So I’m watching the keynote from yesterday, and I thought I’d throw some quick not-too-analytical thoughts into the fray now that I’m stuck here for another 40 minutes anyway.
First off, the new desktop looks nice. I have a folder named ‘clutter’ where I drag all the ‘wow, I’d love to keep that, but I have no use for it’-stuff. Basically the same as the new download folder, except that it’s a nicer implementation. Other than that, transparency and reflection is all great and all, but since I always have my dock hidden anyway, it will be incidental.
Stacks look great, and for people who don’t use Quicksilver (you know, your mom…), I’m sure it’ll be a nice way to launch apps as well. I hope you can use the scroll-wheel to flip through the stacks…
The new Finder. Was it everything you hoped for? For as long as I’ve been a Mac user, people have been whining about the Finder, and I really don’t understand why; it’s always been working great for me. The changes look nice, though it will be interesting to see just how useful Coverflow really is in a file-management environment.
Surely though, stuff like the built-in quickview is one of those things that gets the least ‘press’, but which will see the most usage.
Accessing your computers via .Mac sounds like a great feature, too bad .Mac has largely fallen behind the curve. I let my subscription expire last year, and I haven’t missed it one day.
Spaces… I’m still absolutely non-plussed. Maybe Apple’s implementation will be more intuitive to the way I work, but I’m very much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ kinda guy, and I’ll soon forget that I have more desktops than the one I’m working on. And when a new mail rolls in, I’ll just open a browser and go to Gmail, even if I have a Gmail window open somewhere in the background already.
Safari for Windows? Well done. Am I going to use it? Probably not. I’m way too stuck in Firefox and the many extensions that make my life a hell of a lot easier. In fact, I can’t imagine the web without Google Sync, Adblock, GreaseMonkey (for my beloved Gmail scripts!) and of course the unconquerable Firebug (without which I couldn’t write Javascript).
Plus, even though the new Safari is great in many ways with stuff like resizable textareas, inline searching and reorderable tabs, plus form widgets are now skinnable… Not sure that’s a good thing… Mr. Hicks has some more observations.
But what’s it for? Well, I think Mr. Gruber probably gets it right.
But again, without the extensibility of Firefox, even though I like the rendering on Safari better, it just isn’t as interesting as it could be.
Finally, while not everyone is enthused and content about being able to do ‘web applications’ for the iPhone, I’m actually looking forward to it, as it’s something I might be able to do myself… But touting it as a proper alternative to actual app development? Not so much.
Either way, the keynote is coming to and end, and I need to get to work.
Most impressive demonstration of the keynote was probably the Core Animation video-wall, which I hope will make its way onto the net (and support misc codecs to boot).
Now, ask me: “Michael, do you want an Airport with a drive on it for Time Machine? Would that be nice?”
So yeah, no big splashes, I’m just still looking forward to the iPhone and Leopard.
I’m a bit puzzled at Safari for Windows. It’s nice that Apple is hoping to attract people through selective releases of their software (a kind of “first time free” business model) on other platforms, but they show an incredible lack of respect for the platforms they “honour”.
If I’d ported my Windows software to Mac and had gone out of my way to reimplement the GUI controls so my Mac application looked like a Windows application, on Mac, some zealot would hunt me down and shoot me.
Safari, just like iTunes, violates shitloads of Windows GUI guidelines. It feels like a completely alien application and the fact that it’s made by Apple means nothing to me. So they’re really just releasing some fugly (in Windows GUI terms) application and hoping that somehow, I like their GUI style more. I don’t get it.
iTunes had a specific business reason for being on Windows (music market share), but what the fuck is Safari doing on Windows? It’s not making Apple any money, so why remove an argument for moving onto the Apple platform in the first place.
Safari on Windows is just weird.
By and large, I agree. In fact, there is one thing in particular that is in my face about Safari and iTunes on Windows; I use MultiMon to handle my two 21” monitors here at work and it has a nice feature which lets you just grab a fullscreen window and drag to the other monitor (it will then snap from one to the other). This doesn’t work on Apple’s applications… And since I use iTunes a lot, it does become very annoying over the course of the day.
No, you’d probably just be ridiculed for either porting XP’s Dublo look or for porting Vista’s ‘so shiny it hurts the interface’ look :)
Seriously though, I’m inbetween chairs on the ‘following the Window GUI guidelines’. First of all, Microsoft doesn’t even follow them (Windows Media Player?), so it’s not like there’s a precedent there. Same goes for Apple on OS X of course, so…
Secondly, I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that — if they are otherwise well designed — each app can really stray quite far from the GUI guidelines of its parent OS.
