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All-New PowerBooks, Web Browser Featured at Macworld
The 17" model is 1440x900 resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, G4/1GHz, SuperDrive, GeForce4 440 Go/64MB, and all the same ports, with the addition of line in and FireWire 800 (in addition to FireWire 400). It is less than 1" thin, and 6.8 lbs., and has fiber-optic lightning for the keyboard activated by ambient light sensors. It will be available next month for $3,300.
The 12" version is 4.6 lbs., and is smaller than the iBook in every dimension. It's 1024x768, G4/867, GeForce4 420 Go/32MB, and is AirPort-ready ($99 extra). It is $1,800 for a combo drive model, $2,000 for a SuperDrive model, and will be available in two weeks.
Both models sport the new AirPort Extreme (802.11g), which is 54Mbps, up from the 11Mbps of AirPort (802.11b). The base stations and clients are fully compatible with the old AirPort, handle 50 users, and support both wireless bridging (to extend the range by adding more stations) and can act as a USB printer server.
Jobs also introduced Safari, a new Mac OS X browser based on the KHTML rendering engine from KDE (and Apple will publish changes they've made to it). There's nothing especially great about it -- it's a web browser -- except that, unlike most other browsers, it is expected to be fast and work properly, as well as be fully integrated into Mac OS X. The web is a killer app, but pretty much all web browsers suck; Apple hopes to give us something that doesn't suck in Safari. It is a free download for the beta, starting today. This story was posted using Safari. W00p.
iPhoto 2 has been revamped, with iTunes integration (access to playlists, tracks, even searching) for slide shows; one-click enhance of photos; a retouch brush; archiving to CD/DVD; and more. iMovie 3 has added chapters, the "Ken Burns Effect" (panning through still images), and precise audio editing. iDVD 3 has added a ton of quite cool themes, which will look great the first few times you see them.
They are -- along with iTunes -- bundled with all new Macs beginning January 25 as "iLife". All but iDVD will be freely available online, contrary to previously published reports. The entire bundle of four apps will be available for retail purchase for $50.
For sale today at $99 is another new app, Keynote, which is the presentation software Jobs has been using for over a year for his own presentations. It includes all sorts of flashy features like textures and Quartz-powered 3D transitions, and can import and export PowerPoint, as well as export to PDF and QuickTime. It has an open file format (using XML).
Jobs also introduced Final Cut Express, a stripped-down version of Final Cut Pro, for $300, and noted other prominent third-party software recently released for Mac OS X: QuickBooks, Director, and DigiDesign Pro Tools (later this month). He noted that the number of native apps for Mac OS X jumped from 2,000 to 5,000 in 2002.
Meanwhile, the number of users of the OS went from 1.2 million to 5 million last year, and he expects the number to jump to 9 or 10 million in 2003.
Update: 01/07 19:37 GMT by Jamie (also posted with Safari): And thanks to the several Slashdot readers who pointed out a great but unannounced product: X11 (aka the X Windows System) for Mac OS X. It's in Public Beta right now. Great to see this, an Apple-supported X is greatly needed. I don't know why Jobs didn't at least mention this, it would have gotten quite the round of applause I'm sure.
I {HEART} Apple!!!!!!
Hard work often pays off in time, but laziness always pays off right now.
I just wanted to mention that after using Safari for a few minutes now, it appears to be amazing. The browser is so much faster it is like a hardware upgrade. On my 500mhz iBook I have never been able to scroll smoothly through pages on any browser. Now scrolling is almost perfectly smooth! Great job with the browser Apple!
(Remember that laptop CPUs typically don't run as fast as desktop equivalents - especially when on battery. Most OSX laptops are as fast as PC equivalents. So the CPU gap doesn't apply)
I can't wait to download the new iApps (sorry, iLife) as well.
If it didn't register itself as Netscape 5 or something with a modicum of site compatibility site scripts would redirect it to the retard text only version of a site.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I watched the Quicktime keynote with great interst, hoping that Jobs would finally introduce a 4-pound notebook. I've been waiting for one for a while, so I'm really excited that Apple finally introduced one!
