If Apple allowed 3rd party, it would change the Safari in good way too. They would find themselves competing with 3rd party companies/engines and would feel forced to fix quirks, add better features, add better performance.
As they are in safe (!) area with app store rejector interns, they don't feel like doing anything.
On Symbian S60 (which Mozilla ignores), there is a browser called "Skyfire" which is a shell to a "all plugins installed" Firefox. Believe or not, it can even play wmedia embedded (at least at Nasa TV). There is Opera 10 Mobile beta which is also amazingly unique since it is the exact same browser on desktop without any proxies, just with opt-in compression. There is a Webkit based browser, a Chinese and very impressive browser etc. Idea is, Nokia gets feedback/flamebait from customers asking why their own Webkit based browser doesnt do some things they do and they feel forced to enhance it. Or, they can easily say "Hate our ROM browser? Just click a competitor sisx file, install and use it."
Chair throwing guy could be right that amazing amount of apps on app store may have something to do with the browser being unusable.
Don't forget the idiot marked you as flamebait too, besides app store rejector geniuses, there is also a customer base who will easily abuse their mod points whenever they see something like your post.
Currently, Opera 10 is available on every handset which is open to 3rd party. Read it as iPhone excluded.
J2ME (via Opera Mini), Symbian (which has 40% share and not even mentioned by Mozilla), Windows Mobile and Android supported. It is basically the same engine as Desktop one, bit by bit thanks to their ultra portable web renderer. Even "dead" (chap 11.) UIQ3 is supported somehow with a native client.
They are packing "Widgets" which are based on W3C standards for desktop right now, Opera 10.20 alpha does run same widget across 3 desktop platforms. Linux, OS X and Windows. It doesn't need to crack into their build system to predict they will go mobile with that idea.
What bothers me is, PC Pro, a UK based site doesn't even ask why on earth Symbian is not even mentioned or supported since Symbian is actually a british thing to begin with. Nor they fail to bother checking Opera which supports some handsets/operating systems which are abandoned by vendor themselves.
For web designers, widget developers, there is nothing to bother. They as a small company always supported standards, somehow failed to get market share because of it. So, there is no "Opera specific" quirk. It is all W3C.
What if the people at Apple shameless enough to ask money for full screen video playback (for years!) thinks they can't sell upgraded hardware if they enable GPU acceleration features?
I mean a company sized as Adobe does not joke. They say there is no way to enable GPU decoding for Flash 10.1 beta. That is amazingly big deal especially with the rise of h264 encoded flash video.
VLC's issues, I can guess just by release notes.. They lived a massive problem with gcc 4.2/PPC compatibility, had to drop Tiger (10.4) support getting the flame from users (instead of Apple who didn't do it for 10.4), some idiotic trolls keep on "Not Mac like" whining and their good intentions of taking them serious...
As result, millions of people not having issues and enjoying their software gets the problem. This is the exact reason why I started hating loud mouth "maccie" community.
Quicktime X, which we all hoped as a good client for the Quicktime Framework turned out to be a joke really.
It lacks 3rd party component support... It has no clue what a qtl file is (try nasa.gov/ntv) , lacks 3rd party export support... IMHO if you are a bit serious about media, no need to be professional, you gotta select "quicktime" while installing. That is in case you have not upgraded yet.
What bothers me is that great, visionary framework/arch they are giving bad name with that client. Imagine it was designed/implemented in Apple's darkest days...
Perhaps you didn't mean to be offensive but trust me, this "mac users like expensive software with apple logo" like things doesn't help anyone.
"Mac users" you see have chosen a Mach/BSD/NeXTStep schizophrenically hybrid OS over an OS used by 90% of population. If you remove "Apple" friendly logo and UI, OS X is exactly that. So, if something is good, they use it. In fact, they keep using it. Macs without VLC is a rare thing...
The article doesn't speak about lack of funding or users not already donating. The article and the signs lately shows a mysterious lack of Mac developers/packagers for some reason. It is really mysterious if you ask me and no, Mac users doesn't give 40 dollars to a media player no matter how great it can be. Some German company learned it hard way and they still keep ignoring that lesson.
It is really amazing design glitch on their part. Their 1.x binary is an universal and something Altivec designers/coders should really see.
These guys (they are also creators of MKV) seems to code old school with hand written assembly all over the place. There is no other explanation especially on G4.
I got the 1.3.2 (6909) here. The version 2.x could be Intel only, I really don't know for sure too since it isn't even released.
What it shows is the amount of optimization one can really do for a CPU having 133Mhz FSB so I really wished it was open source. Well, reality is sad sometimes.
