Apple WWDC 2007 Keynote

[schmosef]

A side by side comparison I made of IE7 vs. Safari Beta on a Vista VPC:





I don't like the font rendering in Safari. I tried playing with the Windows ClearType settings and it made no difference to Safari.

I didn't have the loading problems that Joel mentioned. I've tried Safari with a few different sites and it is pretty fast.

I, for one, am looking forward to the full release.

[Jessterw]

Safari uses its own font rendering engine and utilizes the Lucida for the default sans-serif font (as well as in the UI). The ClearType vs OS X font rendering isn't a new argument, it's been going on since the first release of the latter. For many I guess it's a new issue, but to me it's old news. *shrug*

That said, the rendering doesn't look as sharp as it does under Safari for me on OS X (yes, running the 3.0 beta). OS X has a few options for font rendering and it's possible that Safari under Windows is only using one without any intelligent sniffing of the display type. It's apparent that Safari isn't handling fonts in the same way that iTunes does under Windows.

[Jessterw]

Just some thoughts on the keynote...

UI Changes
The new menubar looks like a terrible take on some of Vista's UI, so much so that I can't help but think it's just Apple poking more fun... if only. The dock is almost as bad with weak attempt at a 3D perspective. Gimmicky at best.

The unified look and iTunes style buttons everywhere really make the overall UI look very drab. As exaggerated as Aqua could be at times, this new look is far worse overall.

iPhone 3rd-party "Applications"
Wow. Apple definitely put a spin on that one. Sure, system service access for web applications is great, but that does not true applications make. I'm sure we'll see true 3rd-party application support in the future, but the tone they took with this is a bit off-putting.


Beyond that, I'm actually happy to see features like QuickLook. Looks like it will even support Excel files, which is going to be nice to have (viewing Word files has never been much of an issue even without Office). Stacks look to be a nice implementation of an old concept.

Overall, there seemed to be a lot of things that just didn't seem right. There are some really great features, but if this is what 10.5 (Leopard) is truly going to be then Apple has really dropped the ball in many areas.

[schmosef]

Apple Safari On Windows Broken On First Day

[schmosef]

Safari for Windows - First Impressions

[Nowhere]

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/11.html

small update...

Apple Safari for Windows: The world's slowest web browser
This item ran on the Joel on Software homepage on Monday, June 11, 2007

Apple is advertising Safari for Windows as “the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser.” Fast, maybe, in page rendering speed, but ridiculously slow to launch... on my brand new, 2.33 GHz Core-2 Duo laptop, it takes an insane amount of time to launch: 57 seconds, during which you don't even get an hourglass, so you don't even know it's launching.

By comparison, Firefox takes about 3 seconds and Internet Explorer takes about 2.

UPDATE: OK, I'm wrong. As far as I can tell, Safari is slow the first (few?) times you run it, while it does something, I don't know what, but once that thing is done, it launches as fast as other browers. Sorry!
...

[Mehen]

Just finished some testing with IE7, F2.0 and Safari.

As for initial load times, Safari is definitely a couple seconds longer. But just that. 2.

DEFINITELY faster at loading pages. I entered the same URL in all 3 browser, then actually pressed ENTER on each in the following order (very quickly, CS skills r l337) IE7, F, Safari.
I did this with about 5 different pages and each time Safari finished first, then F, then IE7, the exact opposite order that they were started.

Now the bad;

Font smoothing or their font renderer or whatever it is is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. I will not use Safari any more until they change that. The IE7 one is better, but I still prefer no smoothing/clear type. Check out the small fonts on a site like newgrounds.com using Safari. They look horrible. They have a 'light' setting but no way to turn it completely off. Oh, and a way to actually SAVE PREFERENCES would be nice too.

Maximizing the window when I have it dragged to my second display maximizes it in no man's land and I can't drag it back into view. The NV drivers had a cool option that could send a window to a specific display from the taskbar but I cannot do that with my ATI.

[Mehen]

I don't really care about memory usage differences (if it was >50-100MB yes, but not this small) - but some people might...

[Jessterw]

Font smoothing or their font renderer or whatever it is is HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. I will not use Safari any more until they change that. The IE7 one is better, but I still prefer no smoothing/clear type. Check out the small fonts on a site like newgrounds.com using Safari. They look horrible. They have a 'light' setting but no way to turn it completely off. Oh, and a way to actually SAVE PREFERENCES would be nice too.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier. Safari on OS X uses the system's font rendering, which includes the ability to turn off smoothing for fonts under a given size and change the style of smoothing based on the display. Not sure about the Windows version, but Safari also has the ability to set a minimum font size.

Honestly I don't expect any major changes in Safari Windows font rendering. Which is too bad, because it appears that the smoothing isn't near as nice as it is under OS X (even if it's not the same as Windows' ClearType).

I don't really care about memory usage differences (if it was >50-100MB yes, but not this small) - but some people might...

Safari loves memory. I love it under OS X, but that's probably one of my biggest gripes.


One thing to keep in mind is that this is a beta and Apple's track record with porting their apps to Windows; QuickTime is a nearly worthless, iTunes (at least for me) was mostly on par with its OS X counterpart, and so far Safari is a mix bag of experiences. I've seen reports on both ends of the spectrum on how usable it is.

Beyond the obvious development platform for the iPhone, remember that Apple has deals with Google and, now, Yahoo for the search bar in Safari...