Unfortunately, however, the notebook doesn't include DVI-out support, so my monitor would fall back to VGA mode if I tried to use the notebook with it. Does anyone know if Apple or a third party plans to offer a PC Card with DVI support? Margi had one, but it's only 4MB... not quite enough for this particular monitor.
Also, one thing Apple keeps failing to address is the #1 reason I haven't switched to a Mac. Steve, where are the software trade-in incentives? I own Photoshop 6 and 7, Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft Office XP for the PC. What on Earth is keeping Apple and/or other vendors from offering trade-in incentives? Why can I not trade in my two boxed Photoshop-for-PC copies and receive Photoshop 7 for Mac OS X? The same goes for Dreamweaver MX. The cost to move to a Mac is almost doubled by the $1500 worth of software that I already have for my PC.
Here's hoping Apple will start to address this issue, especially since the platform is geared toward video developers and graphic designers -- two markets whose people invest heavily in expensive software.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Use the "Bug" button! Go to the Safari page, and submit a bug, saying you want tabs. Make it known to Apple that this is something people REALLY want.
"Year of the notebook"
Addresses two key issues with Apple. First is slow cpu's. cpu speed isn't as big of a deal with laptop users, so the ghz gap isn't as pronounced here. Second, and most important, laptops have much higher margins than desktops. Apple already sells a higher percentage of laptops, this does nothing but help the bottom line and if they continue, the bottom line will still look good (even if market share drops).
Most dissapointing
No advancment on the ghz front. I just said that it doesn't matter _as_much_, but it's still dissapointing that Apple continues to lag here.
New FireWire connector. I know that this might not be Apples fault, but yet another connector type for 800Gb FireWire, ugh. Yeah yeah, an adapters available, but couldn't IEEE figure out a way to make the two compatable?
Most "interesting"
Safari. How does this fit into the big picture. Does Safari really make the Mac a sweeter deal for those who were fence sitting (or firmly on the other side)? Does what Apple gets from it outweigh the development costs of it? Is this another sign that Apple is distancing themselves from Microsoft? Now with Safari, Office is the only thing left that Apple has a dependency on M$.
Most likely to go "cube"
The 12" PowerBook. Yes portability is good, but does it sell in enough numbers to keep it alive. Will people want a G4 bad enough to pay the extra for the 12" PB vs the iBook? Subnotes/small notes are notoriously hard to sell, but I guess it does plug a hole in the Apple notebook strategy.
Most likely they used KHTML because it *wasn't* tied in any way, shape, or form to a major corporation. At least that would be my guess. Maybe, also, they thought KHTML rendering engine was better than mozilla's, who knows. But I would place money on the reason behind choosing KHTML over Gecko being the fact that KHTML isn't backed by some major corporation whose interests might run contrary to apple's.
What the hell were they thinking? Perhaps it's a little faster or smaller, but that sounds like a small payoff when you end up with a browser that is broken and doesn't work properly on a large number of sites. Chimera shows that Gecko can make an amazing browser on OS X so why they've jumped over is mind boggling.
I think it's great that he's chosen to go with KHTML instead of Gecko? (For reference, I use Moz, installing Phoenix right now, and I use WindowMaker, not KDE). If they went with Gecko, it would go against everything the Mozilla Project stands for.
Mozilla is created as an alternative. It was not created to be the ONLY alternative. And assuming the world domination thing happens, IE dies off, we would have the same thing, but called Mozilla and hidden behind different 'skins' (front-end like Phoenix, Galeon, Chimera, Etc). I think those projects are great, but choice is what the entire Free Software movement is about.
I choose to run WindowMaker. I choose to use FreeBSD. I can choose to release my projects as either GPL or BSD, or even LGPL, or any of the other licenses. I choose to use an x86 based platform.