No matter what your tech oriented sites say, not having IE in native form having 100% compatibility with Windows (not 99.9, 100%!) is still a "punishment" especially at work place.
Lets say whole World became "Safari only". On Linux, you could pick Arora, on Windows you can get original, 100% same Safari Windows version. MS is a company who does punish users by locking companies to "works better/only on IE" solutions and not providing the client for operating systems other than Windows.
Are you sure if you code fine, Mac users won't pick your solution? Check Amazon.com top software sales sometime. You will see MS Office for OS X there, all the time. Don't believe the whining you read everywhere, they buy it and use it, no matter how expensive (compared to Win) it is.
For plugins like Flash and high end commercial games, engine conversion, FreeBSD is irrelevant. What I talk about is something which will run under MS Visual Studio based development environment, whatever game developers/plugin developers use.
Of course, FreeBSD will have GC just like they have launchd but it won't really matter to some game developer or a plugin developer like Adobe.
VLC has also become de-facto remote controlled Apple OS X software for iPhone/iPod users. Those are the true "walled garden" lovers/ignorers.
VLC should look at their community, IRC channel, developer public comments for why on earth their developer level dropped to zero with such amazing success. Imagine you are a multimedia developer, is there anything more visible and easy to contribute than VLC? Get a CVS pwd, start showing off with your coding capabilities... Really interesting... I suspect some bad treatment to Mac users/Developers going on. BTW, they should look at pure numbers, not some troll/idiot comments from some download sites or blogs. They are currently de facto standard multimedia player on OS X. They should figure this fact if not already.
PS: Not a big VLC fan really while it saves us all the time at TV. I personally use Coreplayer OS X which is really really unpopular and commercial application which does amazing things like playing 720P HD/H264 on G4 1.42 Ghz.
Mysterious (and ignored) thing is, Adobe won't implement GPU acceleration on Flash beta 10.1 on OS X citing "not stable interface" or "not enough documentation"... Whatever, the reality is, a Mac Mini with NV9400M can play 1080p Flash video with 3% CPU load under Windows Vista/XP/7 but it will choke the CPU (no matter how powerful) on OS X. As far as I understand, GPU accelerated version is either available or soon to be available under x86/Linux too.
Game developers, once interested in GC figured "once you write for GC, it will be OS X only" and they stay away too.
Apple made a big mistake acting like Microsoft. They should have released GC simultaneously on both OS X and Windows, with decent developer support and they could become de-facto standard for multi core/GPU acceleration which game developers are dying for. Of course, it would be really hard but not impossible.
First of all, the engine of Safari is open source, portable. See it at http://webkit.org/ . It is so platform neutral that Gnome camp, KDE Camp (Qt 4) and Apple's toughest smart phone competitor (Nokia) uses it.
Do you see anything like mshtml.org ? Please tell me if you see one. Even Apple is not a convicted monopoly, by offering their Webkit openly, for free to dozens (including competitors) and enabling even MS IE to use it, if they wish, the situation changes instantly.
Stop comparing Apple Safari to Windows IE, they are really, really irrelevant. BTW; where is MS IE 8 for OS X? For what exact reason it is not shipped? Because MS wants to "punish" OS X users for not choosing Windows. Same can be said about Linux/BSD. EU and US Judicial system is dealing with a company like that. A total spoiled 6 year old rich kid.
Where are those "more people" and why don't they openly protest that Icaza clown who has effectively took over the project and polluting its every bit with Mono? I remember Gnome 1.x, those times, it was showing the current MS Windows and MacOS interface as some dinosaur from past. What happened and what kind of stuff these people are busy with rather than Silverlight banner arguments?
They should remove "donate" buttons, remove GNU from the name and live happily with the MS Jobs they get. Currently, they are robbing people with false promises and GNU name/trust.
I tried to be a "nice guy" and tried my best to get Silverlight 1 to my system. I was impressed with its video decoding performance and openly said it on die hard Apple download sites... Later, MS simply dropped PowerPC support and MS apologists called "PowerPC is dead"... Well, it is dead in sense of no new hardware shipped, they didn't all explode or turned off forever when SJobs announced Intel switch. Adobe even SMP/multi core enabled the Flash player 10 on PPC, even advancing it.
Anyway, want to benchmark if MS really changed without even running anything other than browser? Check if they ship MS Windows Media Player for OS X, Intel version. Or, check if they actually WARN poor Mac Switchers that their Windows Media Player for PPC is unmaintained, won't get security fixes, will make _all_ installed browsers slow since it runs in PPC emulation, it won't play anything modern. Guess what? They are actually happy to make OS X systems unstable that way so they don't pull the download from their site. It is also Apple's fault not openly protesting it and not removing their "apple downloads" entry so it would help independent download sites to decide. Every single download of Windows Media Player means another destabilized OS X.
