Applelinks Tech Web Reader - Friday, August 29, 2008
Buy My Wife A MacBook Now Or Wait?
10 Mac Browsers Compared
Users Hidden By The Fog Of Browser Wars
Why does Safari stink?
Bloomberg kills Steve Jobs
How Steve Jobs' Obit Got Published
Five Things Steve Jobs Must Do Before He Dies
Clone and Boot: Another Advantage of the Mac OS
Students Will Help Save Apple
Why Everyone Is Picking On Apple
News Alert For Mac Fans: Apple Has Never Been Perfect
Apple Details Next-gen Multi-touch Techniques For Tablet Macs
Apple Patent Would Allow Full Mac Tablet
Installing Firefox, Printing Web Page Text and Using Mini-DVDs
The Mac Night Owl: Apple Is Releasing Products Too Early!
PC Mag: Bargain Hunt: Media Laptops
Buy My Wife A MacBook Now Or Wait?
David Alison says:
Okay, here's the deal: my wife's birthday is at the end of September. Since getting her an iPhone 3 weeks ago she's completely fallen for the thing and is now ready to accept a new Mac as a replacement for her rapidly dying Windows XP laptop. The Windows laptop she uses is running painfully slowly and needs a full reformat and reinstall. Since I'm now heavy into Macs I'd rather not deal with it anymore so the time has come.
That said I've got a bit of a challenge. My wife is a high school teacher and qualifies for not only an educational discount but also the special that Apple is running through September 15th that gives students and teachers up to a $299 rebate on a qualifying iPod purchase. That means we could get her a nice little MacBook and give the free 8GB iPod Touch to our oldest daughter in college.
This would be a slam dunk except for the news that's been building that Apple is on the verge of releasing updates to both the iPods and MacBooks......
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.davidalison.com/2008/08/buy-my-wife-macbook-now-or-wait.html
10 Mac Browsers Compared
Low End Mac's Simon Royal says:
I have always had an interest in web browsers for Mac OSX. Since the demise of Internet Explorer in 2001, nothing has really taken its place.....
This article aims to show which Mac browsers are best, in terms of stability, speed, general features, and compatibility.
1. Internet Explorer 5.2.3
2. Radon 1.02
3. Opera 9.25
4. Safari 3.1.1
5. Shiira 2.2
6. iCab 4.1.1
7. Firefox 3.0
8. Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.5
9. Flock 1.1.2
10. Camino 1.6.1
Internet Explorer 5.2.3
Time to load application & homepage: 5.2 seconds
Radon 1.02
Time to load application & homepage: 1.8 seconds
Opera 9.25
Time to load application & homepage: 1.4 seconds
WebKit Browsers
Safari 3.1.1
Time to load application & homepage: 1.2 seconds
Shiira 2.2
Time to load application & homepage: 1.4 seconds
iCab 4.1.1
Time to load application & homepage: 0.7 seconds
Mozilla Browsers
Firefox 3.0
Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.5
Flock 1.1.2
Time to load application & homepage: 3.1 seconds
Camino 1.6.1
Time to load application & homepage: 0.9 seconds
Conclusion
My choices are between Safari 3 and Camino 1.6 for speed, stability, and compatibility. Firefox 3 is still the best all-rounder for compatibility.
[Editor's note: Good summary, but it does underscore the ideosyncratic nature of browser speed performance with various setups - hardware and internet connections. I was fascinated to note that iCab, a browser I have great affection for, ended up fastest in Simon's testing. Personally, using iCab on a daily basis, I find that on many sites it lags Opera and Safari a bit, and is about on par with Firefox, although on some pages it can be astonishingly fast, and perhaps Simon's test page was one of those. I also find Netscape Navigator 9 to be just as fast or faster than the others on my old Pismo PowerBook, and Opera and Safari to be in a general saw-off for all-round speed champs. But I'm on a dial-up connection, so that may influence my comparative results.]
For the full report visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/royal/08sr/10-mac-browsers-compared.html
Users Hidden By The Fog Of Browser Wars
Leader ZDNet.co.uk says:
The introduction of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 marks another round in the browser wars.
The market is surprisingly vigorous, with IE, Safari, Firefox and Opera all promoting their own particular mix of performance, features, speed and compatibility.
This might seem good news for users: a competitive market at work focuses a developer's mind wonderfully. But that focus may not be on the user at all.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002982,39481768,00.htm
Why does Safari stink?