Why not let Apple choose KHTML? If we wake up one day and find that only Gecko is out there, IE died and Konqueror is "that other browser" (Like Opera and Mozilla are considered today, in the mainstream, although both are gaining considerable acceptance), where would we have gotten? Except for the fact it's open source, it'll be no different than IE.
Just my 2c.
I consider this a pretty Good Thing overall though, especially if AOL adopts Gecko. With decently large groups of people using a range of different rendering engines, designers will have no choice but to stick to open standards instead of writing to one specific browser.
Well, time will tell, but I think the new 12" PowerBook will do fabulously well. In addition to the faster G4, you get 802.11g vs 802.11b, bluetooth, S-video and VGA out, a bigger hard disk that's ATA/100, more memory, faster graphics, a lighter notebook, and QuickBooks bundled. Oddly, you don't get Firewire800. In my world, the total speed bump (which I'm guessing is substantial) is worth $300, 802.11g is worth $50, the bigger faster disk is $50 (it's a PAIN to swap an iBook disk), the memory is worth $30, and the S-video/VGA out (with true dual display) is worth $100. I personally don't care about QuickBooks. So, I think this will definitely be worth it to some people even before you get to better looks and snob appeal, although the 12 inch iBook is a beautiful product in its own right (I own one :-)). The odd computers out in this case are, I think, the 14.1" iBooks.
Babar
As for your 486 running faster than an 8600, do you mean for general OS performance, or for actual comparable applications? My 486 would barely run a graphics program, which the 8600s I've used handle passably (not wonderfully, but better). So at that point, it's subjective word-against-word.
In any case, that's all old news. The reason today's Macs excite us (or me, anyway) is that they offer very spiffy design on very solid, quick performance. You say Macs are not "faster, cheaper, more stable systems." If, for such systems, you mean Linux, I can't argue with you. I would claim, though, that the newest Macs match or best top-flight Windows systems for performance (thanks to G4/Velocity) and stability (thanks to OS X's BSD core). Then, what you get for the extra "expense" is a tastefully designed, fully integrated yet completely flexible computer and GUI. To re-iterate, over Windows, you gain even more stability, possibly some speed, and a full set of command line tools. Over Linux/other *NIXes, you get a snappy, consistent GUI and access to more applications.
Personally, I use all three, depending on the task. I mostly just find Macs a nicer environment to work in.
It is genius.
Mozilla may not have the greatest share of the market, but it may be the best browser available. This is why Apple DOES NOT want Mozilla. Sounds crazy? Not really.
Jobs realizes that competition will create better software. It would certainly be possible for Mozilla to become so popular and 'standardized' on the Unix and MacOS operating systems that development of KHTML would slow down and eventually die. If you have a company behind KHTML like Apple while AOL is behind Mozilla, you can expect a war to brew.
Mozilla is a great browser, KHTML is not bad.. but unless they become more popular and gain more press, Microsoft won't bother to compete.. they won't have to.
If KHTML and Mozilla begin a new browser war, first.. new OSX users will be using KHTML, Linux/Unix geeks will be using either Mozilla or KHTML. Apple still does have a large userbase, using KHTML could really put a dent in Microsoft. KHTML's competition would make Mozilla better and more popular, even in Microsoft Windows.
Apple may have just sparked not only a browser war, but a rejuvination of computing without Microsoft. I won't be surprised to see 30-40% of the web using non-IE browsers within a year.
A cursory look at a few of my web pages confirmed that Safari is not a Gecko browser. It does not support negative margin-top CSS values, and does not recognize DIV {overflow:auto;}. Chimera (and all Gecko browsers) handle all of these correctly.