BTW, the MS Office, the pricey Office which OS X users pay for and makes huge money for MS. Its latest version installed in "user 502", the traditional powerless User account on OS X, especially on corporate. I took my time to check it, it is basically impossible to make that mistake if you are using Apple's packager. Especially if you are MS with thousands of engineers with huge expertise on Mac platform. As Miguel gang loves to accuse people of being paranoid, lets be paranoid... Why did MS install it under user 502 but not under 503? How could they make such a mistake? Why don't they remove Windows Media Player PPC _trojan_ from their downloads?
Now it is owned by a giant (Nokia), it is LGPL too. Want to know how serious they are about Qt? In 2 years, all Nokia devices and Symbian foundation devices will be basically "kernel for running Qt". The projects already started to popup and they are getting great reviews from the always "doom and gloom" Symbian community. E.g. Skype for S60 beta.
In 2 years, all those "cheap S40" devices will become "cheap S60 devices" with Qt. I speak about 150 million devices in everyone's hand. All high end Linux powered "N series" will be "Linux kernel for running Qt".
If future is mobile/touch/iPhone, Qt and Cocoa (GNUStep) has already won. GNU should be busy with replicating the entire Cocoa (minus Apple exclusive and DRM stuff) to GNUStep and somehow make use of Qt in the process.
Silverlight has already gave up the "MS Flash" promise. It will have better features on Windows and less features on OS X, which is officially supported, not by some hack plugin. These guys are running Silverlight ad, do they know where Silverlight is heading? It is designed/coded on MS Visual Studio for God's sake (check screenshot at page). It was taken as a complete joke on OS X land, with pathetic download numbers and people not even caring to flame on comments.
Flash on the other hand, will unify on a SINGLE spec, the demos/betas are already there so it is working... We speak about potentially half a billion devices in 2-3 years of time frame including MS Windows Mobile and iPhone.
Just to let you know, Silverlight is not going anywhere but MS spent so much money so they can't say "We give up." No reason to fight over a born dead plugin.
Look to MS Halloween documents and especially the part they say "easily divided" to Free/Open Source community and tell me it has nothing to do with the current situation.
Slashdot users and thousands of bloggers are calling each other names because some DEAD project, which doesn't progress, took MS money to show an ad on their semi official site. Prejudice my ass really.
I don't care what Icaza or your future intentions are, the open source is healthy and good as never before (check iPhone license sometime) and some MS reject idiot tries to divide community with his half ass clone which doesn't do a SHIT. Just because some MS lawyers/IT suits designed something which suits to GPL, it doesn't make it GPL. It is GPL in a IT Lawyer sense, it is not really GPL otherwise.
Want to code with MS technologies? Look nowhere else than http://www.microsoft.com/NET/ , there, all features, performance, a perfect roadmap which isn't tied to some almost chapter 11 company. I am sure the actual.NET apps and frameworks already shows Mono as some dinosaur. MS Net 3.5 SP1 shipped, 4.x is already at beta stage... What is the functionality level of Mono? What is the functionality level of Sun Java in 4 platforms? Equal right? Equal... Will always be equal.
I think it became more clear that these guys are abusing a project with your name on it. Tell them to get rid of Gnome name, support something which may replace it (e.g. KDE) and live happily.
All I see on Gnome guys blogs are "Did this with Mono, did that with Mono, they did this with Mono on iPhone"... The "Mono" they talk about is Microsoft.NET clone and these guys are supposed to keep open source desktop experience at same level as Windows 7, Snow Leopard.
Your biggest mistake was letting Icaza get a name with your project but anyway, that is already history.
If people see that Icaza clown as a representative of Gnome and see those lame "lets trojan the debian" tactics coming from the Gnome camp, they can predict everything regarding to.NET with Gnome.
First, Gnome must distance themselves from that MS reject, second they should come clean about Tomboy, for what EXACT REASON it was written in.NET and why Gnome team pushed it.
Even Windows camp and OS X camp started to see Gnome as some kind of a joke especially after this Mono (Made in Mexico) soap opera. Everyone on planet, even 13 year old kids knows you can't replicate a Microsoft technology just like you can't make Cocoa with OpenStep.
Gnome guys should get rid of trojans in them or I think, the FSF/GNU and FOSS community will get rid of them. Signs are already there.
Gnome was created by GNU guys, the vision and the name belongs to them.
