Apple Briefs

Ok, I haven’t exactly been boycotting Microsoft products, but I have been trying to avoid them wherever possible. I still use Microsoft Word, but I do so sparingly (and only for the tasks that it truly excels at like complicated tables). And I have replaced Excel and Powerpoint with Numbers and Keynote with very happy results.

So I was a little surprised when someone suggested using Windows Live Mesh to replace Syncplicity as my synchronization solution. Two weeks ago I grudgingly installed the beta for Live Mesh and set up my first computer. Nothing seemed to break or disappear, so a couple of days later I set up my second computer and started synching.

Live Mesh and I didn’t get off on exactly the right foot because I turned synchronization on for the second computer from the website. That plopped the synched folder right on my desktop, not exactly where I wanted it. But after doing some quick internet research, I was able to delete the desktop folder and put the synched folder right where I wanted it by using the local Live Mesh application.

Two weeks later and I am pretty happy. Synching isn’t as fast as with Syncplicity. I don’t know exactly how fast it is, but it can take more than a couple minutes to get even small files from one place to another. I’ll probably run some tests to narrow that number down so I know how to plan my workflow on multiple computers.

Importantly, I haven’t lost any files that I am aware of. And I haven’t created any unnecessary duplicate files from hitting Save too often (something that was a problem with Syncplicity and may have been related to them pulling the Mac client).

In fact, I have had only one spotty problem. For a period of about 3 days, the Live Mesh client had trouble connecting. It looked like it was trying to synch, but instead of the new or modified files I expected, there would be 0Kb files with a different extension (which I can’t remember at the moment). I learned how to detect this problem, though, by looking at the Live Mesh menu extra. If it wasn’t connected properly, quitting Live Mesh and relaunching it 2-3 times would generally fix the problem. It’s been clear sailing for the last few days, though. So its possible the problem was on the back end and has been fixed.

If you’re in the market for a synchronization solution, I would suggest giving Live Mesh a look. It’s free, and you get 5GB of storage for your files.

No, this isn’t an infomercial. And, yes, I did pull the number five out of the air. But it’s true that my iMac is much faster now after doing just one simple thing. Lately my iMac seemed really sluggish. I would beachball frequently and the entire system would just hang for what seemed like ages. I had a sneaking suspicion that the Safari 4 Beta had something to do with it because Safari seemed to be bearing the brunt of the slowdowns. I couldn’t be sure, though, because the system was often slow when Safari wasn’t even running.

So two days ago I uninstalled the Safari 4 Beta. The improvement was immediate and noticeable. After the restart (required by the install/uninstall), I could tell things were faster. I have been using Safari 3 for a couple days now and haven’t had a single issue with beachballing or experienced any slowness. I liked some of the new features of Safari 4, but I don’t care how much faster the Javascript performance is if it brings my whole system to its knees.

There are two pieces of browser news from this week. First, one of my old favorites, OmniWeb, was released as freeware yesterday. I am a big OmniWeb fan, but I honestly have been finding myself using mostly Firefox and Safari. This is mostly due to the constant stream of new features being added to the latter two browsers. Still, competition is good. And I hope that the freeware label doesn’t keep the skilled developers at the Omni Group from making OmniWeb even better.

The second piece of news is the release of the Safari 4 beta. There are lots of changes in this release, including a new tabs paradigm and a new Top Sites page. I won’t say the “c” word (“copied”), but both features are very reminiscent of Google Chrome. I downloaded Safari 4 yesterday and have been using it ever since. Its fast, and I like the new Top Sites page (pretty and functional). I’m not sold on the new tabs, though. I like them in theory, but a few quirks keep me from being sold entirely. The small font size in the title bar is distracting. I have been using Mac OS X for a long time now and I am used to the title bar font being a particular size. The smaller size may be necessary to fit in the tab titles, but it puts me off.

My real problem, though, is how it’s now possible to accidentally switch tabs when switching windows. Before, I could click anywhere on the title bar to bring a Safari window to the front. Now, if I click on one of the other tabs, the window comes to the front but the tab changes. So the area I have to click on is smaller. It’s something of a small ergonomic disaster for me. Thankfully, this problem can be fixed without changing the tab paradigm. All Apple needs to do is put in an option allowing clicks on a background Safari window to no longer change tabs. Then I would be happy.

One of the biggest surprises of the summer has to be Chrome, the open source web browser from Google. Chrome for Windows was released today, with versions for Mac and Linux coming later. Google put together a web comic describing their rationale behind Chrome and its major features (its also available as a Google Book).

The best way I can describe Chrome is to say that it’s designed for web applications, in contrast with other browsers which were designed primarily for web pages. Because of its architecture (described in quite a bit of detail in the comic), Chrome should be more stable and responsive when one tab or window gets a bit unruly.

I have downloaded and installed Chrome – a process which was surprisingly quick – but haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces. The few sites I did visit loaded quickly and everything seemed quite crisp. I look forward to the Mac version of Chrome.

There is a nice article over at Lifehacker on the top 10 Firefox 3 features. I still use an army of browsers at home, but I have been warming up to Firefox 3 (which I use almost exclusively at work). I can’t wait until some of these new Firefox features make it into Camino (I hope!).