The choice of this K stuff over Chimera/Gecko is puzzling, but the performance is there.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Um, I know this argument can be argued from a thousand sides, but I'll try to offer something "intelligent". Your example isn't really a fair comparison. You're talking about computers which are several years old as a parallel for what's available today. The Mac you are using is running Mac OS 9 or earlier, which even Mac fans admit is an antiquated, inefficient operating system on a par with Windows 98, which is the only OS it can be reasonably compared to. Your PC is running Windows NT, which is a modern operating system. On the other hand, NT 4.0 used to cost $$ and couldn't run many consumer applications of the time, so Microsoft sold a billion copies of 95 and 98, which were much slower and more unstable, but more compatible and more consumer-friendly. So you could as easily ask why anyone would buy a PC with 98 when they could use NT instead. So if your question is "Why use Mac OS 9 instead of Windows NT," the answer might be "no good reason," or the answer might also be "to use a well-supported, consumer-oriented operating system which runs almost every title ever written for the platform." If you want to ask why use Mac OS 9 over Windows 98, it's an easier question to answer: Windows 98, is in my experience, equivalently unstable, unreliable, slow, and bad at multitasking. Furthermore, it's harder to configure in many cases, especially when it comes to hardware matters. You just don't have hardware conflicts in the same way on a Mac. Some of the error messages are utterly incomprehensible. Some simple things (dial-up networking, for example) are needlessly cumbersome to configure. etc. The Mac experience is both smoother and more attractive, in my opinion. If you want to compare current day Macs to current day PC's, meaning, why use Mac OS X versus Windows XP, it can be argued either way. It's close. They're both modern, stable, operating systems. (Mac OS X has as much in common with OS 9 as Windows XP does with Windows 3.1). There's more software and more support for XP. But Mac OS X appeals to people for whom aesthetics matter more. The whole experience is more geared around the pleasure of using it. The hardware looks good. The software looks good. I realize these are frivolities in the eyes of many, but to me it's like "Why drive an ugly car if I really enjoy driving a nice one." "Why work in an ugly office if I can work in a nice one." For programmers and techies, Mac OS X is all Unix, all the time, so there's really no end of low-level fun that can be had in Mac OS X, and Mac users are no longer on a software island, as the wealth of existing Unix software runs on OS X. Also, the hardware is cool. Apple was the first to introduce consumer wireless networking, and were by far the price and performance leader there for at least a year. They were the first to popularize USB, despite its being available on PC motherboards for a long time. The Ethernet ports on new Macs autosense, eliminating the need for a crossover cable. They have Gigabit ethernet in their laptops. Their wireless base station, which has a modem in it, can be a standalone PPP server. Their BIOS is an entire Forth programming environment (so that you can write preloaded drivers for your cards) in which you can perform two-machine debugging via Telnet. I can't even remember half the stuff they were first to market with in their machines. Even now, how many PC laptops integrate both Wireless antennas and bluetooth? Have you ever seen the quality of an Apple LCD display, such as those built into the new iMacs? For consumers and creative people, the Mac has tools that are simply without parallel on the Windows side, such as the iApps, which are included with the OS. As far as performance goes, I think XP probably has the edge, but not by much, and there's more to computing than performance alone. It's how well the computer works with you. It's seamlessly connecting and disconnecting from wired and wireless networks without you even knowing about it. (Getting wireless cards to work on a PC can be horrible.) It's little touches, details in the OS, that demonstrate that someone was really thinking about how people use a computer, both newbies and geeks. For YEARS now, from like Mac OS 7.5 days, you've been able to make a disc image of any volume, hard drive, floppy, CD, whatever, and then "mount" it as though it were actually inserted. You know how much more pleasant this makes multidisc CD-ROM games? Or to prepare a CD for mastering? Does it really make sense to have every volume married to a letter, as opposed to having a proper name of its own? Anyway, I'm not trying to start a war either, but I'm trying to say that I think there are good reasons for choosing a Windows machine or choosing a Mac, depending on what's important to you. Neither is inherently the right computer to buy. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I think that Windows just simply doesn't make as much sense to me, and I spend more time having to figure things out. The fact that in 2003 the whole file system is filled with nonsensical 8.3 filenames seems insane to me. I find messages during software installation like "such and such component is older than the one you have installed on your system. Do you want to replace it?" to be entirely useless, since either answer could have serious consequences. But at a minimum, I'd say you owe it to yourself to look at the latest versions of Windows and Mac OS on new hardware if you're going to challenge why it would be that someone would choose one over the other. A lot of these things I mention apply to Mac OS 9 as readily as Mac OS X -- you just have to deal with the instability headaches that are now thankfully gone. But the point is that there have STILL always been advantages to using a Mac, even if it meant sacrifices in other ways. Ivan.
