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AOL Drops MSIE for Netscape in Mac OS X Beta
Kitzilla writes "AOL introduces an 'Aquafied' client for Max OS X, and pulls the plug on Internet Explorer. It's AOL for Mac, Version 2: now with a tasty Gecko filling." news.com has a story. I wonder if Mac OS X will ever ship with a Netscape/Mozilla browser. I wonder if Mozilla will be shipped with Windows clients in the future. I wonder if this will pave the way to a a full-fledged Linux version of AOL. I wonder if this will ignite another AOL/MS war. I wonder how 24 will end this Tuesday.
I have an iBook running OS X, and I've run at least all Mozilla versions 0.9.6 through 0.9.9, and I haven't seen Mozilla crash once in all that time. I also used multiple versions of Mozilla in OS 9 without many crashes (none that I can remember off hand, but that's been a while). Now that's not to say that Mozilla doesn't crash , I have seen it crash (mostly in Windows), just not on my iBook. I occasionally quit Mozilla due to its memory leaks it swells to use a large amount of swap space, but luckily with OS X's great VM it generally causes no problems, and doesn't slow down too much, so I leave Mozilla running constantly so I don't have to wait for it to start. I generally quit and reopen once a month. I leave my laptop on all the time, and just put it to sleep when I don't need it. The only problem that I have currently with Mozilla in OS X is that Java stopped working.(Bug 8337) I think that happened in 0.9.8. Prior to that Java had been working fine. I even downloaded the special beta plugin for Java, but I couldn't get it to work. It's probably my problem since I didn't try that hard, and I don't go to many sites that use Java anyway, but occasionally I find sometime that I need it. So that's only a minor annoyance for me.
Thanks for bringing that up! The true irony, is that the company was Spyglass, and the code was for the Mosaic browser. Mosaic was of course bought by Spyglass from a company also called Mosiac that made a little web browser called Netscape! Another interesting tidbit, is that MS paid very little for the code, as they worked out a deal in which Spyglass would be paid royalties with every copy of IE that MS sold ... but then MS decided to give it away for free, and Spyglass gets nothing in return!
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
This could have something to do with Apple being the first and only OS / Software company to be able to strike a deal with AOL on their chat software AIM.
With Jaguar/10.2's imminent release and iChat compatibility with AIM via mac.com usernames this could really have an interesting impact on the interoperability/integration of AOL services with the Apple/Mac initiative.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.