beyond are affected.

UPDATE for those running Lion or Mountain Lion:

Oracle on Friday February 1 released a new version reportedly addressing vulnerabilities seen with the last build.

Apple disabled Java 7 through the OS X XProtect anti-malware system, requiring users to have at least version "1.7.0_10-b19" installed on their Macs. The release dated February 1 carries the designation "1.7.0_13-b20," meeting Apple's requirements.

Oracle "strongly recommends" applying the CPU fixes as soon as possible, saying that the latest Critical Patch Update contains 50 new security fixes across all Jave SE products.

Update for Snow Leopard users:

Apple issued update 12 for Java for OS 10.6:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1573

Note: On systems that have not already installed Java for Mac OS X 10.6 update 9 or later, this update will configure web browsers to not automatically run Java applets. Java applets may be re-enabled by clicking the region labeled "Inactive plug-in" on a web page. If no applets have been run for an extended period of time, the Java web plug-in will deactivate.

If, after installing Java for OS X 2013-002 and the latest version of Java 7 from Oracle, you want to disable Java 7 and re-enable the Apple-provided Java SE 6 web plug-in and Web Start functionality, follow these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5559?viewlocale=en_US

Further update:

Apple issued this Java related security update No. 13 on February 19:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5666

and Update No. 14 on March 4: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1573

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5677

You should also read this:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5672

The standard recommendation is for users to turn off Java except when they have to use it on known and trusted websites (like their bank). Javascript, which is unrelated despite the name, can be left on.

Further useful comment in this article:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/macsoftware/news/?newsid=3435007&olo=email

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