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So a Windows version of Safari is finally here. Hurrah, another browser to support. Cynicism aside, is it any good?

Now, bearing in mind this is a beta version, there are a few issues I have. These are only my personal annoyances, based on first impressions, and in no way a comprehansive list of bugs.

It’s Fugly.

Fugly in the sense of it dowsn’t fit in with the surrounding OS one little bit. Not even an iota. I give Apple credit for porting the thing in the first place, and I know there’s a kind of UI “branding” to stick to, but the window border looks awful.

Another issue is the font rendering. I have Windows ClearType turned on for font smoothing. Safari has its own font smoothing (which can’t be turned off – another annoyance). The combination of two font smoothing algorythmns makes text look almost bold. It needs sorted ASAP.

There’s the Aqua-style widgets as well, but there a minor annoyance.

It’s Inconsistent

I can middle-click on a link in a web page, and it opens in a new tab. If I middle-click on a bookmark, it does nothing. That irritates me no end. Off the top of my head, some dialogs open in OSX-style “slide-down” windows, others don’t. Maybe this is a OS limitation? Or am I imagining it?

No dotMac Sync

I know, I know… dotMac sucks. But it has one very useful feature which I use extensively – bookmark syncing. I had hoped the Windows version of Safari would include this, but alas, it’s not there. Maybe they’ll add it in before the final version? If not, I don’t know if Safari will be able to compete against Firefox + Google Browser Sync as my first-choice of browser. I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for the moment, simply for the speed boost over Firefox, but speed alone won’t keep it in front.

So all round, Safari on Windows is a bit meh, hovering precariously close to pure dissapointment. For now, I’m willing to the give Apple the benefit for the doubt – it is a beta version, after all.

As one final note, how to do you bring up the web inspector panel I’ve heard so much about? Email chris@ this site with the answer, please!

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On Saturday, I blogged about my experiences of buying Photoshop Lightroom the Adobe.com store. Tonight I came home to an email from Tom Hogarty, Product Manager of the Lightroom team.

I’m not going to quote the email – there’s no need to, really – but for a product manager of a big, giant corporation like Adobe to even notice a single blogger talking about some trouble with the store, let alone take time to personally respond to said blogger, was something which took me by surprise. (I hope Apple are listening – I’ve got a whole raft of issues to take you up on!)

By doing so, Tom humanized Adobe (just a little). It’s nice when someone takes notice of you.

Anyway, the end result is that I’ve phoned my card issuer(s) and tried again at the Adobe.com store. The credit card payment seemed to go through, but my order is currently listed as “Pending” (it’s a download only purchase). However I’m sure before long I’ll be enjoying some full Lightroom goodness again.

[Update] Order fulfilled, and serial codes received. Happy endings all round!

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I own a Nikon D50 camera, which I’m slowly getting the hang of. One of the learning processes I’m going through at the moment is RAW workflow – taking the RAW files from the camera, processing them on the computer, then exporting them to whatever format/size/whatever I need.

The 2 big guns of the “digital darkroom” space on the Mac, are Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, and Apple’s own Aperture. Of these, my preference is definitely Lightroom. I’ve tried to like Aperture – really, I have – but I just can’t seem to figure it out. Lightroom on the otherhand, I had sussed in about an hour. I just couldn’t seem to find how to do what I wanted to do in Aperture (it’s unusual for me to find an Apple app to be unintuitive).

When the Lightroom trial ran out, I was happy enough to buy the full copy – despite the extra 50% premium just for living in the UK. The only problem was I couldn’t buy the full downloadable version from the Adobe store. They just wouldn’t let me. I tried to give them my money, but they just refused to accept it – not just once, but from three different cards. Apparently the details I gave them didn’t match those at the bank, even though I’d used the exact same details to renew some domains earlier this morning. Maybe if their store didn’t hardcode the UK as “GB”, the bank might have corroborated my details? It’s about the only thing I could think of.

My options then are to either

  1. Phone their customer support desk to place the order
  2. Buy a boxed copy from somewhere else
  3. Give Aperture another look.

