Indeed this is a huge shortcoming of iCal, but the new version in Leopard supports group calendars synchronized over WebDAV, which is a big step towards corporate competitiveness. The Leopard release of OS X Server is supposed to include a WebDAV server, too:
iCal Server uses open calendaring protocols for integrating with leading calendar programs, including iCal 3 in Leopard, Mozilla's Sunbird, OSAF's Chandler, and Microsoft Outlook using an open source connector. These open standard protocols include CalDAV -- a set of extensions to WebDAV -- and interchange formats such as iCalendar, iMIP, and iTIP.
That's not true, or highly misleading at best. I think you might be technically correct in stating that Firefox supports more "selectors"—I just today ran into some problems with WebKit's lack of support for the nth-child and last-child selectors—but as far as supporting more of the selectors, properties, rules, and other CSS features that are likely to be used by web designers, and in implementing them according to the standard, WebKit's got Gecko beat hands down.
Just from today's work, I can tell you Gecko lacks support for box-shadow, background-size, text-shadow, and colors specified as rgba() values, and its support for border-radius is incomplete. It also screws up the display of absolutely positioned generated content relative to a relatively positioned owning element. WebKit gets all of this right.
Additionally, Gecko renders text like shit, but you really don't want to get me started on that...
Jesus, that page looks like something that might appear in my toilet after a night of heavy drinking. Even by financial industry standards it's ugly. From my one-second glimpse before I ran screaming away, I could tell that it was designed worse than a fucking Bloomberg terminal. So yes, I can see why your "MAC" using friend wouldn't want to sully his native desktop with such an atrocity.
The real problem is that, in the Windows world, everybody thinks "winning" means world domination.
This is the heart of this particular issue, I think, and also very telling of the cultural divide. I've never understood the PC world's obsession with market share either.
That's because nobody writes "kph"; the more common abbreviation is "km/h." Of course, "mph" still wins, probably due to rural Americans' obsession with motoring. (I personally have nothing against imperial units, mind you.)
Safari also has plenty of hidden settings and tools that you can configure by opening up its property list file. (Or the registry in Windows, I guess?) If you want to go even further, it's not like there's a shortage of extensions. Progressive disclosure at its finest.
Among Safari's unique tools is the Web Element Inspector, which is to fucking die for. Nothing I've seen for any other browser even comes close.
You're ignoring that Mac users tend to cluster together. Most of the people I know are Mac users, and what's more, they also tend to be the types of people I'd consider to ask helping me on projects. Again, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish—I suspect my Mac would be out of place in, say, an accounting team or a CAD workshop.
Is it just me, or does the Mac guy look like a young Justin Long? And the PC guy in the boring sweater a young John Hodgman? But the comic's from almost a decade ago. How did they know???
I used to keep Camino around to deal with websites Safari won't work with, but to be honest, I haven't run across such a site in a looong time. Besides, WebKit is faster and renders text better, and it also recognizes embedded color profiles in images. That it supports more of the CSS standard is a bonus, too. What site(s) are you finding that Safari has trouble with?
Works fine on my Logitech VX Revolution. Are you using Windows or something? Because from what I understand, the.NET framework doesn't natively support more than three mouse buttons—you have to fudge it at the system level by wiring mouse buttons as keypresses. Cocoa, meanwhile, allows applications to support up to 2^16 mouse buttons. Suck on that, PC users.
"Improving" Firefox for Mac would basically take a grounds-up rewrite of the application, if you could even convince Ben Goodger et al. of the necessity (by all indications, none of the core Firefox developers truly understand what the Mac is all about). Besides, harnessing KHTML for WebKit and building a Maclike frontend means that Firefox is still available on the Mac, for ex-PC users who feel more comfortable with a PC port that doesn't integrate with OS X services or functionality like the Keychain and network settings.
More accurately, Apple's philosophy is to offer as many features (often more) than the competition, but—this is key—not to shove them all in your face at once. There's always an elegant way to access specific features and options that only reveal themselves to people who go looking for them.
In my experience, the only "Mac users" who prefer Firefox to Safari are people who never used a Mac until recently. And let's be honest—Firefox would be okay for a PC application, but by Mac standards, it's absolutely terrible. Firefox is a very literal-minded PC port that doesn't think or act like a native Mac application. I remember the same happening with the Mac port of Word 6, which was designed to approach tasks the same way as the Windows version. Native Mac users considered it shit, but ex-PC users of that era didn't seem to mind.
If you're serious about entering the Mac market, the key is not to just "port" it, but to attempt a faithful but thorough translation. Sometimes you'll need to rethink your application from top to bottom, because Mac users and PC users have very different ways of approaching problems.
I made the mistake of purchasing Word 6. It was indeed riddled with bugs, but worse, it looked and behaved like a Windows application, a wretched, horribly literal-minded port from PC land where shit is supposed to taste like chocolate.
With Office 98, Microsoft seemed to have learned its lesson (debatable?) and today I continually wonder why other software projects (Firefox in particular) have to keep pursuing this myth that cross-platform is as easy as flipping a switch.
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Those who block AC comments don't deserve to be informed.