Poster: If it didn't register itself as Netscape 5 or something with a modicum of site compatibility site scripts would redirect it to the retard text only version of a site.
Me: If everyone coded according to the standards instead of using browser-specific hacks, its user-agent string wouldn't matter (except for logging, etc.).
For the people that don't know that 8X5=16X10 which is taller than 16X9 for all that DVD watching you do on your laptop...
All computer companies preach the lowest common denominator (in this case; people are stoopid).
On Cross-Platform Upgrades:
Many products already offer, explicitly or not, cross-platform upgrades. If you own Photoshop 6 for Windows, you can buy the 7.0 upgrade for the Mac and it will install using your serial number. I believe a number of major products will work this way, as long as they are serial-number based rather than checking for installed files-- even applications that don't advertise this as an upgrade option.
I agree, the cost of software does make it hard to switch-- but given that you can upgrade like this, it isn't a major problem. Here's another thought-- does Microsoft offer Photoshop upgrades for people switching from Mac to PC? As everyone is saying, this simple isn't a job for Apple.
iBook vs. PowerBook:
The iBook is the entry-level (consumer) laptop from Apple. The PowerBook is the prestige/pro laptop. Mac users have been asking for a small pro laptop since Apple canned the 2400. I think the 12" model, with its cooler case/keyboard, SuperDrive option, G4 processor, etc. is sufficiently differentiated.
Using VPC for Pro apps:
To the guy who suggested this: Are you nuts? Emulation in Virtual PC does not give you the performance you will need for serious apps, especially graphic-intensive ones. VPC is a great solution for dinky apps, personal finance, and small custom apps, but not for Photoshop.
No!
Hold back your feelings. This is good. Yes, Gecko may be the superior engine. But diversity and choice are superiorer. Think about it: with Apple supporting KHTML and AOL supporting Gecko, there are two alternatives that enjoy major support.
This means that Microsoft, and more importantly, the mono- or duopoly web development mindset lose some of their strangehold on the market. And ultimately this keeps the web's promise alive better than just using a more compliant engine.
It would be better if they allowed you to choose an identification string like iCab and OmniWeb do. Some sites will refuse to serve a particular browser even when it really is compatible.
Sell your used software on eBay.
With the release of Safari and Keynote, apple has fired a salvo across MS's bow. These two apps help to decrease Apple's dependence on MS for the Browser (a key component) and to a lesser extent, on powerpoint. This is, imo, a goo thing. However, every mac user still has to pay a tribute to MS in the form of Office.
OpenOffice isnt seen as a viable replacement among mac users because it uses X11, and looks decidedly un-maclike. With this new release of X11, thats fixed. Apple can now bundle open office with OS X, and they won't need to spend hundreds of man hours porting it to run under Aqua.
The combination of OpenOffice running under apples X11 implementation, Safari, and Keynote could be just the thing that apple uses to decrease (and perhaps ultimatley do away with altogether) its dependence on MS. And that, I think, is a Good Thing.
---
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
For so many reasons.
It saves me an incredible amount of time and enables me to manage viewing a substantially larger number of web pages. It's the only browser innovation in years that's excited me at all.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
The presentation software was not the "least" of Jobs' annoucnements. Keynote is a clear shot across Microsoft's bow. A direct Powerpoint competitor. That's not a small thing.
Translation: we realised that we had no chance of building our own layout engine or javascript engine, so we had to choose between Gecko/Spidermonkey and KHTML/KJS.
Why not use existing tools if they are good enough?
The Mozilla technologies were better, but we could understand the KDE ones.
Who wants to work with software you can't understand? 140,000 lines of code vs. bigger? I'd take 140,000 if I could, too.