I suggest DOTNETDesktop or Icaza can come up with a stylish name like Mono/Stereo/Dolby Digital whatever.
What they want is to ship a freaking Mono desktop and they can't dare to tell it to public yet. As releasing a.NET Clone with GNU license would be really pathetic/impossible, they want to get rid of license.
IMHO, GNU should get rid of them very quick and support KDE and OpenStep. Yes, the OpenStep which people ignore.
I really remember IE always had that "Wizard", way before Opera ASA heroically (no sarcasm) sued them. It must be a pro-active move but regardless, it exists.
What if Judge orders to remove lots of features from both Apple and Nokia devices? It will be a total mess, a comedy like newer devices having less features.
These days, the devices get monthly firmware updates. "It is built into chip, we can't change." is not an excuse anymore. As both companies are playing with justice system, system can play with them in very evil way too.
Issue is, Nokia already installs gigantic amount of device drivers, frameworks to the host OS (Windows) and it would be trivial to add a ext2 vfs to the set. Nobody would bother either, at least the people who thinks having 290 MB of application suite (PC Suite) to communicate with their device is normal.
I am not saying Apple does some sort of magic thing either, their support files are huge, equal amount of "risky", "deep running" device drivers installed.
Wonder what if the general public knows how risky and dangerous running FAT is, especially with removable, gigantic, high end memory cards and offered an easy to install (just like Adobe Flash), tiny "driver"? At last resort, they could do the trick Apple did in HFS+ transtition. Put the driver to the first partition which will also be locked, put some informative readme files (in all languages) and a decent, WHQL certified driver which will be digitally signed and comes in MSI/PKG files for both Windows and OS X?
It is fine up to 2 GB but really, having 32GB cards running that backwards filesystem has become the IT comedy of all times. Even MS does every trick on UI book to "save you" from formatting a drive in FAT these days.
Funny enough, HPFS (grandfather of NTFS) is a full MS technology. They knew FAT is going nowhere back in 1990s so the first thing they did was getting rid of it... At least until the fight broke with IBM. I believe the FS of Xenix (MS Unix, older than MS-DOS) was more advanced than FAT already. Just like they had to copy CP/M, they had to copy its backwards filesystem too. You know, IBM even asked for a CP/M like prompt.
If I definitely need Windows compatibility, I even format the 2 GB USB sticks in NTFS format. At least I know its roots and how it operates. I stay away from FAT as long as possible.
Call me old fashioned but after figuring Apple's stance against input managers (most of them) and knowing how they really don't care about things plugging into their apps (they never test), I gave up trying to "hack" Safari by any reason. There is one, single input manager in my OS and it is 1 Password. I keep it since it is professionally managed, updated, tested etc. I am not saying "input managers" are evil like some trolls do. I think it is a great technology which is becoming victim of abusers and the wrong way it was implemented.
Another option is hacking the "resource" of Safari so it will point to different URL while searching. I guess JWZ did it once. Sadly, Leopard/Post Leopard Safari is very strictly signed (including resources/icons) and Apple's firewall is a kind of black box which hates a signed application becoming unsigned.
I hate the idea of paying to OS X, Apple devices coming with it and not having any other option than Google on default browser of OS X which I also finance by using Apple OS/Products. Windows/iPhone Safari coming with Yahoo option adds more to the issue. Why does Windows users have choice and we don't? Why does Apple try to make money with that engine while MS at least provides some sort of "wizard" to make your own choices, even a http mail service?
I personally use Opera which is a tiny company compared to anything and they happily provide the option to change search engine while their only income is from Google/Yahoo. In fact, browser could be free thanks to those deals. They provide the option, Apple, a multi billion gigantic company doesn't. That is the issue.
ps: If you like Webkit engine, Omniweb is also free and lots of ideas on Safari 4 comes from it in fact.
If MS could get rid of old fashion thinking, they would be pushing Bing to Mozilla and even Apple (Safari) right now. Of course, you would get a chair to your head if you could dare to propose it to Balmer before getting fired.
Allthough there is a change (it doesn't suggest IE), MS still can't think like a company who ships a search engine. If I were them, I would ship "bing search" to devices down to J2ME dumb ones, detect browser and suggest "click here to use Bing as search engine in Firefox", use the technologies present in the competing browsers...
Anyway, they are MS, they won't do it and Google can keep leeching personal information from people.
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If Apple allowed 3rd party, it would change the Safari in good way too. They would find themselves competing with 3rd party companies/engines and would feel forced to fix quirks, add better features, add better performance.
As they are in safe (!) area with app store rejector interns, they don't feel like doing anything.
