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“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity” -A. Einstein

A look at Apple’s .mac web gallery

Subscribers to .mac will be pleased to try out Apple’s new web gallery. It looks great, and is a sure example of how well offline applications can be translated into online web apps. Instant image resizing, different viewing modes, and lots of reflections make you quickly forget you are viewing the photos online.

Apple Web Gallery

Great features like live image resizing make Apple Web Gallery really give Flickr and other foto services something to catch up to.

Apple Web Gallery2

Although Apple did a great job thinning the line between offline and online photo viewing, it still needs some major work. All of the web2.0 goodness make just the home page clock in at more than 1.4MB, which even on my 6Mbit connection feels sluggish and irritating.

A table of download times from Websiteoptimization.com

Connection Rate Download Time
14.4K 1171.17 seconds
28.8K 614.79 seconds
33.6K 535.30 seconds
56K 344.54 seconds
ISDN 128K 146.03 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps 66.01 seconds

Sure waiting a minute on a T1 doesn’t seem too bad, but showing these images to your mom on her ISDN line will take her more than 2 minutes just to download the index page! Pure blasphemy
Curious, try out Apple’s Live Web Gallery for yourself.

The Steve Jobs Hokey Pokey

[ to the tune of the Hokey Pokey ]
Put your turtleneck on,
take your turtleneck off,
Put your turtleneck on,
and shake it all about,
You do your hokey pokey and you leave us all in doubt,
Thats what it’s always about.

————

For some reason Apple news seems to travel on average 1.5-2x faster than other news.
To put things into perspective:

imac

1. Speed of light
2. Speed of sound
3. Speed of Paris Hilton News
4. Speed of High School Gossip
5. Speed of Apple News
….etc
9. Speed of News

So chances are you already know that on Tuesday Steve Jobs held a keynote where he released the all new iMacs, iLife ‘08, iWork ‘08, refreshed the MacMini and the .mac services. Mr Jobs took the stage, razzled and dazzled us , but for some every keynote always ends up feeling like the opening lines of Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”

The Good:
New iMac is beautiful
iLife ‘08 looks great

The Bad:
.mac service still sucks

I would tip my hat to Jobs for being one of the most successful people in the industry, but I just can’t help from feeling cheated on. Every keynote, together with millions of Apple fans, we cross our fingers with hope that Apple will turn rumors into reality, and fulfill our dreams

Safari on Windows, Apple’s Secret

Apple’s Safari web browser has been available for Windows for quite a few days now, and no one is impressed. After several hours of testing, I experienced more than 10 crashes, and then I gave up. Yes, Safari is a beta product, but even Firefox 3 Alpha (which is far from being released) is more stable. Safari feels like a beta product, it is buggy, takes long to start up, and the speed increase is not noticeable on a broadband connection. Before you start to think I am anti-Safari, I must admit that Safari has a sleek design, very polished, but will it’s look get me to switch to Safari, no.

Safari on Windows

So why did Apple release safari for Windows? There are a couple theories (here and there), and of course it has to do with the upcoming release of the iPhone. But is that it?

Does Steve Jobs really think he can capture a noticeable amount of market share? Just by making a beautiful ‘fast’ browser? Compare Safari to Internet Explorer, and sure, you will convert some users. But Steve’s problem is that right now, Safari is not competing with Internet Explorer, but with Firefox.

Most internet users are unaware that Safari is avaiable for Windows, and those who are, are mostly Firefox users. And to get us to switch from Firefox to Safari, will take a lot more than a sleek design. Firefox has a plethora of features, extensions, and plugins which would take Apple a lot of effort to catch up to.

But then again, there is that one thing which Steve has, which puts us in the palm of his hands, the iPhone. The iPhone is one thing that we all want, and has become Apple’s way to leverage their needs towards them.

The iPhone is going to be the beginning for many new Apple features, new applications, new widgets, etc. Being an iPhone owner will be an exclusive experience, you will have access to more things, you will be able to do more,.. or at least, it will feel that way. This is the direction that Apple is going, and part of this, is Safari on Windows. It may not be obvious now, but Safari will have exclusive features. Soon we will be able to do things on Safari which we won’t be able to do on other browsers. Soon Apple will be creating Safari specific apps, or Safari only widgets. We are going to end up finding ourselves in the position that every time we hook up our iPod or sync our iPhone, we are going to have to be starting up SafariTunes, or whatever Apple will end up calling it.

The release of Safari now, is just mainly for developing purposes for the iPhone, but in the long run, Windows users are going to be facing new Apple applications which will combine our iTunes, Mail application, Agenda, and even web browser.

We must admit, Apple developers are clever. The experience of owning a Mac is great, everything is integrated, everything is works well together, and that is the experience that they are going to be bringing to Windows.

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