#FF00AA

Here we go, Apple’s launching its home-made browser. None too soon—operating systems have only been delivered with web browsers for thirty years. This one is called Safari and, well, I think this isn’t a good start. I don’t know what the deep, well thought-out concept is behind this name, but I find it ridiculous anyway.

So it looks like Apple is keeping to the 2002 trend of using the brushed steel look everywhere, for no reason whatsoever. Not so long ago, the official guidelines specified this look was only to be used on some specific type of applications—if I recall correctly, those that vaguely emulated a real object’s behaviour. Like a CD player. Now is only two years later, and Apple’s putting brushed steel everywhere. It’s upsetting me, and I don’t even own a Mac. Besides, the navigation buttons look terrible. Have a look at the Chimera screenshots, rather: it’s nice, soft, light, and it’s integrated correctly with the Aqua interface.

Anyway, the most surprising, and frightening, is that Safari isn’t based on the Gecko layout engine (ie, on Mozilla), but on Konqueror’s. I’ll refrain from criticizing here, because I haven’t tested the latest Konqueror yet. But I’m really holding my breath. Or I am, but not in a good way. As long as Konqueror was limited to KDE users, it meant that its users were negligible (not in a they’ll be left out the door way, but it just didn’t matter that much if a site looked wrong to them). Now that one of its cousins will be shipped with OS X (well, I suppose that’s the point), I’m gonna get a whole new wave of users experiencing brand new incompatibilities with the sites I make. Great. Just what I needed. Opera 7 isn’t even out yet, and now we have another one. I’m gonna quit webdesign and take up sculpture, it’s less troublesome.

Good thing that Safari doesn’t offer tabs. There’s still a possibility Chimera will steal its spotlight.

In other news, and in the dream section, Apple was also introducing a 17” PowerBook, which looks pretty nice. I could use one, if you really insist. And I know you don’t insist.

A light sensor automatically adjusts the keyboard and screen brightness based on the available ambient light. Now that’s class. It’s important that there be light under the keys, and it’s important that it adjust itself like the widescreen TV in your living-room. It’s just a pity that the keyboard doesn’t take advantage of the seventeen inches to spread out a little—I suppose it has to do with the one-inch thickness of the thing, but I think it’s a questionable choice. When you’re carrying a laptop twice as big as every other one, I don’t quite understand why it’s so important that it should be so thin. Well, maybe it’s me—I’m not really the target for this kind of product, so I may not be supposed to understand. Well, it’s my wallet that’s not in the target. It’s far away from it. Far below. Laying on the ground. Hidden under a floor tile. Slowly dying of starvation, suffering a thousand pains. Without the faintest noise. Which is why I’m mentioning it. Someone has to honor its memory. The poor little thing.