Let’s count up where Safari/WebKit is in use as of today.

Adobe AIR uses WebKit as their HTML/Javascript engine.

Safari runs under both OS X 10.4.9 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard and Windows XP/Vista.

Safari runs on the iPhone.

My gut tells me that Safari on Windows combined with AIR using WebKit AND third-party development on the iPhone being done against Safari is going to be much, much more significant than we realize right now.

Depending on the adoption of the iPhone and AIR, the browser war could turn into IE vs. Safari instead of IE vs. FireFox like everyone expected.

So, can I access it under Windows? Without resorting to sharing it as a network share?

It’s 2007, I’m really looking for a filesystem I can format my external USB hard drives with, that doesn’t suck, that I can access from either my Windows or Apple computers. Fat32 is what? 10 years old now? When was Win95 OSR2 released? It’s time for a new system. Hopefully someone will release ZFS drivers for Windows.

There are two different Silverlight sites. microsoft.com/silverlight and the community site at silverlight.net.

You can’t get to the system requirements for Silverlight through the community site (in fact, there is a link called “system requirements” on that page, but nothing seems to be clickable for me right now). If you click on “getting Started” at the community site and click on the links to download the specific version for your platform, the system requirements only state “OS X 10.4+”. You can only get to them by going to the main microsoft.com/silverlight downloads page. There I found the system requirements

for 1.0

System Requirements: Macintosh Computer with Power PC Processor

* Supported operating systems: Apple Mac OS X
* Supported browsers: Firefox 1.5.0.8, Firefox 2.0.x, and Apple Safari 2.0.4
* Minimum recommended hardware: Power PC G3 500-megahertz (MHz) or faster processor

System Requirements: Macintosh Computer with Intel Processor

* Supported operating systems: Apple Mac OS X
* Supported browsers: Firefox 1.5.0.8, Firefox 2.0.x, and Apple Safari 2.0.4
* Minimum recommended hardware: Intel Core Duo 1.83-gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM

for 1.1

System Requirements: Macintosh Computer with Intel Processor

* Supported operating systems: Apple Mac OS X
* Supported browsers: Firefox 1.5.0.8, Firefox 2.0.x, and Apple Safari 2.0.4
* Minimum recommended hardware: Intel Core Duo 1.83-gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM

It’s a not so subtle difference. It’s something to keep in mind if you are a PowerPC owner and want to play with Silverlight. You’re stuck with version 1.0. No Dynamic CLR for you! It’d be nice if a MS employee would post a notice about future PPC support for Silverlight?

Drag the “default.html” from the Chess/Run folder in the 1.1 SDK into Safari.

Wait while the beach ball spins.

Boom.

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0×0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0×0002) at 0×00000000

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 <<00000000>> 0×00000000 0 + 0
1 slr.dll 0x07b32dd0 CreateManagedRuntime + 656 (SLRuntime.cpp:52)
2 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x05987e94 CMacServices::CLR_Startup(CRuntimeHost*) + 212
3 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x058fe058 CCoreServices::CLR_Startup() + 320
4 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x058fbfc0 CCoreServices::DownloadCustomAssembly(unsigned long, wchar_t*) + 72
5 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x059b9734 CParser::StartElement(unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, unsigned long) + 520
6 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x059bae14 CParser::LoadXaml(CCoreServices*, unsigned long, unsigned char*, IDependencyObject*, IDependencyObject**, long) + 1252
7 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x058fe974 CCoreServices::LoadXaml(unsigned long, unsigned char*, IDependencyObject**) + 388
8 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0597ba44 CMacBrowserHost::put_Source(unsigned long, unsigned char*, void*, void (*)(void*, unsigned long, IDependencyObject*, IDependencyObject*, wchar_t*, long, IScriptObject*)) + 316
9 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0597be1c CMacBrowserHost::GotResponse(IPALDownloadResponse*, long) + 228
10 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0597a574 CMacBrowserHost::CallResponseCallbacks(RequestInfo*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*) + 536
11 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0596b438 PluginObject::Write(_NPStream*, long, long, void*) + 364

(sigh)

Futzed around some more. Now I get a Javascript error from Silverlight when I load the page, if I reload the page it bombs out and Safari crashes. Who says Macs don’t crash, they do if they are running Microsoft code! My guess is that the 1.1 version of Silverlight is Intel OS X only.(sigh again). Is it even worth it to try playing around with it at this stage? I may try on my Windows PC (after I create a Virtual machine and install the alpha there). Just when you think Microsoft has changed, same crap different platform.

