January 7, 2003

Macworld

/ technology

Macworld expo just opened in San Francisco. I attended the expo myself, about 10 years ago (has it really been that long?).

Nobody expected much in the way of interesting announcements from Apple this time around. While Apple hasn’t exactly announced that all Macs will now come with quantum-computing processors or anything similarly groundbreaking, they did pull a few rabbits out of their collective hat.

Perhaps most interesting is that Apple has a web browser, Safari. It’s still in beta. At first glance, it has some good points and bad points.

Good points:

  • Clean interface. Buttons are inobtrusive and fairly customizable (though not supporting the standard toolbar interface, yet). Though I should mention that I’ve disabled Apple’s metallic look, which Safari uses. There’s a Google search-box right there in the toolbar. The URL field serves double-duty as the progress bar–nice touch. Has a “snapback” feature that takes you to the last page you were at outside the current domain — very clever.
  • Fast. Can’t complain about the speed. Especially when backing up to a cached page.
  • A brilliant bug-reporting tool. Click on a bug icon. It pops up a sheet pre-filled with the current URL, gives you the option to send the source text and a screenshot of the current page, and other options. Why, it practically makes software problems fun!
  • Pretty amazing bookmark organization.
  • A minimum of extraneous bells and whistles.

Bad points:

  • Bad CSS rendering. Yes, it’s still beta, and I’m fairly sure they’ll get it worked out, but pages that rely on CSS extensively for layout may not look right. Including my own.
  • No support for tabbed browsing. Hello?
  • Doesn’t seem to import bookmarks from Netscape or Chimera, though I may be missing something. It automatically snags my IE bookmarks, though.

While I’m a big fan of Chimera, I don’t have a religious dedication to it. If something better comes along, I’ll use it. With some work, Safari could be better.

The other interesting announcement is that Apple has both supersized and downsized the beloved PowerBook (which is still available in its original form). A laptop with a 17″ screen…wow. Imagine flipping one of those suckers open at your local coffeeshop. Cower in fear, lesser laptops! Oh yeah — and Bluetooth. And 802.11b/g. And faster firewire (interestingly, no USB 2). And a backlit keyboard. And an “ambient light sensor” so it knows when to light up the keyboard and change the monitor’s brightness.

Can’t go back to Constantinople

/ tidbit

In an interview with the NY Times, Frank Gehry repeatedly emphasizes his age, and also mentions “I took 15 students to see the Haga Sofia in Constantinople”

I don’t care how old you are, Frank, you’re not old enough to remember when it was called Constantinople. There’s even a song to help you remember its current name.

Oh, and it’s spelled hagia.

Unintended irony

/ current events / 1 Comment

Burningbird writes about a series of public-service announcements (available for download):

All the ads are intended to ‘inform’ the American public about what will happen if we don’t continue to support the war on Terror. All horrifyingly demonstrating the reality of what is happening to this country because of the war on terror.

Ouch. One ad illustrates “freedom”: a shopping cart rolling through a grocery store aisle, with 10 kinds of bread, 50 kinds of breakfast cereal, etc. This is an unintended tribute to George Carlin’s observation that “freedom” in this country means we’ve got 37 different kinds of mustard, but no real political options. Another shows a guy asking for a banned book at a library and immediately being grabbed by the cops–too close to what’s already happening at libraries.