ZNet's Christopher Dawson says:
I started my day with several calls from our Special Ed folks who suddenly couldn't access their student information portal (e-Sped). I could access it without problem, our Special Education administrators could access it, but several teachers and counselors were discovering (since this was the first student day back at school) that e-Sped simply didn't look right.
They reported intermittent login problems, data not appearing in forms, navigation troubles, etc. Feeling like an epidemiologist hunting down the source of salmonella outbreak, I started looking at what made these users different. It probably won't surprise anyone that they were using Safari.
Some of my Mac users were fine; these users were running Firefox since I'd had it installed on most of the new Macs we'd rolled out this summer. Anyone who had reverted back to Safari or who my techs hadn't gotten to yet was having problems......
For the full commentary visit here:
http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1832
Bloomberg kills Steve Jobs
The Register's Lester Haines reports:
Bloomberg yesterday dispatched Apple supremo Steve Jobs to the hereafter with a 17-page obit inadvertently published during an apparent update, Gawker reports.
The short-lived homage - quickly pulled - contained a heartwarming tribute from Bill Gates....
For the full report visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/28/steve_jobs_obit/
The full text of the obit can be found here:
http://gawker.com/5042795/bloomberg-runs-steve-jobs-obituary
How Steve Jobs' Obit Got Published
Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt says:
The first rule of publishing is that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. (A corollary favored at Time Magazine, where I labored for nearly three decades, is that all copy is guilty until proved otherwise.)
None of this excuses, but it does help explain, how Bloomberg News managed to publish an obituary on Wednesday afternoon of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is still quite alive.
Advance work on famous figures' obits is nothing new, and given Jobs' well-publicized brush with pancreatic cancer four years ago and recent concerns about his weight loss, it's understandable that Bloomberg might choose this moment to update its piece on Jobs, although the version that got published contains no details about his health that weren't already in the public record.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/08/28/how-steve-jobs-obit-got-published/
Five Things Steve Jobs Must Do Before He Dies
Forbes' Brian Caulfield reports:
It's all true, almost. Bloomberg ran an obituary Wednesday for the man who made the computer as easy to use as the telephone, remade animated films, hooked the world on digital music and turned the phone into a truly smart, pocketable computer. There's just one tiny detail Bloomberg's write-up got wrong: Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs lives.
But while the rascally Jobs lives, another man is dead: Dave Freeman, 47, author of "100 Things to Do Before You Die." Freeman died this week after hitting his head at his Venice, Calif., home.
In that spirit, here are a few of the gadgets we'd like to see Jobs, 53, create before he goes.....
You can check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/6oopcj
Clone and Boot: Another Advantage of the Mac OS
Low End Mac's Kev Kitchens reports:
One of the most useful - and I believe coolest - features of the Mac OS is the amazing flexibility of the operating system. Specifically, I am referring to the ability of the OS to be copied from one computer to another without a need for reinstall.
Compared to Windows, the Mac OS is like a double jointed gymnast.
Something that most people may not realize is that an installed copy of the Mac OS can be almost endlessly copied and instantly run on any Mac for which there is basic hardware support....
This principle forms the basis of Low End Mac's Unsupported Leopard page. If I so desired, I could buy a copy of Leopard and install it on an external drive using my fairly new Intel-based iMac. I could then attach my eMac in Target Disk Mode and clone the Leopard installation to it using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.....
For the full report visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/kitchens/08kk/mac-clone-and-boot.html
Students Will Help Save Apple
BusinessWeek's Arik Hesseldahl says:
Take a look around and it's hard not to get depressed by all the negative economic news. Home prices keep sliding. Credit is drying up. Inflation fears are on the rise. And consumer confidence is lower than it's been since the early 1990s.
You would think all of this would eat into the business at Apple. The company's computers tend to be pricier than those from Dell or Hewlett-Packard, while its iPods and iPhones are the sort of discretionary purchases that consumers often cut out during an economic slowdown.
Paul Kedrosky thinks Apple is about to take a hit from the slowing economy.....
I think he's way off. So we've agreed to wager $50 on Apple's earnings announcement coming up in mid-October....
Kedrosky's assumption seems reasonable until you start looking at what's really driving Apple. For all the attention the iPhone has been getting, Apple's performance in the quarter ending Sept. 30 will largely be determined by sales of its computers.