In particular, Mozilla is full of cross platform code that makes it harder to adapt and integrate into our OS, and it relies upon its own portable runtime and rendering layers.
Who's fault is that? Certainly not Apple's.
When we started this project, Chimera didn't exist.
Who cares? Safari rocks. A big, bad commercial softwarre developer uses an open-source project and gives back to that community and there are still people who whine. It boggles the mind.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
stealing? hardly. The list of contributions covers a very impressive number of optimizations and TODO's in KHTML, and the code was submitted with an excellent changelog. If this is stealing KHTML, we could sure do with more thieves like this :-)
They are doing exactly what the LGPL (as chosen by the KHTML authors) wanted them to do... improve KHTML, and use it.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
... because it can help extend battery life, big time. Those of you with power-hungry x86 laptop CPUs may scoff at this, but my experience with my 500 MHz iBook has been that I can run it for a little over three hours with the display at full brightness, and a little over four hours with the display at its dimmest (and if you're on an airplane at night, that's actually a practical way to hack). This means the display accounts for about 25-30% of the power consumption. Anything that automatically makes the display draw an appropriate amount of power might extend my battery life half an hour or more.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I read about USB 1.1 ports on the new PowerBook, but saw nothing about USB 2.0. It seems that USB 2.0 and Firewire would be a nice combination for maximum flexibility.
Please don't take offense to the following:
I just love it when people who have no business concepts come up with crackpot reasons for why corporations do what they do. A lot of times these people make me laugh with their logic.
First of all, Jobs doesn't want competition. He's the CEO of a multibillion dollar company. Do you honestly think he believes in a competitive, efficient market? Sure, he'll say and do whatever he can as long as MS is where it's at, but only as long as he's in second place.
Remember, the Macintosh computer is a franchise market (read: Harley Davidson) with Apple at the helm. Companies with a monopoly over a franchise market (which Apple has) have little that will erode their marketshare. The Harley Davidson example is the textbook case. Basically, Harley Davidson has 0 competition from Honda, Yamaha, whoever in their main market. Harley's main market happens to be "Harley Davidson Motorcycles". Similarly, Apple has 0 competition from other computer makers in the Macintosh market. Everytime somebody tries to release something that emulates a Mac, they get crushed by Apple's litigation thugs. Send an email to themes.org if you disagree.
Now if we can rule out betterment of society from CEO Jobs' goals, we should be able to assume that profit is his ultimate goal. All of his plans revolve around those little 3 step underpants gnomes plans. in this particular case, we have:
1. Use KHTML
2. ????
3. Profit!!
Now we just have to find the elusive step 2. from the 3 step plan. You, GiMP suggest that he wants a competitive browser market to create a better browser that will drive people to the Macintosh platform, thus, creating profit. Hmmm. I don't think that having the best browser will generate any profit. How much profit has MS made from IE (if we haphazardly assume it's the best browser)? None. Has dominance with IE led to profit with IIS? IIS has yet to generate profits for MS, so again, No.
Here's my idea of why Apple chose KHTML, and although it may be just as crackpot as yours, at least it's business based crack (the expensive stuff that Wall St Tycoons snort) as opposed to opensource hippie crack. I think that Apple sees a switch campaign as a good way to increase revenues so he needs to get more people to "switch". One main reason that people don't feel comfortable with OS X is because all of the browsers suck. I use OS X and I'm justified in saying that ALL CURRENT OS X Browsers suck. I currently use a collection IE, Navigator (chimera?), Mozilla, and OmniWeb. Every one of them sucks differently and together, there's usually one that's right for each job, but I can't use one for everything. Steve Jobs knows this and says, "Holy shit! How can convince people that OS X is the best platform when people can't even browse the fscking web?" CEO Steve is smart though. He realizes that the slow web browsers in OS X (IE and Mozilla) don't suck as much as the fast web browsers (Navigator and Omniweb). He decides that Apple's going to do it's typical amazing thing and surprise everybody with a fast webbrowser for OS X that doesn't suck! Has Steve succeeded? From other comments on this page I'd say not yet, but it's a beta version and CEO Steve put a serious team of hackers behind his browser.