On Symbian S60 (which Mozilla ignores), there is a browser called "Skyfire" which is a shell to a "all plugins installed" Firefox. Believe or not, it can even play wmedia embedded (at least at Nasa TV). There is Opera 10 Mobile beta which is also amazingly unique since it is the exact same browser on desktop without any proxies, just with opt-in compression. There is a Webkit based browser, a Chinese and very impressive browser etc. Idea is, Nokia gets feedback/flamebait from customers asking why their own Webkit based browser doesnt do some things they do and they feel forced to enhance it. Or, they can easily say "Hate our ROM browser? Just click a competitor sisx file, install and use it."
Chair throwing guy could be right that amazing amount of apps on app store may have something to do with the browser being unusable.
Don't forget the idiot marked you as flamebait too, besides app store rejector geniuses, there is also a customer base who will easily abuse their mod points whenever they see something like your post.
Currently, Opera 10 is available on every handset which is open to 3rd party. Read it as iPhone excluded.
J2ME (via Opera Mini), Symbian (which has 40% share and not even mentioned by Mozilla), Windows Mobile and Android supported. It is basically the same engine as Desktop one, bit by bit thanks to their ultra portable web renderer. Even "dead" (chap 11.) UIQ3 is supported somehow with a native client.
They are packing "Widgets" which are based on W3C standards for desktop right now, Opera 10.20 alpha does run same widget across 3 desktop platforms. Linux, OS X and Windows. It doesn't need to crack into their build system to predict they will go mobile with that idea.
What bothers me is, PC Pro, a UK based site doesn't even ask why on earth Symbian is not even mentioned or supported since Symbian is actually a british thing to begin with. Nor they fail to bother checking Opera which supports some handsets/operating systems which are abandoned by vendor themselves.
For web designers, widget developers, there is nothing to bother. They as a small company always supported standards, somehow failed to get market share because of it. So, there is no "Opera specific" quirk. It is all W3C.
What if the people at Apple shameless enough to ask money for full screen video playback (for years!) thinks they can't sell upgraded hardware if they enable GPU acceleration features?
I mean a company sized as Adobe does not joke. They say there is no way to enable GPU decoding for Flash 10.1 beta. That is amazingly big deal especially with the rise of h264 encoded flash video.
VLC's issues, I can guess just by release notes.. They lived a massive problem with gcc 4.2 /PPC compatibility, had to drop Tiger (10.4) support getting the flame from users (instead of Apple who didn't do it for 10.4), some idiotic trolls keep on "Not Mac like" whining and their good intentions of taking them serious...
As result, millions of people not having issues and enjoying their software gets the problem. This is the exact reason why I started hating loud mouth "maccie" community.
Quicktime X, which we all hoped as a good client for the Quicktime Framework turned out to be a joke really.
It lacks 3rd party component support... It has no clue what a qtl file is (try nasa.gov/ntv) , lacks 3rd party export support... IMHO if you are a bit serious about media, no need to be professional, you gotta select "quicktime" while installing. That is in case you have not upgraded yet.
What bothers me is that great, visionary framework/arch they are giving bad name with that client. Imagine it was designed/implemented in Apple's darkest days...
Perhaps you didn't mean to be offensive but trust me, this "mac users like expensive software with apple logo" like things doesn't help anyone.
"Mac users" you see have chosen a Mach/BSD/NeXTStep schizophrenically hybrid OS over an OS used by 90% of population. If you remove "Apple" friendly logo and UI, OS X is exactly that. So, if something is good, they use it. In fact, they keep using it. Macs without VLC is a rare thing...
The article doesn't speak about lack of funding or users not already donating. The article and the signs lately shows a mysterious lack of Mac developers/packagers for some reason. It is really mysterious if you ask me and no, Mac users doesn't give 40 dollars to a media player no matter how great it can be. Some German company learned it hard way and they still keep ignoring that lesson.
It is really amazing design glitch on their part. Their 1.x binary is an universal and something Altivec designers/coders should really see.
These guys (they are also creators of MKV) seems to code old school with hand written assembly all over the place. There is no other explanation especially on G4.
I got the 1.3.2 (6909) here. The version 2.x could be Intel only, I really don't know for sure too since it isn't even released.
What it shows is the amount of optimization one can really do for a CPU having 133Mhz FSB so I really wished it was open source. Well, reality is sad sometimes.
No matter what your tech oriented sites say, not having IE in native form having 100% compatibility with Windows (not 99.9, 100%!) is still a "punishment" especially at work place.
Lets say whole World became "Safari only". On Linux, you could pick Arora, on Windows you can get original, 100% same Safari Windows version. MS is a company who does punish users by locking companies to "works better/only on IE" solutions and not providing the client for operating systems other than Windows.
