Archive for July, 2010

Apple’s Been Busy

July 9, 2010  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Apparently it hasn’t all been about the iPhone 4 and iOS4 down in Cupertino.  This week Apple announced a preview of updates to the MobileMe calendar.  From the screenshots, it looks like a step in the right direction.  Currently, the MobileMe calendar is a poor knockoff of the (already poor) iCal application.  The updated calendar app looks much more like an iPad application – quite attractive and much more useful.

Apple also updated the MobileMe iDisk app.  It’s a universal app, so it runs on both iPhone and iPad.  I hadn’t been looking for this app because we use DropBox rather than MobileMe for online backup, syncing, and storage.  But is seems like a fairly capable entry into the field, so it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Now if Apple would just release new iMacs already…

Steady. Aim. Firefox!

July 7, 2010  (Jeffrey Kabbe)

Mozilla released the first full beta of Firefox 4 a few days ago.  As with Firefox 3 beta, it comes with some cool art (which, if the pattern repeats, will change to cooler, newer art when we hit beta 2).

The headline features are a more complete HTML 5 implementation, better support for (non-flash) internet video, and better performance for web applications.  No, wait, scratch that.  Actually the real headline features are that tabs have moves slightly and you can now type tab names rather than working up a sweat moving the mouse.  But the good news is that they threw in all that other stuff for free.

I plan to put the Firefox 4 beta through its paces.  I am still running into slowdowns after about a week with Safari (on several computers, so I am pretty sure its not just a single system acting funky).  In fairness, Safari did better than Firefox 3, which could only last about a couple days of my internet usage (if that!).  But I’d like to get out of the habit of restarting Safari every 5 days or so just to keep it usable.

You see, for me, a web browser isn’t just a fancy newspaper.  Something I pick up once a day, read for a bit, and put down.  It’s a workspace.  I keep a couple dozen tabs open at any one time for the various projects I am involved in.  And when I have to shut down Safari and reload all of those tabs, there’s always the chance that something goes wrong.  I want a browser that I can keep using for a month or longer without restarting, just like I do with Mac OS X.

Maybe Firefox 4 will be my savior?  Only time will tell.