Browsers through the revolving door

I know I'm not alone in having Safari (1.3) repeatedly beachball for 3-5 seconds for no apparent reason -- despite clearing cache and history (too many saved passwords to go all the way to Reset Safari). One day, already restless and feeling like I might not be having the Most Optimal Browsing Experience Possible, I hit my limit and went looking for a replacement.

I tried Firefox for a while, but the small ways in which it doesn't feel like a native OS X app wore on me, despite the undeniable utility of extensions like the Web Developer toolbar.

Then I checked out Shiira, a cool, pure Cocoa, WebKit-based browser from Japan. Shiira was great, with a lot of neat little features, but many features seemed not quite ready for prime-time and -- the killer -- it didn't work with Google Maps (maybe the Tiger-only Shiira 1.0 does, but I'm still mostly on Panther yet).

Then I remembered Camino, which was my main browser before Safari came out. Gecko rendering with a nice Aqua interface (no brushed metal, either). The latest nightlies are solid and featureful. Safari bookmarks imported cleanly, and my giant list of bookmarks opens instantly, vs. Safari's 6-second brain freeze (related to favicons, I think, but that's no excuse).

But lately I'm noticing that the Gecko text rendering just isn't quite as sweet as WebKit, and thinking maybe I should give Safari another chance...

Jane, get me off this crazy thing!

4.9

Another iTunes, another JHymn breakage?

OS X On Intel

Personally, I'm glad to see it. Hopefully this means that there will be another decent laptop to run linux on than the thinkpad. Yeah, I know that I can run Yellow Dog and YDL is nice but it's pain enough getting software to work on a supported OS on a marginal platform; getting software to work on a marginal OS on a marginal platform can really be quite ridiculous. Hopefully Intel Pentium-M laptops will only be a few drivers away from working with more common Linux distributions.

With a less powerhungry P4M running a Powerbook, we should expect to see longer battery lives and better screens (since they will be competing less with the CPU for power).

Unfortunately, for all of those projects not using XCode (as the Keynote showed, only 56% of the top 100 apple developers were using XCode), there's a new world of OS X mysteria approaching; check out this post from a developer of PyObjC on the work they can expect to do for Intel Macs.

It's a brave new world.

50,000,000 Reports of a Rumor Can't Be Wrong

I had a post in draft ready to go, loaded with links to all the big news outlets that got fooled. Well, Jobs confirmed it. Intel is the future CPU of the Mac. I guess he really didn't like being wrong about how far and how fast IBM could push the G5.

Oh well. I guess Gruber will getting ready to chow down on that Daring Fireball tshirt...

Intel Story: The Hilarity Continues

Via TUAW we read an oh-so-cute letter from Jonathan Schwartz to Steve Jobs suggesting that Solaris become the underpinnings of OS X. I hope Gruber doesn't read this, it might give him a logic coronary or perhaps just a giggle fit with hiccups at the end.

Now I have some questions:

1. Is Solaris 10 really the "world's highest volume and most secure UNIX?"
2. How is "highest volume" defined? Does it go to 11?
3. How is "most secure" measured? Against RHEL 4 with SELinux? Against OS X 10.4?
4. Does this mean Sun isn't buying Apple anymore?

I will be so glad when the keynote is over...

WSJ Adds to Intel Story

John Gruber reads the WSJ so you don't have to. They say the Intel story is for real. They don't add many details, but they do state specifically that the Mac is moving to x86.

Now, I've never met John, but right now he is worried about having to eat that Daring Fireball shirt. Yes, yes...he never agreed to the bet. Blah blah blah. What ever. John is also thinking what I was thinking about Intel -- they could be set to start manufacturing PPC chips. Stranger things have happened...

One thing I know for sure, and that is John trusts the technology reporters at the WSJ a lot more than I do.

C|Net Bets On Intel

"Sources familiar with the situation" say so...the rest of the article is rehashed tidbits about who got mad at who when.

I still say no way and if I'm wrong John Gruber will eat a Daring Fireball shirt.