Are you sure if you code fine, Mac users won't pick your solution? Check Amazon.com top software sales sometime. You will see MS Office for OS X there, all the time. Don't believe the whining you read everywhere, they buy it and use it, no matter how expensive (compared to Win) it is.
For plugins like Flash and high end commercial games, engine conversion, FreeBSD is irrelevant. What I talk about is something which will run under MS Visual Studio based development environment, whatever game developers/plugin developers use.
Of course, FreeBSD will have GC just like they have launchd but it won't really matter to some game developer or a plugin developer like Adobe.
Are you really joking? VLC is the most successful open source project on Mac, forever. It even beats Firefox.
Here is a top sw downloads listing from absolutely general user focused download site: http://www.macupdate.com/popular/
VLC has also become de-facto remote controlled Apple OS X software for iPhone/iPod users. Those are the true "walled garden" lovers/ignorers.
VLC should look at their community, IRC channel, developer public comments for why on earth their developer level dropped to zero with such amazing success. Imagine you are a multimedia developer, is there anything more visible and easy to contribute than VLC? Get a CVS pwd, start showing off with your coding capabilities... Really interesting... I suspect some bad treatment to Mac users/Developers going on. BTW, they should look at pure numbers, not some troll/idiot comments from some download sites or blogs. They are currently de facto standard multimedia player on OS X. They should figure this fact if not already.
PS: Not a big VLC fan really while it saves us all the time at TV. I personally use Coreplayer OS X which is really really unpopular and commercial application which does amazing things like playing 720P HD/H264 on G4 1.42 Ghz.
Mysterious (and ignored) thing is, Adobe won't implement GPU acceleration on Flash beta 10.1 on OS X citing "not stable interface" or "not enough documentation"... Whatever, the reality is, a Mac Mini with NV9400M can play 1080p Flash video with 3% CPU load under Windows Vista/XP/7 but it will choke the CPU (no matter how powerful) on OS X. As far as I understand, GPU accelerated version is either available or soon to be available under x86/Linux too.
Game developers, once interested in GC figured "once you write for GC, it will be OS X only" and they stay away too.
Apple made a big mistake acting like Microsoft. They should have released GC simultaneously on both OS X and Windows, with decent developer support and they could become de-facto standard for multi core/GPU acceleration which game developers are dying for. Of course, it would be really hard but not impossible.
First of all, the engine of Safari is open source, portable. See it at http://webkit.org/ . It is so platform neutral that Gnome camp, KDE Camp (Qt 4) and Apple's toughest smart phone competitor (Nokia) uses it.
Do you see anything like mshtml.org ? Please tell me if you see one. Even Apple is not a convicted monopoly, by offering their Webkit openly, for free to dozens (including competitors) and enabling even MS IE to use it, if they wish, the situation changes instantly.
Stop comparing Apple Safari to Windows IE, they are really, really irrelevant. BTW; where is MS IE 8 for OS X? For what exact reason it is not shipped? Because MS wants to "punish" OS X users for not choosing Windows. Same can be said about Linux/BSD. EU and US Judicial system is dealing with a company like that. A total spoiled 6 year old rich kid.
Where are those "more people" and why don't they openly protest that Icaza clown who has effectively took over the project and polluting its every bit with Mono? I remember Gnome 1.x, those times, it was showing the current MS Windows and MacOS interface as some dinosaur from past. What happened and what kind of stuff these people are busy with rather than Silverlight banner arguments?
They should remove "donate" buttons, remove GNU from the name and live happily with the MS Jobs they get. Currently, they are robbing people with false promises and GNU name/trust.
I tried to be a "nice guy" and tried my best to get Silverlight 1 to my system. I was impressed with its video decoding performance and openly said it on die hard Apple download sites... Later, MS simply dropped PowerPC support and MS apologists called "PowerPC is dead"... Well, it is dead in sense of no new hardware shipped, they didn't all explode or turned off forever when SJobs announced Intel switch. Adobe even SMP/multi core enabled the Flash player 10 on PPC, even advancing it.
Anyway, want to benchmark if MS really changed without even running anything other than browser? Check if they ship MS Windows Media Player for OS X, Intel version. Or, check if they actually WARN poor Mac Switchers that their Windows Media Player for PPC is unmaintained, won't get security fixes, will make _all_ installed browsers slow since it runs in PPC emulation, it won't play anything modern. Guess what? They are actually happy to make OS X systems unstable that way so they don't pull the download from their site. It is also Apple's fault not openly protesting it and not removing their "apple downloads" entry so it would help independent download sites to decide. Every single download of Windows Media Player means another destabilized OS X.
