Activity for January 21

Review - Opera (v10.5) for Mac OS X
10.50 Build 8189 Pre-Alpha (Jan 21, 2010)

Installed this latest pre-alpha, and I'm still not satisfied with some minor annoyances in terms of GUI and browsing customization. Speed is there, though, as is better rendering on all Ajax and Javascript pages, where frames are better defined. No more text overlaps on some sites I visit on a daily basis, but still, some functionalities are absent or not easily customizable, like single-key shortcuts, for example. You can check the appropriate box in Preferences, and they still won't work.

I hope the next release will be more "finished" (I know, it's a bad pun when talking about a Norwegian browser...)!
Review - QtWeb
3.1 Build 005 (Dec 17, 2009)

What a piece of crap!!!

The perfect example of what K-meleon should never become (know what I mean...?), what with the toolbars that can be unanchored, but never anchored again, and overlaid over each other so as to become unusable... The interface being what it is, I tried it for a couple minutes and shed it for good. Sorry guys, but K-meleon was (is?) the real thing. This one is a pale copy, and though it is fast and has small footprint, it's not enough for me.

Too bad you can't give a zero-star rating...
Review - Safari for Mac OS X
4.0 (Jun 9, 2009)

How strange so many things changed in Safari 4's GUI between the last beta and this final version...! Strange indeed that "they" abandoned the tab bar in the upper portion of the interface, and that "they" also reversed course as to the progress bar, not back to the blue tide (yet?), but not exactly as bland and non-informative as the simple spinning grey wheel either.

Aside from that, Safari 4 on my MBP running Tiger with all the bells and whistles is very fast at rendering web pages, quick to start up too, and rendering is so far flawless. I still deplore the fact that its interface can't be more easily customized, but in terms of speed and stability, it's a good application. Don't know yet if I'm ready to ditch Opera as default browser, though...
Review - Safari for Mac OS X
4 Beta (Feb 24, 2009)

Sorry to rain on your parade, guys, but I just installed it, only to uninstall it immediately, because it just wouldn't start (Safari had to quit, would you like to send a report to Apple? By all means, Steve...).

Got back to Saf4 Dev Preview, which works just fine, thanks...
Review - KDE
4.0.1 (Feb 6, 2008)

Hi all!

I must say I'm amazed: KDE 4 is not only good- (even better-)looking, it's also much more user-friendly, and doesn't seem to be quite the power-hog some predicted it would become... Tried it first on a newly-minted Kubuntu live-cd, then decided to install it on a new partition on my Toshiba laptop (my Guinea pig of all trades...), just for the fun of it, and I just love it. One thing, though: what was called Kwifi Manager on former versions of KDE is now so well hidden I have yet to find it...

If anyone knows where it's gone hiding, feel free to holler...

Aside from that, a plain 5. Truly deserved, IMHO!
Comment - On second thought, maybe the RIAA did conspire to fix prices, appeals court finds
4.0.1 (Jan 14, 2010 - 5:08 AM)

I think I'm gonna be sick... A few years ago, I posted on the French website I was then working for news related to RIAA's and MPAA's strange behaviors regarding "illegal" downloads of music and/or movies via P2P networks. In some cases, if memory serves, one or both these organizations were suing people who were already dead when the alleged infringement took place... In other cases, a single mom was being sued for millions of dollars for downloads that some obscure "research firm" had documented by pirating her computer without her consent...

But hey, don't fret: President Obama said he truly wants a "neutral Internet", and you guys in the US don't have a president with an Obama complex and who's totally sold to multimedia corporations and the pile of money they will no doubt inject in his next presidential campaign! You guys are blessed...
Comment - The once and future king: Test build of Opera crushes Chrome on Windows 7
4.0.1 (Dec 26, 2009 - 2:16 PM)

I wish! When you enable them, you still can't go back by pressing Z or go forward by pressing X. At least not consistently, hence my finding it "pretty unstable". The same goes when you press the F2 key and can't open the "Go to URL..." dialogue. These are must-haves in my case, though I understand others will find this pretty benign. What's pretty certain is this new build's speed and rendering: they're both excellent. Now, if "they" could make it a little more stable, I'd adopt it as my default browser right away.

