Posts Tagged Safari
Why buy an iPad and where does it fit in to the market place ?
Posted by Craig_Strong in Product Reviews, Tech Headlines, Technology / Hardware on January 30th, 2010
Finally the long awaited iPad has has been released. For quite some time people had speculated what the device was going to be and what it would be capable of. This has been followed by some passionate underlying debates for what it should and needs to be for consumers. Well the device has been released, which has been met predictably by a mixed reception with continued debate. Following such debates, the key point of confusion standing out is people are unsure where an iPad fit’s into their lifestyle. This is the question I am trying answer from my own perspective and lifestyle, suggesting where an iPad would mainly suit me.
iPad doesn't replace PC's or smart phones
Being a Software Developer/IT Manager by profession I have pretty much access to a computer/device of some description most places I visit on a day to day basis. I currently use a ‘G1 Android phone’, have a ‘macbook’ for working on the move, iMac at home, and have a Vista machine at work, not to mention access to several remote linux servers holding my information. I also have an xbox360 which is linked to my media linked to the TV. With all these devices around me where would an iPad fit in and why would I want one?
To understand where an iPad would fit into my lifestyle, I have to look at my daily patterns and highlight where I waste time with a little ‘lean’ thinking. Pretty much most of the day I’m in front of a computer and I clearly don’t see and iPad as a suitable replacement/substitute for what I use these devices for. When relaxing in front of the TV, listening to music via the xbox360 and iMac, I don’t see and iPad offering anything against these devices. I certainly don’t want a 10 inch device to replace my mobile phone unless I was aiming to block out the sun. So what gap is leftwithin my daily lifestyle pattern?
Well looking at my daily patterns I quickly identified somewhere where I am wasting time which could be improved. As part of my day, I regular attend Scrum meetings, meetings with 3rd parties, and am often called for quick consultation from various parts of the business. Most of the time these can be quick meetings lasting no longer than 10-20 minutes. When called for any of these tasks, I find myself picking up my A4 notepad, rushing into a room and writing notes. Most of the time I then type up key points of the meeting on my PC. Sometimes however with interruptions I miss the odd one or two and end up being chased up by others where I have to then play catch up. For me, this is where I see an iPad fitting into my lifestyle.
If I could turn to the iPad rather than an A4 notepad this would mean I could take more information everywhere, makes notes once and most importantly of all for me is to free up my time. An iPad offers 10 hours of battery life and can stay on standby for a month! It is small, lightweight and quick to turn on and off which makes it a perfect fit to replace my A4 notepad replacement. I can make notes and pass it around the room with others to share information such as diagrams, images or notes, as easily as passing around sheets of paper. I have a macbook, but there is no way I could get it to fill this gap like an iPad could, otherwise believe me I would be already doing it. It’s overkill, less mobile, slower to turn on and involves launching full blown software packages. This is enough to say no and the A4 notepad has won every time. On the same note where I would use my macbook and smartphone, an iPad wouldn’t be a replacement for these. My macbook is good at being a macbook and provides me with the ability to have a mobile computer for developing code, running VM’s etc. My smartphone is too much of a compromise with such a small screen. Therefore I’m very glad Apple decided to make the iPad exactly what it is without a full OS trying to compete with the notebook/laptop devices. A purposeful and simple solution to fill an obvious gap in the market.
There are other obvious uses where the iPad would be a benefit and that is on the commute. I used to travel to work by train carrying at least one magazine, a book and a macbook every day. An iPad would have meant I could just carry a macbook with it, reducing the weight and giving me the ability to carry much more reading material. I don’t see the point spending on an ebook reader now when and iPad is just a bit more money for a lot more value in return. I could just pull out at any time to fill the short, but sometimes very long gaps between train journeys. If the train is 10-15 minutes late, I’m not going to boot up a macbook and find a place to sit on a very over crowded platform.
iPad replaces notebooks and ebook readers
Obviously my viewpoint above is selfish to my lifestyle. Who else could use an iPad ? Well looking at my circle of friends and family, unlike me most of them are not tech people. However, they all have computers and laptops and I know this as usually I’m contacted at some point if they run into problems. Looking at their use it tends to be mostly shopping online, social networking, emails and sharing photos. Most of them also seem to be intimidated and frustrated with their computers to various degrees. They look boring and a computer probably reminds them of the office they just left in the day. For these users an iPad could be a good option as it’s cheap ‘ish’, simple, secure and most of all friendly. It’s a device that can sit on the coffee table and be picked up and used anytime just like a magazine. For less tech savvy users this is far more inviting to use and therefore likely to get more use. This is why I’m glad they made it more like an iPhone than a notebook. It makes much more sense for this device to be app based and would be much more attractive to already proficient iPhone users.
I’m sure it won’t be long before we see Google responding with a slate device offering Android, not ChromeOS.
Apple’s Safari 4 beta. Is it as good as they claim?
Posted by Craig_Strong in Web Browsers on February 26th, 2009
With my recent launch of this blog I wanted my first official post to be something of substance. After pondering for a while, I was handed a golden nugget with the recent release of Safari 4 Beta. With Apple claiming that Safari 4 has 150 new features, I thought I would investigate further. Was this going to be a compiled list of over stated achievements which so many before them have claimed to have solved?
I downloaded the Safari 4 Beta version on both Mac OSX and MS Vista to give them a run through. Almost from the first moment I started using the browser I was impressed. The clear and concise interface being unobtrusive, gave way to a well thought out structure which allows a user to get on with what’s most important, surfing the web. It didn’t stop there though, after being gently seduced by Apple’s obvious attention to detail with their efforts combine style and functionality which include such features as the new ‘Top Sites’ 3D menu and the iTunes style “Cover Flow” history browser. Although impressed at this point I was impressed at the interface level, I thought and hoped that this wasn’t a mask to hide a lack of improvements under the hood.