Oh yeah, and Leopard's calendar server is (or will be) open source.
Given that Address Book spits out vCard files when I drag contacts to the desktop, the iPhone probably speaks vCard as well.
That's not true, or highly misleading at best. I think you might be technically correct in stating that Firefox supports more "selectors"—I just today ran into some problems with WebKit's lack of support for the nth-child and last-child selectors—but as far as supporting more of the selectors, properties, rules, and other CSS features that are likely to be used by web designers, and in implementing them according to the standard, WebKit's got Gecko beat hands down.
Just from today's work, I can tell you Gecko lacks support for box-shadow, background-size, text-shadow, and colors specified as rgba() values, and its support for border-radius is incomplete. It also screws up the display of absolutely positioned generated content relative to a relatively positioned owning element. WebKit gets all of this right.
Additionally, Gecko renders text like shit, but you really don't want to get me started on that...
Jesus, that page looks like something that might appear in my toilet after a night of heavy drinking. Even by financial industry standards it's ugly. From my one-second glimpse before I ran screaming away, I could tell that it was designed worse than a fucking Bloomberg terminal. So yes, I can see why your "MAC" using friend wouldn't want to sully his native desktop with such an atrocity.
Have you seen Drosera? If not, you should definitely check it out—it beats the pants off Firebug, in my opinion.
That's because nobody writes "kph"; the more common abbreviation is "km/h." Of course, "mph" still wins, probably due to rural Americans' obsession with motoring. (I personally have nothing against imperial units, mind you.)
Safari also has plenty of hidden settings and tools that you can configure by opening up its property list file. (Or the registry in Windows, I guess?) If you want to go even further, it's not like there's a shortage of extensions. Progressive disclosure at its finest.
Among Safari's unique tools is the Web Element Inspector, which is to fucking die for. Nothing I've seen for any other browser even comes close.
I'm foe-ing you for your staggering lack of clue, though I don't care to waste my time countering your points. Just FYI.
Ah, yes, I concede the point—I'd forgotten about Gmail's integrated Google Chat. Me, I just use iChat with Google's Jabber gateway.
You're ignoring that Mac users tend to cluster together. Most of the people I know are Mac users, and what's more, they also tend to be the types of people I'd consider to ask helping me on projects. Again, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish—I suspect my Mac would be out of place in, say, an accounting team or a CAD workshop.
Is it just me, or does the Mac guy look like a young Justin Long? And the PC guy in the boring sweater a young John Hodgman? But the comic's from almost a decade ago. How did they know???
I used to keep Camino around to deal with websites Safari won't work with, but to be honest, I haven't run across such a site in a looong time. Besides, WebKit is faster and renders text better, and it also recognizes embedded color profiles in images. That it supports more of the CSS standard is a bonus, too. What site(s) are you finding that Safari has trouble with?
KHTML is faster and more standards-compliant, so why?
-1? Who gave modpoints to the President?
Wow. Just wow.
Works fine on my Logitech VX Revolution. Are you using Windows or something? Because from what I understand, the .NET framework doesn't natively support more than three mouse buttons—you have to fudge it at the system level by wiring mouse buttons as keypresses. Cocoa, meanwhile, allows applications to support up to 2^16 mouse buttons. Suck on that, PC users.
"Improving" Firefox for Mac would basically take a grounds-up rewrite of the application, if you could even convince Ben Goodger et al. of the necessity (by all indications, none of the core Firefox developers truly understand what the Mac is all about). Besides, harnessing KHTML for WebKit and building a Maclike frontend means that Firefox is still available on the Mac, for ex-PC users who feel more comfortable with a PC port that doesn't integrate with OS X services or functionality like the Keychain and network settings.
More accurately, Apple's philosophy is to offer as many features (often more) than the competition, but—this is key—not to shove them all in your face at once. There's always an elegant way to access specific features and options that only reveal themselves to people who go looking for them.
In my experience, the only "Mac users" who prefer Firefox to Safari are people who never used a Mac until recently. And let's be honest—Firefox would be okay for a PC application, but by Mac standards, it's absolutely terrible. Firefox is a very literal-minded PC port that doesn't think or act like a native Mac application. I remember the same happening with the Mac port of Word 6, which was designed to approach tasks the same way as the Windows version. Native Mac users considered it shit, but ex-PC users of that era didn't seem to mind.
If you're serious about entering the Mac market, the key is not to just "port" it, but to attempt a faithful but thorough translation. Sometimes you'll need to rethink your application from top to bottom, because Mac users and PC users have very different ways of approaching problems.
It would also mean Chinese citizens lose access to a somewhat useful collection of websites. I'd rather have a limited Yahoo than none at all.
Consider yourself lucky you never saw the "THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING!" troll. Oops...
I made the mistake of purchasing Word 6. It was indeed riddled with bugs, but worse, it looked and behaved like a Windows application, a wretched, horribly literal-minded port from PC land where shit is supposed to taste like chocolate.
With Office 98, Microsoft seemed to have learned its lesson (debatable?) and today I continually wonder why other software projects (Firefox in particular) have to keep pursuing this myth that cross-platform is as easy as flipping a switch.