BTW, the MS Office, the pricey Office which OS X users pay for and makes huge money for MS. Its latest version installed in "user 502", the traditional powerless User account on OS X, especially on corporate. I took my time to check it, it is basically impossible to make that mistake if you are using Apple's packager. Especially if you are MS with thousands of engineers with huge expertise on Mac platform. As Miguel gang loves to accuse people of being paranoid, lets be paranoid... Why did MS install it under user 502 but not under 503? How could they make such a mistake? Why don't they remove Windows Media Player PPC _trojan_ from their downloads?
Now it is owned by a giant (Nokia), it is LGPL too. Want to know how serious they are about Qt? In 2 years, all Nokia devices and Symbian foundation devices will be basically "kernel for running Qt". The projects already started to popup and they are getting great reviews from the always "doom and gloom" Symbian community. E.g. Skype for S60 beta.
In 2 years, all those "cheap S40" devices will become "cheap S60 devices" with Qt. I speak about 150 million devices in everyone's hand. All high end Linux powered "N series" will be "Linux kernel for running Qt".
If future is mobile/touch/iPhone, Qt and Cocoa (GNUStep) has already won. GNU should be busy with replicating the entire Cocoa (minus Apple exclusive and DRM stuff) to GNUStep and somehow make use of Qt in the process.
Guys, you are fighting for Silverlight clone's banner ad and the RMS/GNU finally said "Please, get serious" to them right?
Here is Silverlight 4 preview: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/03/silverlight_4_review/
Silverlight has already gave up the "MS Flash" promise. It will have better features on Windows and less features on OS X, which is officially supported, not by some hack plugin. These guys are running Silverlight ad, do they know where Silverlight is heading? It is designed/coded on MS Visual Studio for God's sake (check screenshot at page). It was taken as a complete joke on OS X land, with pathetic download numbers and people not even caring to flame on comments.
Flash on the other hand, will unify on a SINGLE spec, the demos/betas are already there so it is working... We speak about potentially half a billion devices in 2-3 years of time frame including MS Windows Mobile and iPhone.
Just to let you know, Silverlight is not going anywhere but MS spent so much money so they can't say "We give up." No reason to fight over a born dead plugin.
Look to MS Halloween documents and especially the part they say "easily divided" to Free/Open Source community and tell me it has nothing to do with the current situation.
Slashdot users and thousands of bloggers are calling each other names because some DEAD project, which doesn't progress, took MS money to show an ad on their semi official site. Prejudice my ass really.
I don't care what Icaza or your future intentions are, the open source is healthy and good as never before (check iPhone license sometime) and some MS reject idiot tries to divide community with his half ass clone which doesn't do a SHIT. Just because some MS lawyers/IT suits designed something which suits to GPL, it doesn't make it GPL. It is GPL in a IT Lawyer sense, it is not really GPL otherwise.
Want to code with MS technologies? Look nowhere else than http://www.microsoft.com/NET/ , there, all features, performance, a perfect roadmap which isn't tied to some almost chapter 11 company. I am sure the actual .NET apps and frameworks already shows Mono as some dinosaur. MS Net 3.5 SP1 shipped, 4.x is already at beta stage... What is the functionality level of Mono? What is the functionality level of Sun Java in 4 platforms? Equal right? Equal... Will always be equal.
I think it became more clear that these guys are abusing a project with your name on it. Tell them to get rid of Gnome name, support something which may replace it (e.g. KDE) and live happily.
All I see on Gnome guys blogs are "Did this with Mono, did that with Mono, they did this with Mono on iPhone"... The "Mono" they talk about is Microsoft .NET clone and these guys are supposed to keep open source desktop experience at same level as Windows 7, Snow Leopard.
Your biggest mistake was letting Icaza get a name with your project but anyway, that is already history.
If people see that Icaza clown as a representative of Gnome and see those lame "lets trojan the debian" tactics coming from the Gnome camp, they can predict everything regarding to .NET with Gnome.
First, Gnome must distance themselves from that MS reject, second they should come clean about Tomboy, for what EXACT REASON it was written in .NET and why Gnome team pushed it.
Even Windows camp and OS X camp started to see Gnome as some kind of a joke especially after this Mono (Made in Mexico) soap opera. Everyone on planet, even 13 year old kids knows you can't replicate a Microsoft technology just like you can't make Cocoa with OpenStep.
Gnome guys should get rid of trojans in them or I think, the FSF/GNU and FOSS community will get rid of them. Signs are already there.
