Chrome
Wednesday, September 03, 2008 - 04:31 PM
I’m sure most of you have heard of Google’s new web browser Chrome by now. When I first hear the news, I thought “Does the world really need another web browser?” Then I checked out their introductory comic (which actually gets fairly technical, but is still readable to non-geeks), and I was intrigued by much of the ideas and technology behind it. So, I went and downloaded it.
So far, so good. I’ve been using it all day and haven’t needed to switch to Firefox yet. I think this may quickly become my default browser. It’s fast. It renders pages better looking than either IE or Firefox (like Safari it’s based on Webkit - but sadly no support for CSS text shadows).
One of my favorite things is that it has built-in site specific browser functionality. (Only they call it “application shortcut”.) I’ve been looking for a decent Windows SSB for a while to use for the web based help desk system we have at work. Nothing that I found really lived up to the challenge. Until now. A decent Windows SSB, who would have thought? (It makes perfect sense though, given Google’s focus on web apps.)
If you’re on a Windows machine, it’s definitely worth checking out. I can’t wait to see how it matures in the coming months (it’s only beta right now, but aren’t most of Google’s offerings still “beta”?). I also can’t wait to try the Mac version.
Ubiquity
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 09:50 AM
If you haven’t seen Ubiquity yet, go check it out. It’s only version 0.1 Alpha and it’s already one of the coolest things out there. It’ll be really great once they move it past being a browser extension to being a system-wide utility. But, with more and more of people’s workflows being browser-based, it’s extremely useful as it is.
It’ll be an interesting thing to keep an eye on.
WWDC News
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 - 07:54 AM
Okay, so I’ve got nothing to report that you haven’t already read elsewhere, or didn’t already know before the keynote for that matter.
- New iPhone with 3G and GPS? Check.
- Great new iPhone apps? Check.
- Subsidized iPhone pricing? Check.
- MobileMe replacing .Mac? Check.
- Snow Leopard announced? Check.
I do have a couple of things to say, however. First off, my purchase of an iPhone is inevitable now. All of the new features combined with MobileMe make it pretty much a no-brainer now. And even though there were no real surprises with anything announced yesterday, Apple (and Steve) still managed to make everyone say “Wow!” Think about that. Everyone already knew everything that was announced, but they still managed to exceed our expectations. We knew what was coming, yet it still was beyond what we had hoped for. That’s pretty impressive.
On MobileMe. One thing that I think kind of flew under the radar was just how impressive the web app portion of MobileMe is. Put MobileMe next to Gmail or Yahoo! Mail and they look silly and amateurish in comparison. MobileMe is a web app that feels like an application. Gmail (all of the Google Apps, really) and Yahoo! Mail are web pages that have application-like functionality. They feel like web pages. They act like web pages. MobileMe acts like an application. Not only that, it acts like an Apple application.
People thought the iPod was going to have a “halo effect” of bringing Windows users to the Mac. And that was just an MP3 player. This will blow Windows users away. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like for an iPhone owning Windows user, one who has never used a Mac, using their MobileMe account. Eventually it’ll click with them: “Why can’t my entire computer-using experience be like this?” Eventually, they’ll buy a Mac.
MobileMe was the real Trojan Horse in yesterday’s announcements. The iPhone will bring them in, but MobileMe will make them stay.
If IT Made the Rules
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - 02:55 PM
What to do in case of User Error…
(If you’ve never worked in a tech support position you probably won’t find this funny.)
Yet Another Switcher
Monday, May 05, 2008 - 09:06 AM
Much attention is given to “switchers” in the Mac journalism front (and even in general “tech” journalism). I think this one deserves attention, however, because it’s from the perspective of not an average user (or, commonly for these types of articles, a tech journalist), but from a programmer. He digs into the under-the-hood stuff to explain why he, as a programmer, switched to OS X from Windows. And, he doesn’t get bogged down in any of the stupid quasi-religious/political/emotional B.S. that usually surrounds platform choice. He just lays out the facts surrounding his decision.
Part one is here:
Part two is here:
I think this quote sums things up nicely:
There might not be as much third-party software for Mac OS X as there is for Windows… , but the quality of the applications is a great deal better. Third-party developers on Mac OS X strive to make applications that work in a way that’s consistent with the OS itself, with first-party applications, and even with each other.
Of course, the article goes into quite a bit of depth as to the reasons why that is, but (to me, anyway) that seems to be the crux what he’s getting at.