Apple Safari On Windows Broken On First Day

Yeah, I'm sure Maynor was all over it as soon as it was available to download. Ax to grind and all. Sadly he's proven he doesn't believe in responsible disclosure or in being completely honest about such things.

Still, good find on his part.


One thing I still find odd is Apple's insistence on using the OS X look & feel on Windows. It'd be just as easy for them to create a unique and stylish but fitting one for their Windows apps. Of course, it's to be expected.

[schmosef]

Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering

who's Maynor?


Oh wait... I think you meant to quote a different post of mine. I get it now.

[az]

Great find, Schmo!

Sums it all up nicely, and I still want ClearType on my Macbook, or a finer resolution display. I'll see how fonts will look when my 226BW comes

[Jessterw]

Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering

who's Maynor?

Oh wait... I think you meant to quote a different post of mine. I get it now.

Yeah I did Fixed it.

Joel definitely manages to sum the differences up (as have others). It's definitely a case of preference and how (as in display technologies) one is viewing. In some ways I prefer ClearType, while in others I find it distracting compared to that of OS X. Of course, I've always been a designer at heart, so it's easy for me to be comfortable with how OS X renders fonts.

I've said a few times already, but how Safari is rendering type under Windows is definitely not on-par with how OS X does. Why that is, I'm not sure.

Oh and Maynor is the guy who found the flaws in Safari for Windows.

[DGhost]

DEFINITELY faster at loading pages. I entered the same URL in all 3 browser, then actually pressed ENTER on each in the following order (very quickly, CS skills r l337) IE7, F, Safari.
I did this with about 5 different pages and each time Safari finished first, then F, then IE7, the exact opposite order that they were started.

This is actually a really, really bad way to test performance. Applications in the foreground automatically have higher priority when it comes to execution, and tends to cause context switching. By swapping them all you did was give Safari the highest priority for execution, and bump IE twice by forcing firefox into the foreground and then forcing it out of the foreground and force Safari into the foreground. each time you do that it causes causes a bit of a hit to background processing as pages are pushed around in memory and processor cache is emptied/refilled.

Also... as to why Safari was loading faster on subsequent runs on a Vista PC... didn't we have a discussion on it's precaching features a little while ago? oh well... yeah... it's the sort of thing that Vista is really nice about

Personally, I figured this was going to happen as soon as Apple announced Intel Mac's... the best way for them to get market share with their technology is to get their applications running on the competition, and then lure people into their platform...

oh well..

new UI stuff in Leopard is interesting... I love the sidebar... reminds me of the UI changes that you got from integrated IE4 into 95

[schmosef]

Video: Windows Browser Speed Shootout - IE7, Firefox2, Opera9, Safari for Windows Beta 3




Cupertino, Start Your Copiers!

[Jessterw]

Well they already had the main alluring application on Windows before the Intel switch - iTunes. We'll ignore the QuickTime abomination. So Safari running on Windows has far less to do with the switch to Intel than the need for WebKit to be supported by Web developers and by extension, browser-hosted application development for the iPhone.

The sidebar in Finder came straight out of iTunes. The same thing is implemented in Apple Mail as well. It's really only an organizational change in the UI from the previous Finder sidebar as the capabilities are practically the same.

If you want features that remind you of something, take a gander at the translucent menubar or compare the 'new' dock to the one found in Sun's Project Looking Glass - now there's some true resemblance. Honestly, most of the new features found in Leopard have roots elsewhere (some of them from *gasp* NeXT even).

[Edit]
Of course, anyone pointing out that features like QuickLook (for instance) have been available for Windows for some time should be aware that the same is true for OS X. The technology/hooks to do so have been there for awhile at that.

Just going on that list that's present in your second link schmo:

• Translucency - No denying the menubar is very, very Vista-like, but transparency is nothing new to OS X.
• Photo Desktop - Erm, yeah, as it's supposedly the new default it's definitely reminiscent of Vista, but photo wallpapers have been included with OS X for some time.
• New Dock - Really not the same sort of 'new' that Vista's Start Menu was as it's almost all in presentation only.
• Cover Flow - Originally a 3rd-party app that was then implemented in iTunes.
• Quick Look - OS X has had preview (live icon) capabilities for certain file formats for some time (built-in and via 3rd-party). Of course, QuickLook is far more extensive.
• Downloads Folder - Credit where credit is due. OS X has had a 'Drop Box', though that's always been more for file sharing.
• Improved Spotlight Search - Seriously? They improve a feature they already have and it's copying?
• Home Network Search - Another great idea that Windows can lay claim to.
• Shared Computers - Always been present in OS X, just not with a friendly name and location.
• 64-bit - What can you say about that. Obviously Windows and OS X were moving to it well before either's latest versions came out.
• CoreAnimation - Simply an extension of already present animation features.
• Time Machine - Ignoring any 3rd-party software, Windows definitely gets the prize there.

Obviously the list was just some similarities between the latest OS's and not an actual declaration that Apple copied those things from Vista. That said, Microsoft would be entirely justified in returning the jabs Apple has given them for 'copying' in the past.

There's a number of features and implementations that Apple would do well to copy from Windows. By the same token, I'm not overly impressed with some things Apple has implemented (regardless of whether MS does them in Windows or not).

I need to stop though, I already sound like enough of a Mac zealot as it is