Apple has announced that they are releasing a version of the Safari web browser for Windows. Apple say that Safari for Windows is twice as fast as Internet Explorer (is that saying much?) and that a beta release is available for XP and Vista.

It will be interesting to see if the Windows and Mac versions render the same (unlike MS IE on Windows and Mac). Also interesting is the fact that Safari’s rendering engine is in part based on KHTML the Linux/*nix GUI, which will hopefully help raise the status of Open Source code even more.

Many people (myself included) were not terribly impressed with the layout of Windows Itunes, hopefully Safari will be a more intuitive experience. If we (as web developers) are really lucky, Safari will end up with 25% market share (who knows, perhaps the Iphone will drive that since it comes with Safari.) and the rest is divided between Firefox, IE and Opera. That way it will be impossible for any one browser to drive developers away from W3C standards ever again.

See Apple/Safari for more details.

Another country has decided that they would be better off using Open Source software instead of proprietry “binary only” software from the likes of Microsoft. South Africa has announced that as soon as possible they will be swapping to Linux and OSS in government departments. It could be a tactic to get better pricing from companies like Microsoft, but time will no doubt tell.

In other MS news, they just lost a patent case with Alcatel-Lucent regarding the playing of media files and their office suite just got some more competition from Google in the form of Google apps premium.

Lastly, ITwire, notes the irony that Steve Balmer of Microsoft has been making comments about the potential legal problems with Linux, even going so far as to suggest they may sue GNU products, while on the other hand Microsoft themselves have just lost a 1.5 billion patent lawsuit themselves.

These statements about IP violations in Linux are being made by the CEO of a company which is being sued by AT&T for sending development work overseas to avoid US patents. Lest we forget, this is the same company which was successfully sued by Eolas for infringing patents relating to browser plug-ins.

There’s more. A small company named Visto is suing Microsoft for alleged mobile email and data patent infringements; another firm VirnetX is taking action against the Redmond giant for alleged patent infringement in VPN. Remember, Timeline successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement in SQL Server.

Apparently Microsoft is of the “Do as I say, not as I do” philosophy , they don’t want their own IP taken, but seem to have little respect for anyone elses.

Bill and Melinda Gates claim they limit their oldest daughter’s screen time, or so says the headline at C-Net. Of course the limit doesn’t restrict her homework time, only her free time. Of course, what isn’t homework? At least according to my kids, everything relates to homework — instant messages to clarify assignments, posts to facebook to clarify assignments, etc. etc. When you drill down a little what you really find is an advertisement plug for Vista that allows parents to set controls. While that isn’t a bad thing, that is what the article is really about, selling Vista from my view-point. What do you think?

Apparently some people are getting a computer with Vista loaded to get exposure among the influential. And I didn’t get one? Either they figure I already have used Vista enough or they think that I might not like it? Are they only giving it to their huge fans? I use Windows — heck I have an install of 98, 2000, NT, XP (and we don’t run it often but we even still have 95 on a machine) … and there is a Vista in my house. I don’t use Vista yet, despite having edited two books on Vista so far for Wiley Publishing, because it is on a desktop and I am usually on a laptop. Oh well I guess I won’t be one of the influencers.

On other software I have recently given a test run. LeadTools Eprint 5 was given to me for a test run. It sounds fantastic. It promises to essentially let you hit print and output to many formats, most significant to me being pdf (Adobe Portable Document Format). I often take a Window’s Office document (based on this template) and open it in Open Office (oOo 2.0) for the simple purpose of outputing it in pdf format. Unfortunately in my limited testing, it only works so, so. The first document I tested it on converted just fine. But then I did my Christmas Newsletter (more on Christmas Newsletters in a moment in another post) it butchered it. It turned the solid backgrounds in text boxes into plaid colored backgrounds making the overlying text impossible to read. In turn it flipped several of the little eye candy images like the reindeer upside down. To put is simply, it didn’t work on this document so I opened Open Office and it converted it near flawlessly (it also had one glitch … the connected text boxes didn’t connect completely so I had to make a little edit, the first time I might add when oOo has failed me even a little in the conversion process). My wish for the new year — a pdf output program that works 100 percent.

Maybe I’ll go get Open Office 2.1 that was recently released and see if it does any better. As an interesting aside, Google still talks about downloading oOo 2.0. I wonder if Open Office has missed a step in updating that is causing Google not to react? They have the 2.1.0 in most of the bottom links, but the first link on the page in navigation doesn’t reflect the change. Perhaps it should?

Internet Explorer 7 has been available for download for about a fortnight, but it wasn’t until today that I received my first task-bar prompt to update from IE6 to IE7 via Microsoft Update / Windows Update. As Don mentioned in an earlier post folks who develop and test web pages would be wise to run both IE6 and IE7 (on different PCs) until IE6 usage drops away, and this High Priority Update is the first step towards that goal.

In the interests of dumping the dud that is IE6, my guess is that this High Priority Update will see most personal Windows users migrate over the next few weeks via Microsoft Update. This would leave corporate and small business users at the mercy of system administrators to update SOEs in their own sweet time. And with IE7 only able to run on Windows XP (or higher) and many businesses still running Windows 2000, this will be “a journey” for many. Point in case is my employer, who only recently rolled out XP nearly 5 years after I first started running it on my home PCs. The other group of users, unable to update from IE6 at all, will be those people running an ancient version of Windows or one that fails the “genuine Microsoft product” test.

After all of this, the next round of IE7 converts will probably come from people buying new PCs or otherwise upgrading to Windows Vista from early 2007.

As a fan of Firefox and Opera I only run Internet Explorer (6 & 7 now) as a tool to check web pages as I develop them. But I’m certainly looking forward to the day when IE6 usage statistics reflect those of IE5 and earlier versions, and then I can trash it forever!

After five beta’s and a final release candidate, Internet Explorer 7 has launched. Grab your own copy and test, but understand that like all prior IE Browsers, it will replace your version of IE6. That is problematic for developers as we now need to keep two machines running side by side, one for IE6 that is still in most common use, and one for IE7 as it will become more and more common. When Vista launches around the first of the year, it will expand even more in use as it is the native browser with Windows Vista.

It is good news that Vista will ship on a single disk. Expected to reach consumers in January 2007 (only a year late I guess), the product key given will control how much access you actually get to Vista.

I have run several of the Vista betas so far and have yet to see what is so wonderful about it. The main claim to fame is that it is secure … but shouldn’t the old versions be secure? Widgets don’t excite me a bit. Transparent windows don’t excite me a bit. Internet Explorer and Outlook Express updates don’t excite me a bit. I’m sure the only thing likely to excite me is the amount of money I have to shell out when they quit supporting my 2000, NT and XP versions.