Innovative way to view browsing history
Scrolling through the list of 150 improvements and new features within Safari 4 beta, it’s without doubt that Apple are planning for Safari 4 to raise the bar. Some of these features are quite impressive including ARIA support, improved CSS effects, HTML 5 Offline Support, improved international/cultural compatibility as well as feature rich development tools to name just a few. However amongst all these new features there was one that I had to test straight away for myself and that was that Safari 4 was ACID 3 compliant. Could this be true? With so many other browsers stepping up to the plate and failing after making this claim, I wondered if Safari 4 was going to be the next victim of false claim. Well any doubts I had were instantly quashed when I seen for my very own eyes, Safari 4 has indeed passed the ACID 3 test.
Safari 4 Beta Passed ACID 3 Test
I then proceeded onto start reading about the ‘Blazing Performance‘ benchmarks. These claims display information suggesting that Safari 4 is much quicker that the incredibly fast ‘WebKit‘ based cousin Chrome 1.0 at rendering HTML and Javascript, not to mention a white wash on performance over Internet Explorer 7 & 8 as well as my beloved Firefox 3 browser. Now as I was using Safari 4, I had noticed that the browser was rendering pages extremely quick. Without proper benchmarking techniques involving stable, fair testing environments how could I satisfy my curiosity to test Apple’s Safari 4 speed claims. Now this is when it struck me, I could use the ‘slickspeed‘ test aimed at testing the response times of various well known javascript frameworks. Although this is by no means an accurate benchmarking suite, I presume that although the figures maybe out somewhat, the patterns of results should be relative to the browsers javascript engine speed. So with this new arsenal I set out one by one to prove or disprove that Safari 4 could be faster than the competition.
To carry out this test I minimised the amount applications running on my computer and tested each browser one by one to get the following results.
(Mac OSX - 2 Ghz Dual Core, MacBook, 2GB Ram)
| MooTools 1.2 | JQuery 1.2.6 | Prototype 1.6.0.2 | YUI 2.5.2 Selector beta | Dojo 1.1.1 | Total (ms) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Safari 4 beta | 73 | 52 | 251 | 189 | 19 | 584 |
| Opera 9.63 | 222 | 198 | 278 | 526 | 128 | 1352 |
| Firefox 3.06 | 231 | 230 | 274 | 516 | 162 | 1413 |
| Total | 526 | 480 | 803 | 1231 | 309 | - |
(Windows Vista Business - AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ 2.11GHz 4GB Ram)
| MooTools 1.2 | JQuery 1.2.6 | Prototype 1.6.0.2 | YUI 2.5.2 Selector beta | Dojo 1.1.1 | Total (ms) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Safari 4 beta | 58 | 52 | 210 | 185 | 6 | 511 |
| Opera 10 Alpha | 125 | 104 | 199 | 337 | 45 | 810 |
| Chrome 1.0.154.48 | 78 | 70 | 374 | 306 | 82 | 910 |
| FF3 3.0.6 | 137 | 153 | 269 | 360 | 104 | 1023 |
| Opera 9.51 | 182 | 147 | 187 | 419 | 94 | 1029 |
| IE8 6001.18372 | 529 | 336 | 1763 | 1062 | 77 | 3767 |
| IE 7.0.6001.18000 | 599 | 417 | 2083 | 1417 | 690 | 5206 |
| Total | 1708 | 1279 | 5085 | 4086 | 1098 | - |
The test I used can be found at http://mootools.net/slickspeed/.
Wow! These results are impressive. Not only is Safari 4 showing it’s speed, but Dojo really stood out as well. I must point out however IE8, reported a great deal of errors when accessing Dojo elements and seemed to be the only browser to do so. Now before getting too carried away my firefox does contain some additional plugins which no doubt could have slowed the engine down a little, although I had made efforts to keep it slim. However even with that in mind, there is a clear pattern from these results that Safari 4 is pretty damn fast! In the name of “who is the fastest browser in the west”, Safari 4 certainly is proving to be a threat. With the immense speed claims from Apple regarding Safari 4 as well as the convincing evidence, what else appeals to me that is included in Safari 4 Beta?
Being a native Firefox user for many years and with all the effort I have taken configuring firefox to provide a development haven which include such plugins as firebug, firephp, developer tools, urlparams and so on, could Safari development tools offer me anything I haven’t already got? Well interestingly the answer was Yes! Not only do the development tools offer a very graphical representation of load times and file sizes ‘Resources’, but the development tools now include a javascript debugger which is something I often use in firebug. Not only this but Safari 4 includes ‘tools for managing offline databases’. Now I haven’t used the database feature as of yet, but this sounds very interesting and something I am definitely going to investigate.
After looking through the immense list of features and claims the big question is, can Safari 4 do to me what no browser has done to me in the past few years and entice me away from Firefox? Well I actually think Yes and No. My development environment in Firefox is setup so well, where I use Zend_Debug to log to firephp and I am quite used to several small, but useful plugins making life easier and more productive such as ‘urlparams ‘. I can’t see a complete alternative yet fully within Safari 4. However if I manage to figure out a way in which I can throw log messages to the error console in Safari 4 which might already be possible, Safari 4 could win me over. In cases where I simply wish to browse the web I do actually think I might start using Safari 4 and see how it holds up, where I shall keep Firefox for development. All in all though, Safari 4 beta looks promising and Apple have certainly raised the bar in the main stream browser market. If I were one of the competition I would certainly be paying close attention to this release.
Please note this is by no means an official test or official comparison and should not be considered a stable foundation for browser quality or representation. This is simply a self test carried out for personal interest and is no way a reflection of the quality or performance of any of the selected software’s integrity.