And in this back-to-school season, college kids are buying Macs in numbers never seen before......
For the full commentary visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/6cpyao
Why Everyone Is Picking On Apple
Forbes' Brian Caulfield says:
It's been a rough month for Apple. The latest slap: Psystar, a company cranking out Apple clones said Wednesday it will sue the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer and gadget maker for anti-competitive practices.
The threat comes as reports trickle out that Dell plans to attack Apple's iPod business with a new line of music players and rival handset vendors such as Nokia plan to keep the iPhone knockoffs coming. Meanwhile, Apple is apologizing for glitches with its freshly launched MobileMe service after getting lambasted by reviewers like The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg. Even blogger Michael Arrington, an Apple bigot, is taking shots at Steve Jobs and Co.
So is everyone picking on Apple lately? It's not personal - it's just business.
Apple's business model is just too sweet for anyone in the hardscrabble hardware world to leave alone.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/5bnmf2
News Alert For Mac Fans: Apple Has Never Been Perfect
The New York Times' John Markoff says:
For Apple, these are the best of times and the worst of times.
The California consumer electronics company is on a tear like never before. It is winning market share from Microsoft, enough to persuade the software giant to embark on a costly ad campaign that has being described as a belated response to Apple's Vista-baiting Get-a-Mac ads. Apple stock has outpaced Google's, and in the space of a year the iPhone has turned the telecommunications industry in a knot trying to find a way to respond....
The flaw in the "Apple is not living up to some ideal of technology perfection" theme is that it neglects history.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/28/business/apple.php
Apple Details Next-gen Multi-touch Techniques For Tablet Macs
Appleinsider's Sam Oliver reports:
In a revised company filing discovered by AppleInsider, iPhone maker Apple Inc. illustrates a number of techniques that would pave the way for tablet Macs that display a near full-sized multi-touch keyboard and run an undiluted version of the Mac OS X operating system.
Much of the 52-page filing describes methods for accurately detecting and deciphering a plurality of simultaneous contacts on a touch screen, which sets the foundation for future tablet-based products that users can manipulate using not only more than one finger, but more than one hand.
The illustrations in the April 15, 2008 document, which builds on filings dating back two years, depict a tablet Mac with a full windowing interface, by which interface windows can be enlarged, shrunk, moved, and cycled, rather than being locked or set in place as they are with the company's iPhone.....
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/5oucfo
Apple Patent Would Allow Full Mac Tablet
Electronista reports:
Apple has been developing interface technology that would allow for a multi-touch handheld with full Mac OS X rather than a streamlined interface, the company has revealed through a US patent filing published today. Showing an example device which is clearly portable, the patent for a gesture system would adapt many of the basic control scheme elements familiar to Mac OS X to an environment where touch input is assumed but which is larger than an iPhone or iPod touch-class device.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/08/28/apple.mac.tablet.patent/
Installing Firefox, Printing Web Page Text and Using Mini-DVDs
My First Mac's Chuck Konfrst says:
Welcome to My First Mac's Q&A column. It is said that Macs are easier to use, but they are still complex in their own right. Here are a few questions we have received lately from readers like you. Sometimes we reformat the questions for clarity and presentation.
This week we have questions about that big Firefox install box, How to print text from a website and what to do with mini DVDs.
I don't really like Safari so I downloaded Firefox, But every time I open Firefox, Firefox opens but also Another window opens that says drag firefox into the applications folder. I have already done this but it still says drag it in....what shold I do and Why does it do this!?
You can check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/674xvu
The Mac Night Owl: Apple Is Releasing Products Too Early!
Consider what Steve Jobs said in his widely-quoted employee memo about the failed rollout of MobileMe, that Apple could have waited somewhat longer to make sure things were working properly before transitioning from .Mac.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/2008/08/apple-is-releasing-products-too-early/
Notes: You can also access our new RSS feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/rss
Or our new Atom feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/atom
PC Mag: Bargain Hunt: Media Laptops
A killer multimedia experience-whether it's a high-def movie, great new RPG, what have you-doesn't mean you have to give up mucho desk space (or cash) for a media desktop PC. Media-centric laptops now pack the goods to give you superior video quality, screaming graphics, and bright widescreens. These three systems all impressed us with their high-def capabilities and now are getting even more attention for their price.
To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329039,00.asp
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