How do you say "Fingers crossed" in Norwegian...? ;-)
Comment - The once and future king: Test build of Opera crushes Chrome on Windows 7
4.0.1 (Dec 24, 2009 - 7:10 AM)

Still pretty unstable, but a good build nonetheless, if only for its speed when rendering Javascript, and the new interface, with new tabs "sliding" out from the existing ones and stuff. Still, some one-key keyboard shortcuts have been taken away (namely, the ability to press "Z" to go back and "X" to go forward, or to press "F2" to display the small "Go to new URL" dialogue), and aren't as easily customizable as before. But hey, this isn't even a pre-alpha, so... I'll stick to 10.10 for now, and keep an eye on the Desktop Team webpage, just in case...

How do you say "Keep up the good work" in Norwegian...?
Comment - Will Nokia's plans further alienate American consumers?
4.0.1 (Dec 5, 2009 - 10:42 AM)

I think Tim is missing the point: to be successful on the US market is indeed important to Nokia, as it is for any foreign company, but the US home market is also a pain in the backside from a technical point of view (CDMA being what it is, it's still the technical exception rather than the rule, world-wide), and a poor source of extra revenue, because in this already saturated market, as in Europe's, selling new phones to homes and companies who already own several of them has become increasingly difficult. Mobile phone operators have also muddled the waters even more, with their multi-year subscription plans than in effect discourage users to switch, therefore to change their mobile. Therefore, cutting on its product line is probably the smart thing to do for Nokia, given that the financial crisis we've been experiencing for the past 18 months is still far from over. The crux is not to fall behind, technically speaking.

This is why I agree with Julien: Symbian has been around for ever, but it's still the number 1 mobile OS these days. It's been adopted by major mobile phone makers, such as Samsung, and though Windows Mobile 6.5 (really a 6.0 with better eye-candy) is now here, Symbian is not going away, if only because it's one of the things Nokia has a good control over, in the market. The price of mobile components is going down, as opposed to that of mobile OS licenses (Windows Mobile doesn’t come cheap, from what I hear) because more and more manufacturers are using the same screens, keypads, motherboards and chips. Only the specs are going up: one year from now, SnapDragon will probably be the norm on smarphones in the 100-200 USD price bracket, as opposed to a handful now. When that happens, we'll see more and more manufacturers trying to make more revenue on other things, such as software. Maemo is good, but it's still in its infancy, from a technical standpoint. No one has really implemeted yet, aside from Nokia on its N900, which is, as expected, one expensive piece of hardware.

Still.

Nokia sells about 15% of its mobiles and smartphones in the North American market. That leaves 85% for the rest of the world, especially technical-hungry markets in South East Asia. For those, as for its "domestic" market (Europe), Nokia must keep on releasing wave after wave of new products, based on the same architecture, using one of its two OSes. For US customers, Nokia could become the mobile phone equivalent of Porsche or BMW for cars: a cutting-edge, user-friendly symbol of simplicity and refinement, when US manufacturers seem more inclined to compete with their asian competitors in the eye-candy department. Nokia phones have never been considered to be especially good-looking, but they do the job, and that’s why so many companies use them. But let’s face it: the race nowadays isn’t commercial, it’s technical. Nokia has been in the lead for over four decades, now, and has its electronic fingers in so many pies, it’s not going away anytime soon...
Comment - Nokia lawyers up, chooses to fight Apple in court rather than the market
4.0.1 (Oct 27, 2009 - 11:40 AM)

Mr Levy seems to forget that Apple itself hasn't always been as successful as it is today, and has in its time indugled in the very "tactics" Nokia is being accused of in this article. Let the courts decide on the merit of this case. We may learn something along the way... Nokia has been on top of the mobile, then smartphone, game for years. As such, it's been considered as top dog by most of its competitors, who sought to bring it down, but repeatedly failed. Maybe it's the European in me speaking, but Apple is a relative newcomer on this market, and as a Mac-user, I'm quite glad they became so successful so quickly, but let's face it: all smartphone makers nowadays use more or less the same technology (same logic boards and chipsets, same screens, same processors and memory), buy their components from the same suppliers, and then have to make a decent profit selling their overpriced products on markets so bored with this technology that they won't even look your way if you don't reinvent the wheel with each new release. Apple's iPhone is one of a kind, has been from the start, but is now facing a harsher competition. Nokia, on the other hand, has been active in more numerous segments of the cellphone business: they make cell-towers and servers, and various other hardware related to their core activity. They have patented countless technologies in their 40+-year existence, and have probably been plundered a couple times.

As I said, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and see what the court says...