None of these options are appealing at all. I don’t like handing out card details over the phone, assuming the order would work this way. Nor do I want another software box taking up space, or an install CD to lose. Then there’s Aperture. It’s maybe the lesser of the three evils, but it means relearning how to do all the stuff I just learned for Lightroom. That doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement.

Who knows, maybe the store will work tomorrow. Maybe it was just my day for gremlins (I had troubles with downloading Icon Shoppe purchases as well). Or maybe I’ll find a good book on Aperture which will show me how to do things properly.

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Something I like to do for each of my Macs, is keep a backed-up folder containing all the “essential” apps for both machines (along with all registration codes for easy reinstallation). I was updating my iBook copy this evening and thought I’d share. Some of these are generic apps that I’d use on either machine, while others are iBook specific.

Side-note – My iBook is pretty exclusively a web development machine.

Textmate. Textmate describes itself as “the missing editor for OS X”. I’m not sure what that’s meant to mean but hey, I’ll take their word for it! Textmate was the first Mac App I ever bought and is by far the best file editor I have ever used. Textmate handles just about any text file format you can throw at it, and above all else, lets you work without getting in your way. Seriously worth trying.

Ecto. Ecto is the best blogging client in the world. Especially on the Mac. I used to be a fan of MarsEdit (I own licenses for both), but Ecto won out in the end for its wider range of features. If you’re in any way serious about this blogging malarkey, I’d recommend you give it a try. Even the Windows version is recommended (although, naturally, it’s nowhere near as good as the Mac edition!)

Transmit. If Textmate was the first Mac App I paid for, then Panic Software’s Transmit was the second. It’s a S/FTP client with more features than you’re ever likely to need, but wrapped in a highly polished and intuitive interface. Transmit makes working with files on remote servers as effortless as working with local files in Finder. The synchronisation features alone are worth the price of the license.

Coconut Battery. More of a useful widget than an application, Coconut Battery can tell you near enough anything you need to know about the status and health of your battery. Ideal for checking if you want to know if you’ll be needing to buy a replacement any time soon.

Colloquy. Sometimes, the best – or only – way to get help on open-source applications/scripts, etc, is to jump into an IRC room. Colloquy is the best OS X IRC client I’ve found. As a rule, I don’t like chat or IM applications (they tend to be little more than a distraction), but Colloquy has helped me get access to the right answers on more than one occasion.

That’s really it for my iBook’s list of essential apps; I try to keep laptops “light”, hence the short list. My iMac list is probably huge in comparison. Besides, my other needs are either met by the apps bundled with OS X – Safari for web browsing, Terminal.app for command-line activity (remote sessions, etc.), iTunes and what-not, or by web applications –PHPMyAdmin for MySQL administration, Roundcube for accessing my IMAP email anywhere. Are there any applications you can’t live without on your Apple laptop? Please share!

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I’ve had my iBook for about 48 hours now, and I’m beginning to find my way. OS X (or is it OSX?) is a completely new experience to me, but I think I’m taking to it rather well. I’m still getting used to the difference between shutting an application and quitting an application, but that’ll come in time! For what it’s worth, I wanted to jot down my initial experiences and reactions with the switch. I won’t go into too much detail just yet – I’ll save that for later articles.

  • File browsing is more intuitive, especially after I switched to column view in Finder.
  • A lot more emphasis is placed on using keyboard commands than in Windows…
  • …Which is just as well, as the trackpad is a bit pants.
  • Software installation is a breeze. It’s so simple and logical. Drop the application into the applications folder and away you go!
  • I’m still not sold on the Dock, but I haven’t done any tweaking yet (other than the size of it)
  • Everything just looks better. From the icons to the text to the GUI widgets… it’s just better!

So far, I haven’t done anything to set up the machine for local development/testing. I plan to do this later this week, after I’ve done a bit more reading – I want to set up SVN and Ruby/Rails, both of which I’ve never set up before (or even used before, in the case of Ruby/Rails!). Another thing that I haven’t done yet, is transferred any old files onto the iBook. That’s tonight’s job.