Tag: Mac

Microsoft comes full circle with IE

Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch’s Browser Future report for today:

The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their “standard” product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.

The price is higher than Opera or Omni’s paid competition, and you don’t have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from.
Now that they’ve pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.

Mailsmith 2.0 arrives

Bare Bones has released v2.0 of my favorite email client. Major kudos to Michael for getting SpamSieve bundled with all Mailsmith 2.0 purchases (before 31 July 2003).
Speaking of which, SpamSieve 1.3.1 has been released. Seems to be a bit faster to me, and I like the new script addition that sends a piece of mail directly to the Trash when I mark it as spam. (I have the Mailsmith filter that SpamSieve’s script uses set to send spam to the Trash; others have a spam folder, so your mileage may vary.)
If you’re already using both of these products, here’s the kicker regarding Mailsmith 2.0: it features direct integration with SpamSieve! No more scripts or filters! Rock on, Michael! Way to go!

Good riddance, IE, part III

Speaking of the dress-code-aware genius that is Dan Benjamin (is that enough, Dan?), he offers up some delectable food for thought on the discontinuation of standalone IE development for the Mac. I say standalone, because it seems that IE will continue on in MSN for Mac OS X.
Zeldman sums it all up rather well.

From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. They may even gain in market share. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if most of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.

But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth. To Tantek and Jimmy and their colleagues on the IE/Mac team: for what you achieved on behalf of web standards and usability, much respect.
When it arrived, IE5/Mac was the standard for web browsers. It shamed Netscape. Complacency and stagnant development, however, have left it behind technologically. Zeldman mentions reasons people switched from IE to Camino or Safari; I switched for all the reasons he discusses, including that it’s one less Microsoft application on my system. There are choices people, and they’re better than the “standard.”

DNS Primer

If you’ve ever been interested in how your email gets from your computer to someone else’s, or how your browser knows how to load up a web site, you need to read Dan Benjamin’s excellent DNS primer at MacDevCenter. It’s geared toward Mac OS X users, but anyone can learn the basics of DNS, IP addresses, routing, and all that other techie stuff that makes the Internet work, boiled down in to simply terms by Mr. Benjamin (of Hivelogic/Hiveware fame).
Oh, and hire this dress-code-aware guy, if you have the need. Too much talent to not be getting paid well by someone, somewhere.

Good riddance, IE, part deux

This morning, Microsoft released a slightly-updated version of IE for Mac OS X, version 5.2.3. While no future development is planned, Microsoft will update this last version of IE as needed.
I hope Ric doesn’t mind my copying this from today’s Macintouch, but he doesn’t provide a permanent link to this story:

Clint McIntosh summarized the issues of Microsoft dropping Internet Explorer development for the Mac (something the company also has done on the Windows platform):

Microsoft is saying that they can’t do as good of a job as Apple of integrating the browser with the MacOS as a a reason they are halting development of Internet Explorer and that Safari is an excellent browser even in this public beta stage. BUT there is a serious problem ahead of us Mac users that deals with browser detection at many sites.

Many sites that rely on security or on compatibility do a browser check when you first try to view their pages. They usually make sure you are running MSIE 5.x or higher or even Netscape 4.x and higher. I’ve found that a lot of site developers don’t even realize that there are many more browsers other than IE and Netscape–either that or they just don’t care.

I’ve already found quite a few sites that don’t work at all with Safari such as my online banking through SouthTrust bank. I’ve written to the webmasters of those sites that aren’t Safari friendly but the standard answer I get back is “Our site only works with Internet explorer and netscape.”

Using iCab’s ability to identify itself as another browser, I’ve found that there is no technical reason for the limitation to IE and Netscape. They just do browser checks and see that you are using something other than IE and Netscape they deny you access. I’m not a fan of Microsoft but I do use IE on those occasions when I just can’t get a page to work with any other browser. Netscape 7 is just too slow and bloated for my liking and it still doesn’t work on a lot of sites where Netscape 4.x works flawlessly.

I’ve tried and compared the features of iCab, Opera, OmniWeb and others. They all have their good points, but Safari wins out overall. If Safari is going to be a suitable replacement for MSIE, Apple is going to have to either change the identifier to pretend it is IE or they are going to have to market the hell out of Safari to get the name known out there as a major player AND they are going to have to beef up a lot of the compatibility issues before they finalize it as a 1.0 release. There’s also the issue of browser plugins, but that’s another story.

Good riddance, IE

No more Internet Explorer for Macintosh. No more standalone Internet Explorer on Windows. I cannot tell you how heart-broken I am to hear this.

7135 first impression

As I stated previously, I went on my lunch break to the nearby Verizon Wireless store to check out the Kyocera 7135 SmartPhone. I was suitably impressed. Yes, it’s a little thicker and bulkier than most phones out there, weighing in at 6.6 ounces. But playing around with it, I didn’t find its size to be a deal-breaker. We are, after all, talking about a phone with a Palm PDA jammed in to it. Personally, I didn’t feel that it was too much bulkier than my current Motorola StarTac, once it’s folded over and in its belt clip/holster.
Decided to do a little checking on the web. Walt Mossberg likes it, but doesn’t like it. Walt’s gripes do not overly concern me, especially the email issue. Call me old-fashioned, but I just haven’t quite grasped the concept yet of checking my email on my phone. I like to stay connected and in touch via email as much as the next guy, but I honestly don’t have the type of professional or personal life that would warrant such immediate need.
Mike Wendland loves his 7135, and has had little problems with it under OS X. Since I’m no longer using iSync, I doubt I would encounter the same issues as Mike. (Said issues may have been fixed with iSync 1.1, but I haven’t come across the post yet on Mike’s site that may say so.) Reading through one forum on Palm Boulevard sounds like there was a lot of pent-up demand for the 7135 from November of last year to just this April. There’s even an entire site devoted to Kyocera SmartPhones.
I’m waiting to hear back from our VZW corporate rep, but I think I’ve found my new phone…

De-iApping

So today I de-iApped a bit. Viz: I had moved all of my contact and calendar info out of Palm Desktop, into OS X’s Address Book and iCal. Then I set up iSync to sync my Palm m505 with my TiBook. The thought was that I could then sync this info with my iPod–which I’ve done once in about six months–and whatever new mobile phone I get when my current contract expires (end of this month).
Seeing as how I’ve never used iSync to sync to my iPod (did it all manually the one time), and now I’ve got my eye on the Kyocera 7135 as my mobile phone replacement, I’ve ditched Address Book and iCal and moved everything back over to Palm Desktop. Syncing is way faster now. I think Apple is doing some really cool stuff, but the iSync Palm conduit just plain sucks. Address Book and iCal are now gone from the Dock.
Yeah, I may opt for another phone, and that might mean that I’m doing all of this again. The m505 actually is provided by my employer, so if I went with the 7135, I’d have my own Palm, with a phone wrapped around it. I’m going to look one over during my lunch break.

iMac no more

So, yeah, maybe I’m just way behind in picking this up, but the CRT iMac, the box that helped bring Apple back, is no more. The only CRT Macintosh still being sold in the Apple Store is the 17″ G4-driven eMac. So the flat-panel iMac is now the only iMac. Thanks to Robert for pointing this out.

PowerBook prices lowered

Apple has lowered the prices on the 12″ and 15″ PowerBooks, in some cases by as much as $300. Does this portend an update for the 15″ model and speed bump for the 12″? WWDC is just around the corner…