Today (June 11th) at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs announces to the world press the latest features for the Apple Macintosh, PC and iPhone.
The first of which is details regarding the new operating system for the Macintosh, the eagerly anticipated Mac OS 10.5 a.k.a. Leopard. The OS will feature 300 new features including a stylish way of viewing files similar to iTunes’ Cover Flow. In addition, a new and powerful organisational system for the desktop called Stacks.
Leopard is due to release in October and will cost $129. There is only one version of the new Mac OS X, unlike Windows Vista…
Steve Jobs also gave details regarding a new web browser for PC users with Safari – Apple’s web browser. Steve believes that it can compete against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.
He said Safari was “the fastest browser on Windows”, saying it was twice as fast as Internet Explorer.
A Beta version of Safari 3 for Windows XP, Vista and Apple Macs running OS X, is available for download immediately from the Apple website. Apple is hoping to replicate the overwhelming success of iTunes, which is available on both Macs and Windows platform.
“We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari,” said Steve Jobs.
Furthermore, Apple took the opportunity to announced details over third-party development for the iPhone. But in a u-turn from a previously stated policy, Steve Jobs said developers would be able to build web applications for the device that “extend the capabilities of iPhone… but keep the iPhone secure”.
Instead of having to test each and every new application themselves, Apple will allow developers to build web applications for the phone which run inside the mobile device’s web browser and which were built on existing web standards.
Games giant Electronic Arts were also on stage at the WWDC to announce a series of titles that would be released for the Mac.
The latest Harry Potter game, Battlefield 2142, Tiger Woods, Need for Speed Carbon and Madden Football are all to be released for the plaform, in major boost to gaming on Macs (which has been severely lacking).
Gaming legend John Carmack (Id software) made the announced that the firm was working on an un-named project for Apple Macs, as well as other major platforms (including the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3). Details on the new title will be revealed during this year’s E3.
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Yink says:
I’m currently using the safari internet browswer. And I am quite impressed with it. Its very very fast even with page rendering. I haven’t seen any major issues with the way it renders pages either yet but I haven’t fully tested it.
I notice the font feel bigger and more bold. I like the way the blue bar moves acrross the address bar rather than taking up room at the bottom of the browser. Need to use it for longer but I quite like it.
With games coming along for the Mac now its fast becoming an all round alternative to pc’s.
But we still can’t wait for the iPhone to come out.
Jun 11, 2007, 7:03 pmSnige66 says:
Just started using it. Love it so far. Deffo has that ” Apple ” look, which I love. Just not got an Apple computer
iPhone is looking great. And as a bonus, the two main things reviewers are moaning about, no 3G and only 2meg camera, I couldn’t give a moneys toss about. Not got 3G in my area, and CAMERA? Pah! Give me more memory over a lense any day.
Hope it come to the UK soon. I assume the release date is not worldwide?
Anyway Safari is great so far. Love the fonts and colours. Next step a full on Apple Mac, whenever that’ll be…..sigh.
Jun 11, 2007, 1:54 pmNeoBlade says:
Seems the browser has had mixed reactions thus far and indeed in two hours security flaws have been found. One of which causes the browser to shut down with certain code…
Have a read here for more things…
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2007/06/niiiice.html
Jun 11, 2007, 3:22 amwalking leaf says:
I’m not surprise that there are serious security issues with the PC version of Safari. After all, the Windows platform is always under attack from hackers and it doesn’t help that the new Apple web browser is still at a BETA stage. The final version will be much better to prevent this on happening.
Moving away from the negative side to Safari, I’ve been using version 2 for quite a while now and it does feel faster. Firefox on a Mac is rubbish, but perfect on a PC. It will be difficult for PC users to move away from the trend setting Firefox for other web browsers (plus I hear Firefox version 3 is coming soon!)
As for the iPhone, found this website (link below) in which applications are running via the Safari interface. It’s only a tech demo but it gives the impression of how to run your own software on the device. Impressive.
http://davidcann.com/iphone/
Jun 11, 2007, 4:46 amNeoBlade says:
Oh I forgot to say, these exact some bugs (not 100% sure about the one that causes it to crash, maybe you can test it out for me) are also present in the Mac OSX version of the browser and not just the PC version. Why? The MacOSX isn’t always so secure because they made it so easy for things to connect to it, hence lowered the overall security of the system.
Why are these errors and bugs being pointed out now? Simply because in the past Apple had such a small market share no-one cared. Now that the Mac’s are becoming popular it makes it more worthwhile for people to test the security of the system. So in the future we should be seeing the system getting a lot more coverage, which is good because the views won’t always be so biased as it usually is in the press.
Jun 11, 2007, 4:03 pmNeoBlade says:
Here’s another comparison thing… Interesting reading really http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070612-afirst-look-safari-3-on-windows.html
Also the font thing… Have you guys tried IE7 with ClearType enabled? I’m still unsure if I like it myself… Especially with Vista as I’m quite used of high res and sharp fonts so my eyes take a while to adjust. It seems Safari goes further not supporting Window’s ClearType and introducing its own type of alising. I’m sure though it can be disabled.
As for speed, you could try out Firefox 3 Beta 5, its ment to be rather sweet…
Jun 11, 2007, 7:59 pmwalking leaf says:
Despite the many issues regarding this new web browser, Apple are pleased to announce that the software has been downloaded one million times in the space of 2 days! Pretty impressive I might add.
In addition, you can download 3.0.1 version right now. Hopefully the little bugs that affected the first version is now resolved.
http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
Jun 11, 2007, 10:53 am