Gnome was created by GNU guys, the vision and the name belongs to them.
I suggest DOTNETDesktop or Icaza can come up with a stylish name like Mono/Stereo/Dolby Digital whatever.
What they want is to ship a freaking Mono desktop and they can't dare to tell it to public yet. As releasing a .NET Clone with GNU license would be really pathetic/impossible, they want to get rid of license.
IMHO, GNU should get rid of them very quick and support KDE and OpenStep. Yes, the OpenStep which people ignore.
I really remember IE always had that "Wizard", way before Opera ASA heroically (no sarcasm) sued them. It must be a pro-active move but regardless, it exists.
What if Judge orders to remove lots of features from both Apple and Nokia devices? It will be a total mess, a comedy like newer devices having less features.
These days, the devices get monthly firmware updates. "It is built into chip, we can't change." is not an excuse anymore. As both companies are playing with justice system, system can play with them in very evil way too.
What would rock at this point is: MS getting into fight and suing BOTH of them :)
Do you think I am joking? I expect anything from MS regarding mobile operating systems since it is only Windows Mobile not going anywhere.
Issue is, Nokia already installs gigantic amount of device drivers, frameworks to the host OS (Windows) and it would be trivial to add a ext2 vfs to the set. Nobody would bother either, at least the people who thinks having 290 MB of application suite (PC Suite) to communicate with their device is normal.
I am not saying Apple does some sort of magic thing either, their support files are huge, equal amount of "risky", "deep running" device drivers installed.
Wonder what if the general public knows how risky and dangerous running FAT is, especially with removable, gigantic, high end memory cards and offered an easy to install (just like Adobe Flash), tiny "driver"? At last resort, they could do the trick Apple did in HFS+ transtition. Put the driver to the first partition which will also be locked, put some informative readme files (in all languages) and a decent, WHQL certified driver which will be digitally signed and comes in MSI/PKG files for both Windows and OS X?
It is fine up to 2 GB but really, having 32GB cards running that backwards filesystem has become the IT comedy of all times. Even MS does every trick on UI book to "save you" from formatting a drive in FAT these days.
Funny enough, HPFS (grandfather of NTFS) is a full MS technology. They knew FAT is going nowhere back in 1990s so the first thing they did was getting rid of it... At least until the fight broke with IBM. I believe the FS of Xenix (MS Unix, older than MS-DOS) was more advanced than FAT already. Just like they had to copy CP/M, they had to copy its backwards filesystem too. You know, IBM even asked for a CP/M like prompt.
If I definitely need Windows compatibility, I even format the 2 GB USB sticks in NTFS format. At least I know its roots and how it operates. I stay away from FAT as long as possible.
Call me old fashioned but after figuring Apple's stance against input managers (most of them) and knowing how they really don't care about things plugging into their apps (they never test), I gave up trying to "hack" Safari by any reason. There is one, single input manager in my OS and it is 1 Password. I keep it since it is professionally managed, updated, tested etc. I am not saying "input managers" are evil like some trolls do. I think it is a great technology which is becoming victim of abusers and the wrong way it was implemented.
Another option is hacking the "resource" of Safari so it will point to different URL while searching. I guess JWZ did it once. Sadly, Leopard/Post Leopard Safari is very strictly signed (including resources/icons) and Apple's firewall is a kind of black box which hates a signed application becoming unsigned.
I hate the idea of paying to OS X, Apple devices coming with it and not having any other option than Google on default browser of OS X which I also finance by using Apple OS/Products. Windows/iPhone Safari coming with Yahoo option adds more to the issue. Why does Windows users have choice and we don't? Why does Apple try to make money with that engine while MS at least provides some sort of "wizard" to make your own choices, even a http mail service?
I personally use Opera which is a tiny company compared to anything and they happily provide the option to change search engine while their only income is from Google/Yahoo. In fact, browser could be free thanks to those deals. They provide the option, Apple, a multi billion gigantic company doesn't. That is the issue.
ps: If you like Webkit engine, Omniweb is also free and lots of ideas on Safari 4 comes from it in fact.
If MS could get rid of old fashion thinking, they would be pushing Bing to Mozilla and even Apple (Safari) right now. Of course, you would get a chair to your head if you could dare to propose it to Balmer before getting fired.
Allthough there is a change (it doesn't suggest IE), MS still can't think like a company who ships a search engine. If I were them, I would ship "bing search" to devices down to J2ME dumb ones, detect browser and suggest "click here to use Bing as search engine in Firefox", use the technologies present in the competing browsers...
Anyway, they are MS, they won't do it and Google can keep leeching personal information from people.