Safari 3 Public Beta
Apple have just announced the Safari 3 Public Beta at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Now I love my Apple products. I still love my old G4 even though it is now on it’s second power supply, and am I currently sat here typing away on my 6+ year old PowerBook even though the DVD drive is starting to really struggle. (I actually want to get a new Mac, but I keep changing my mind about which one but that’s another story…) And I think my Apple Video was one of the best products I’ve ever been given for a Birthday present. I use it all the time at home connected direct to the TV to watch video podcasts PixelPerfect and Diggnation (both Revision3 productions). Oh hang on I am digressing here a bit… but basically I am a fan of the Mac.
So I guess it was expected, with the move over to Intel, and iTunes successfully moving over to the PC (and well Windows media player sucks so why wouldn’t it). But I’m a bit worried that it may not be that successful or at least not gain the market share they hope. Firstly, it is known amongst some developers that the fastest browser on the Mac at the moment is Camino. Safari and Firefox just doesn’t seem to be as fast. Yes, standards compliance is important, but if something takes for ever for some JavaScript to run, you ain’t going to hang around. However notice that they don’t even list that it the comparison charts. You can’t even download this Beta unless you have upgraded to the latest OSX either which also sucks. (A problem we have in the office at the moment as we are still stuck on OSX 10.2.)
But I think what is really ironic is that the screenshots of Safari they have on the Apple.com website is displaying Yahoo. Now as a Mac user I know I can’t view Yahoo Mail Beta in any other Browser but Firefox (and some other weird one I’ve never heard of). Hoping this might have changed I have downloaded the Beta and tried again, but no we are still not allowed in. I will assume this will be the case for those on PC too. So why would anyone change from a great browser that is Firefox, and well if you’re using Internet Explorer, do the right thing you know you want to, and switch over to Firefox, if you can’t even check your Yahoo email. Come on Apple and Yahoo, I think it’s time you resolved this issue.