The problem is that they can’t share the same iTunes library. If I add a song to iTunes when I’m using my iBook. I have to then remember to go in and add the song to iTunes on my Windows laptop. But when I do that, since I have “copy the file to my iTunes music library” checked, it sometimes makes a copy. It will then append the file name with ” 1″ (unless there is already a ” 1″ file, in which case I get a ” 2″ filename and so on.). If I’m merging two physical libraries, the story gets worse.

Whee!

So right now, when I click on the “view duplicates” option in iTunes, it shows I have 4.75GB worth of duplicate files. Automator doesn’t provide any actions for comparing two file names and finding the physical file and then doing something to it. Like removing it from iTunes and moving the file to another directory. I still haven’t learned Applescript yet, so Python to the rescue.

All I ask is this: iTunes, if I’m copying a file and you find a file with that name already in my library. ASK me what to do. And give me the option to say “apply this decision to this question if it comes up again.” Or better yet, just scan the library for new files at startup or while the program is running. You are checking the files anyway. I know you are, I see the little “!” next to the files when I open you up and the usb drive isn’t connected. Just quit hurting my music library.

: “But this stings a bit… Three short videos of from Bill Gates’ Windows Vista demonstration at CES. Well, it’s Bill’s voice, but the video has been replaced with demonstrations of the same features on Mac OSX, which was released back in 2002.”

Vista Could Be So Much Better:

“From reading other blogs, it seems many developers are unimpressed with the sheen of Windows Vista, the next version of the Microsoft operating system. “

I’ve seen the videos that Jon is referring too, they are pretty funny. Not all of the features shown were in the version of OS X that was released in 2002. In fact, most of them (Dashboard, Spotlight to name two) weren’t available until Tiger. The live previews and Expose have been around for a while. When you use OS X, these features get so ingrained into your workflow that you start to hit the keystrokes no matter what system you are currently working on. I’m always hitting F10 on my WinXP Pro machine at work and expecting it to do something. I know there are third-party apps out there that simulate Expose on Windows, I’ve tried them. They run like 2 legged dogs compared to the real thing. It’s just not the same.

See, it doesn’t matter what features are in OS X or in Vista. It doesn’t matter if Microsoft demoed desktop metadata search before Spotlight was ever announced. It doesn’t matter if “Aeroglass” looks better than “Quartz”.

Microsoft’s biggest enemy is itself. Even if Apple did copy Spotlight from Microsoft, Apple shipped it first. I know it’s “hard to turn the battleship”. The users don’t care. I don’t care. I know you have to test every new feature against every language in the world. I don’t care. The users don’t care. If you are second to market with a feature, you look like you are lagging. Even if internally you conceived the feature years before your competitor. You look like a copycat. Microsoft needs to change it’s shipping mindset. It needs to be able to turn around features faster. Apple users buy a new version of their OS for $129 almost every year? Why? Each version has new features in it. For both developers and end users. 10.0 brought Cocoa for devs, protected memory for the users. 10.1 (Puma) brought DVD playback as well as significant performance increases. 10.2 was a biggie. Quartz Extreme, a new Finder, Rendezvous , support for Windows networks. 10.3 had Expose, iChat AV, and Filevault to name a few. 10.4 brought several “Core” technologies to the developers. Core Data and Core Imaging. Users were treated to Spotlight, the Dashboard, Smart folders, and the Automator. In that same amount of time, Microsoft has shipped 1 version of it’s flagship OS, Windows XP, to it’s users. (I know server 2003 came out too, but is your Aunt Tilly or Uncle Jed going to run server 2003 at home?). Name the big user facing improvements to Windows between Windows 2000 and Windows XP? More stability, security (well with XP SP2 at least), and the Luna theme. All of the applets, as Jon notes, have stayed about the same. Vista will add in RSS all over the place, about a year after Tiger. Still nothing about podcasting support, either creation or consumption. While Apple is shipping updates to their iLife products that enable Aunt Tilly and Uncle Jed to put our the “how to bake a pie” podcast. How many Apple users will actually USE that stuff? Probably not many, but more than if it wasn’t present and they had to cobble together a solution from third party tools.

Sure Apple has a tiny, small percentage of the market that Microsoft does. But ask yourself, who’s users are happier with their choice? Why, because even if they just care about making money it APPEARS that Apple cares more about their users. They fan their userbase like a small flame and try to grow it. They ship features that are user facing much faster than Microsoft, or almost anyone else for that matter. It’s the one thing that has impressed me the most about Apple products. The focus on the consumer and the ability to quickly turn features out to the public. That’s something Microsoft needs to work on.

update: hmm, looks like the iMactel is going for the same price as the PPC iMac. That’s pretty lame.

Interesting: Macbook Pro. Intel based Powerbooks. Wow, dual-core too. HOLY CRAP, 2 GRAND. You’re safe for another year my little iBook.