Sure, Safari wouldn’t really be hurt from adhering closer to the Windows look and feel, so I guess you’re right in this case :) — But principally my point stands!
That’s where you’re wrong. Like Firefox, Flock, Opera and so on and so forth, Google (and Yahoo for that matter) pay the browser providers money for hooking into their search engine. And I quote:
And of course my Textile plugin is borked… Grrr.
My guess is that increasing the number of “app” developers for iPhone is a big part of the reason for porting Safari to Windows.
And, evidently, generating a shitload more money for Apple.
I just Dowloaded Safari from the apple site (windows user, big facination with apple) and i found it was slow.. very slow.. but its starting to come around for me. will it be like this forever?? cause this is annoying. im used to firefox..
Agree on the Safari stance – but it’ll be interesting to see how well it does!
You can tell the Developers weren’t too happy about the pseudo–SDK they were presented with – deadly silent the entire time …
Heh, definately. At least there’ll be some hooks to access the iPhone’s built-in stuff.
Something I just noticed: in the C:\Program Files\Safari folder exist 3 files: CFNetwork.dll, CoreFoundation.dll, and CoreGraphics.dll
Interesting…
I don’t care for Safari at all, for pretty much all the same Firefox reasons that you listed. Being on Windows though, it’s great that I won’t have to steal my brother’s MacBook every time I want to test a website I make. For that reason alone I have been hoping Apple would release Safari on Windows for a long time.
I should also add that by bundling it with iTunes they might be able to expose it to a lot of not-quite-so-tech-savvy people. Now that IE7’s growth has slowed to a crawl, it might help the rest of those aforementioned people finally get off IE6. I know that’s not something you care much about, given how this site looks in that browser, but I approve of anything that can reduce IE6 market share.
Safari on Windows is awesome for web developers as many have already pointed out.
Seems like the Apple fan boys are getting a little jealous their exclusive niche OS is getting bits ported over to the evil that is Windows.
I guess if I was an Apple fan boy I would be a little peeved too.
Why would you be peeved? And who gets jealous? And how is OS X a ‘niche’ OS?
What makes you think that?
mailto:lets you send mail. Addresses and phone numbers are recognized from their format and context. You’re not accessing the iPhone’s built-in stuff, you’re unconsciously linking to it. There’s no indication that information flows in the opposite direction. There’s no standards-based way to do so. And if there were such a way, there’d be an SDK.My thoughts exactly.
Just trolling through the usually bookmark of blogs a few of which are covering this same subject. The most popular reaction amongst the comments is good, as in pro Safari on Windows. But there’s always one die hard Apple fan who hates the idea of Safari on Windows simply because they feel they’ve lost a part of the exclusive OS they paid for or like it’s some sort of sell out. Basically I think they feel jealous at the fact Windows now has that feature it never had before. If you want to look at semantics, Ok so it’s not strictly jealously because Windows hasn’t exactly gained anything over OS X but you know what I mean. Maybe jealous was a poor choice of word.
It’s the idea that when you by a Mac you use OS X, which is something you can’t use on a PC. It’s what makes Macs Macs. Safari was unique to OS X and therefore unique to Macs, now this has changed. If I was an Apple fan boy I would be a little peeved I’ve lost a piece of my exclusive OS.
***And how is OS X a ‘niche’ OS?
OS X caters to those who have Macs (less than 5% of the market) that makes OS X niche.
I hate to argue semantics, but ‘niche’ isn’t really the word to use. A niche OS would be something like Windows CE for cars. Something very specialized, which only appealed to a very small number of people.
Besides, Windows Vista currently has a smaller market share than OS X; would you call Vista a ‘niche’ OS? Of course not.
They mentioned right in the keynote that you can access some of the iPhone’s built-in functionality, such as the ability to initiate a phone call.
It’s probably just some JavaScript hooks or something. Or maybe a custom protocol specified in the URL, like call://18008675309
However, I’ll be the first to admit that, compared to a full-blown SDK and native 3rd-party apps, doing web apps on the iPhone is weak sauce.
***“Something very specialized, which only appealed to a very small number of people.”
That to me is OS X which “appealed to”…or appeals to Mac users (relatively small number of people).
Vista is aimed at PC users its catering for the mainstream (so to speak) therefore it cant be a niche OS.
“OReillyMac: Many say that as long as they have to use Mac hardware …
OReillyMac: Mac OS X will remain a niche OS”
- http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/mac/2001/04/27/w_talk.html?page=2
Guess I just kinda agree with that view as long as Macs remain in the tiny minority.
But i can see why you might not agree with the idea of OS X being a niche .
Zain, OS X isn’t ‘specialized’ to appeal to a niche.
PS: The article you’re linking to is 6 years old.