BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
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For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Monday, February 16, 2004
If Bill Gates did this, people
would be howling. A little more than a year ago, Apple unveiled
Safari,
a brand-new Web browser for its Macintosh computers. The move led
Microsoft to stop further development of the Mac version of
Internet
Explorer. So - at least for
those who like to use Officially Approved Software - Safari was
suddenly the only game in town.
Now Apple has finally released an
upgrade to Safari, version 1.2. And I can't use it. The new Safari
only runs on OS X 10.3 (a/k/a Panther). I'm running OS X 10.2
(Jaguar). Panther is not a new operating system - it's a maintenance
upgrade with a few new features. And it costs $129. I'm not
buying.
The problem is that I'm not seeking
cool breakthroughs in Safari, just basic functionality that was left
out of version 1.0, like the ability to print stuff out with page
numbers. Not being allowed to upgrade to Safari 1.2 without forking over more money strikes me as at least
low-level customer abuse, given that my iBook is less than a year
old.
Anyway, I'm experimenting with a
new browser, Mozilla Firefox. It's still in beta (version
0.8), but it seems to be stable and at least as fast as Safari. You
get page numbers when you print, and some sites that don't render
properly with Safari - such as Cosmo
Macero's weblog - now look
just fine. It interacts better with Blogger.com,
too.
Firefox is part of the
Mozilla
Project, which designs
open-source Internet software. There's a Windows version, too, so
give it a try.
posted at 10:19 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