Why did he choose KHTML? Probably because it was the easiest *fast* html renderer to modify and create a new web browser with. CEO Steve knows that reinventing the wheel costs too much in today's economy.
PS. I'm very happy that Apple chose an open source browser and is giving back to the community the way that they are. I'm happy for the KDE people (all of them) for creating a browser and desktop environment that was capable for a company like Apple to use the code base.
Keeping
If you really think about it, however, you would realize that adding the tab feature to something like a web browser window is in fact BAD DESIGN. It may be more convenient for you, but it drastically changes what a window represents to the user.
With tabs, closing a window can in fact remove the contents of many windows. Something that should only happen when you quit the application. Granted, adding this as a default-off feature might be okay, but I can just see all the grandmas wondering why all their different web pages went away when they only closed the front window.
There would also need to be a cycle-tabs keystroke, in addition to the cycle-windows keystroke. (Something that does annoy me when I use tabs in Phoenix.)
My point is, that by promoting the ideas and benefits of Open Source to Graphic Artists, Travelling Business People, "Creative Types" and the Casual Mac User(tm), Apple is doing more to promote open source among non-technical people than any other company out there - at least any other company my grandmother has heard of, anyway.
Here's a screen shot:
Apple Keynote Screen Shot
If Apple's goal is to create a web browser that is as simple as possible, then this would be viewed as an unnecessary complication.
Know why a lighted keyboard makes sense?
Husband/Wife, one wants sleep. One wants to surf.
One wants the ALL of the lights off, right now, or there will
be hell to pay.
That's why
So when I found that Apple had come out with X11 for OS X, the first thing I thought was "So what? That's already been done. Somewhere along the way (probably while waiting for the new X11's "Optimizing" process to finish), I went over to the OroborOSX site to see if they had mentioned Apple's new X11, and that was when I remembered what's so cool about (most of) the open source community.
They didn't bash it. They didn't knock it. They didn't even complain about it. They said something like, "How does this affect our project? We don't know. Download it. Check it out. Don't forget to back up the X11 directories beforehand, just in case." And they linked to a message forum thread on their site that had been created to talk about this new product from Apple. Even in the forum, there was very little criticism of Apple's X11 product, and everything critical they had to say was constructive.
Even though this product could completely obliterate the need for their software, they were open to an alternative. They didn't go into FUD mode and immediately issue press releases bashing the "competition".
One could argue that they have no reason to get upset or concerned, because they were giving their software away anyway. No money to be made or lost, right? So take your ball and go home. Not so. You can't tell me there's no pride in Open Source. These people found a void and filled it, and the void could very well be filled AGAIN by the very people who caused the void in the first place. It would be very understandable for the OroborOSX team to get a little miffed.
Hats off to these guys for representing the best of the Open Source Community, which most often really DOES seem to be about ensuring that we all have the very best software that we can get, no matter who makes it.
Now I'll check to see if my "optimization" is done yet, and I'll begin my little evaluation of Apple's new effort. But I will be very careful to REMEMBER who has already been here and to not forget the work that they have done. Now that they have been here, the bar has been RAISED for Apple and they will have to produce quality software. This is a great role for Open Source software, if nothing else.
Cheers,
RP
If everyone coded according to the standards [w3.org] instead of using browser-specific hacks, its user-agent string wouldn't matter
Well, if browsers actually implemented the standards, then standards-compliant code would work cross-browser. Alas, it does not, so browser-specific code becomes necessary. However, doing this by detecting the user-agent string is ill-advised. Object detection generally works better.
Sig this.
Look isn't the point.
Look and feel and expected behavior and interoperability are the point.
Ever tried to use an app that emulates your OS's native widgets with skins? It doesn't look right, it ignores global color and font settings, it ignores UI guidelines, it behaves differently when you drag the scrollbars, it uses its own oddball keystroke commands, you can't drag-n-drop to or from it... bleh.