Apple has released an AppleWorks 6.2.7 updater.

This free update to AppleWorks for Mac OS X provides improvements to the presentation module, AppleScript, web content searching, printing, label printing, table support, and spell checking with user added words. The update provides better recognition and handling of Office 97 and Office 2000 files, improved support for multimedia files in database documents, improved web template downloading over slow internet connections, improved spreadsheet module--including Auto-Calculation, as well as enhanced support for documents which contain links. This version also supports web based templates and clipart on networks using proxy servers.

No complaints except that my spreadsheet of death still brings it to its knees! Discuss

There's an interesting interview with Max Horn about the Fink project on OSNews. Not much news there, but it's good to see life in the project.

If you prefer DarwinPorts, you probably want to read the somewhat evasive interview with Jordan Hubbard. Jordan's being a good Apple employee and not saying too much about the future, which is understandable and frustrating.

OK, I'm even more of a Safari fan now. (FWIW, it has been my default browser for a long time, but somewhat grudgingly.) After reading the past two days of Safari reports on Macintouch, I can see that lots of things are being ironed out. One thing that I haven't seen anyone comment on is printing. The new beta prints fine. There was a problem for some people (including me) that the first beta would split text lines at page breaks, which meant that I had to flop over to IE to print; no more.

And I'm starting to warm up to tabs, which is difficult because I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind a zillion open Safari windows and cycling through them with the splat-` key. I can see the value of tabs, but they still don't seem as natural to me as multiple windows. I am glad that they are available to the people who love them, and I assume I'll use them at least occasionally.

On a related topic, thank you to the readers of this blog for sending me mail about tabs. My previous message was meant to get some of the other posters here to post why they like tabs, but since they didn't, a handful of you were nice enough to send your comments to me directly.

Well, if they did it for me, they missed. The Al Jazeera site still has the same problems. I got a few messages about my previous post, one which pointed out that the Al Jazeera site (and a handful of other interesting sites) are a jumble of Microsoft-centric cruft, so it is no surprise that anything other than IE cannot display them correctly.

And can someone explain the so-highly lauded tabs thing here? I have never used a tabs-driven browser, and even after turning them on in the new Safari, I can't figure out how to fly them. I can't be the only one who has just a single tab there all the time, wondering why this is worth the flamage that we saw for the past few months...

No doubt in response to Paul H's last post, Apple has released a new Safari beta, available via Software Update or the Apple site. (Ironically, Blogger Pro doesn't support it so I'm making this entry in Camino.) One word: tabs. Already I like two things about their tab implementation (one: fast switching; two: tab bar can be made to persist even with just one tab) and hate two things (one: external URL open events create new windows, not new tabs; two: tabs can't be dragged between windows). Aside from tabs, one notable new feature is "privacy reset" which clears out history, cache, download history, cookies, Google searches, and autofill text in one fell swoop. Nice. Discuss

Note to compulsive upgraders: 10.2.5 is now available via Software Update, a 40M download. Working fine for me so far. Details Discuss

Sometimes the rendering problems in Safari don't seem so bad, sometimes they do. I haven't been reading too much news about the Current Situation other than on the BBC, but I just went to the Al Jazeera coverage of Iraq. The front page renders fine, but all the linked news comes up with a headline but no body. As usual, those pages render fine in IE.

Hasn't it been a couple of months since the last update to Safari? We keep hearing how many improvements they're making; can't we see them too?

UNIX sysdadmin Mike Knell is conducting a little survey of UNIX people who have been using OS X. (Replies should go to the e-mail address given in his message.)

 Having bought an iBook just after Christmas due to the fantastic UNIXness of
 MacOS X, I've noticed that there are a lot of people in the UNIX admin world
 who seem to have been sprouting Macs over the last year or so since OS X
 became, uh, usable, and in particular a lot of people on sage-members are
 mentioning OS X these days.
 
 I thought I might do a little survey to see how prevalent this actually is,
 so if you're one of those UNIX people who's started using a Mac since the OS
 X fuss started, it'd be interesting if you could drop me some mail at
 mpk@uffish.net with some or all of the following information:
 
 1) What machine you bought
 2) When you bought it
 3) Why you bought it (i.e. "It runs UNIX and it's cool!")
 4) What platform you would have previously used for the application you now
    use a Mac for (i.e. "Linux on a Toshiba laptop")
 5) Whether you plan on buying any more Macs - or do you just have the one
    machine for the curiosity value?
 
 For instance, in my case:
 
 1) iBook 800MHz
 2) December 2002
 3) It runs UNIX and it's cool!
 4) Windows or FreeBSD
 5) A G4 PowerMac, sometime when I can afford it.
 
 Add any other free-form comments you care to, and I'll quote the interesting
 ones in the results.
 
 Please reply directly to me to avoid spamming the list - I'll summarise the
 responses to the list. Feel free to pass this mail on to anyone who'd not on
 the list but who might be a likely respondent. I'll probably expand this to
 a web-based survey if the results are intriguing enough..
 
 Mike
 mpk@uffish.net

Quark has finally posted a second installment in their Quark XPress 6 preview series. Along with XML capabilities which I don't know enough about to comment on, they outline some web-content creation features. Who on earth is going to base their web production process on an app whose update cycle is measured in years? Also, as long as I'm complaining, if they use the phrase "an intriguing way to manage complex projects" one more time I'm going to freak out. Damn you Quark, I gave you the best years of my life and this is how you repay me? Continue to Discuss