Eknath Kadam > Apple

Windows is the Bug #1 in Ubuntu bug database. It might be same case in Apple bug database as well, but since its not public database we will never know it. After bashing windows for last 3 years, I seriously started to think if its a Bug or a Fix?

Windows 7 is officially out. I have been using its pre-release version for a quite a long time. Its better than Vista. But its still windows. After using Mac for last 3 years, every moment on windows PC is full of annoyance. But this post is not about telling how bad windows is, but about what this world would have been, if there was no windows. And how Windows-ecosytem is great in some ways.

Apple made the personal computing revolution with Apple II and then the Mac. Mac OS was always tied to its Apple hardware. It was for a good reason. Later when Steve Jobs left Apple, they seriously thought of licensing Mac OS to third party hardware manufacturers. But it never became a reality. Macs are great computers but they are too expensive. The cheapest Mac Mini is priced at $599. Add another $100 for a cheap monitor and $50 for Mouse and Keyboard. So the cheapest mac computer costs you $750. In same amount of money one can buy two Windows PCs.

Apple enjoys huge profit margins on its hardware where as PC manufacturers have tough times maintaining their profit margins because of the competition. The end result is that PCs see huge price decline every year. Apple faces no such competition, they maintain their monopolistic position in pricing their hardware.

So, If there was no Windows, I doubt if countries like India and China could have seen the same amount of computer literacy as they have it today. Its very easy to criticize the shortcomings of windows, but hard to appreciate what the Windows-ecosystem have made it possible for third world countries. Apple computers are way too expensive for these countries. Today, in India every middle class household has a PC or thinking of getting one. If there was no Windows, I doubt if India could have ever emerged as an IT-Superpower.

So far windows has worked a Fix. The world (90% it) runs on Windows. So its enough proof that windows works, and it works to fix a lot of world’s problems.

I receive an update of firefox every week. And I don’t see if anything has changed since last version. IE 6 was better but IE 7 has become really heavy and slow. Interestingly enough, Safari: the default browser on mac is becoming the next generation browser. Safari v4 is now available for developer preview and its amazing to see how fast Apple has made progress is browser space. Its important to note that, Safari is the youngest browser among IE, Firefox and many other popular browsers.

Some of the noteworthy features Safari has are follows.
1. Intuitive tab browsing.
Watch following screencast of how Safari has most intuitive way of tab browsing.

2. Save as functions.

There are several ways you can save a webpage as. You can save a webpage as PDF, Self-contained App, page source or web-archive.

3. Bookmark manager.

Managing bookmarks is really really easy. You can see all bookmarks as a library, search thru them or see them in menu-bar. Adding a book mark is just a click away.

4. Ideal browser for developers.

For web-developers Safari comes with in-built menu called as ‘Devlop’. It has everything a developer needs. Debugging of javascript, HTML and CSS, DOM inspector, activity monitor, Error console, Javascript profiler, custom user-agent setter, or opening a current page with other browser. It has all that. In built. NO 3rd party extensions, add-ons or plugins are required, which always tend to be buggy and do not often keep the pace as new browser versions are shipped.

5. Enhanced Search.

You can search thru the pages in your history.You can search thru your bookmarks.And searching in current page is really very fancy and easy.

6. Really Fast.

Safari uses Webkit and SquirrelFish technologies. SquirrelFish is the fastest Javascript interpreter.Here is one snapshot of latest browser benchmarks. Other browsers are 1.5 to 7 times are slower than Safari.

7. Keeps the pace with modern specifications.

Safari is the only browser which passes all ACID 3 tests. You can visit following url in your browser to check acid 3 score of your browser.http://acid3.acidtests.org/

Safari scores 100/100
Firefox scores 71/100
Opera scores is 83/100
IE 7 hardly reaches to 12/100

After using IE for several years, firefox taught us that browsing could be easy. Safari is going one step ahead making browsing really intuitive, fast and fun.