Bites from the Apple: Form and Function

by EndUser at 3:15 PM PST, March 1, 2009

This week was a reminder that Apple isn't just a hardware company. Despite many a fanboy/fangirl's obsession over the latest cooly designed aluminum delectability, Apple keeps reminding us that they're about software and services. The big splash was the rather unexpected drop of the beta version of the Safari 4 web browser, but it was followed by some minor refreshes of the MobileMe subscription service and a few more leaks of the next version of the Mac OS X operating system--Snow Leopard.

Having been a full-on Firefox user for several years now, it's hard for me to compare Safari 4 to its previous iteration (and this is made especially difficult as the new beta software overwrites your previous version), but there are a few very obvious new features that have been getting attention, including Top Sites, which displays your most visited sites in a very cool grid, and the addition of Cover Flow to your bookmarks. While good for eye candy, I agree with Doug McLean over at TidBITS, who is skeptical about the usefulness of both features. I think I'd actually use Top Sites if it allowed me to pick what sites would appear rather than basing it on the number of times I visit a site, as there are sites that I might not view as much as others but I'd like to have them front and center when I fire up the browser. As it stands now, you can only modify the number of sites that appear, "pin" a site to a specific location within Top Site, or delete a site (which may show up again later if you visit it more).

From a user interface (UI) perspective, Safari 4 will take a bit of getting used to as it places its tabs (now de rigueur for a browser) up in the title bar rather than placed within the browsing window as is typically done (and not everyone is a fan). And from a speed perspective, Safari 4 does seem a bit springier (Apple boasts that Safari's new JavaScript engine can render sites up to 4.2 times faster than the Safari 3.x and 30 times faster than Internet Exlporer 7; Lifehacker has some actual speed tests that seem to corroborate these claims). But I'm too invested in Firefox's extensibility and the tools I use within it every day (Foxmarks for syncing bookmarks, a TinyURL creator, FlashBlock, etc.) to make the switch back to Safari (even though I curse Firefox's stability from time to time). If you've had some time to play around with the new Safari, let us know what you think in the comments.

• If you're comfortable writing up some Terminal commands, Caius Durling provides some hidden preferences you can manipulate, including moving the tabs and removing Cover Flow (via TUAW).

• MobileMe got a cosmetic change to its launch page as well as some UI tweaks to its Mail and Calendar components. But the most important aspect of this update is that push capability--touted as a major feature when MobileMe was launched, but then pulled after its epic fail--has returned. CNet's iPhone Atlas has the goods:

  Any updates that you make to contacts or calendars on your Mac in iCal or Addressbook, or on your PC using Microsoft Outlook are automatically and rather quickly pushed to the cloud. Conversely, any updates made to MobileMe data at me.com, or on an iPhone or iPod Touch is pushed back your Mac or PC.

  After doing some testing, the pushing of calendar and contact data was very quick and seamless with changes made either on my Mac or on my iPhone appearing equally as fast (for more on setting up your iPhone for push, check out this Apple instruction page). These changes come on the heels of the Share File feature that was released earlier in February.

• The World of Apple blog posted some images and video of the latest build for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard... and they were promptly taken down at Apple's request. And while other sites have also had those screenshots taken down as well as descriptions redacted, Wired's Epicenter blog still has their take on what they saw in the images--more applications running as 64-bit (which should translate into some speed boosts) and slimmer application file sizes as well as smaller RAM usage. There's still no release date for Snow Leopard, but AppleInsider reports that the current Leopard OS should be getting a new update (to 10.5.7) in the near future with tweaks to syncing and Time Machine among others.

• In addition to Safari 4, the Mozilla-based Camino browser released its 2.0 beta version this week (via Ars Technica).

• The Omni Group has now opened up four of its paid applications as free downloads, including the OmniWeb browser as well as OmniDiskSweeper, the OmniDazzle presentation tool, and OmniObjectMeter memory optimization tool (via TidBITS).

• Rumor watch: Electronista reports that high-end iMacs seem to be in short supply with several online retailers, which could point to a refresh coming soon. Maybe. One stock analyst isn't expecting any iMacs until June.

• Gizmodo has a review of the Cadillac of Apple laptops--a fully loaded 17-inch MacBook Pro complete with 256 MB SSD (solid state disk drive)--and they're liking it despite the fact that it's only getting about half of the 8 hours of battery life that Apple boasted.

• Another blow to old media relevance: After Adam Corolla's radio show was nixed from the airwaves on February 20, he turned to podcasting as a way to keep the radio show going. After just a week, it's now sitting atop the iTunes Podcast chart (link opens iTunes) and has been downloaded over 1 million times during its first week.

• Like Godzilla on the rampage through Tokyo, Apple has issued a store-wide takedown order for all iPhone/iPod touch apps that include Emoji pictographs (basically, Japanese-based emoticons that have a wider range of expression and iconography). Ars Technica reports that this might be due to the fact that Emoji access data that lives outside of the Emoji-enabling app, which is a no-no in iPhone development (which is also one of the reasons the iPhone currently doesn't do copy-and-paste).

• Apple TV got a software update this week, which wipes out Boxee and any other 3rd party hacks that may have been installed. (However, Cult of Mac reports that re-applying the patchstick brings back the Boxee hack.) Aside from breaking the hacks, there doesn't seem to be much else included in this update other than a Network Test function.

• And finally... for the rad kid in your life, an iPhone skateboard deck (via Slippery Brick):

  

--Agen G.N. Schmitz

Tags: Bites, Apple