terrandabo's Profile

Having read the comments more carefully, I ran into Chris's argument that the Applications pop-up menu shows everything and becomes ungainly if you have more than a few apps installed. Makes sense. I personally don't need a Start style button because at the point that I need to look for some obscure app I'll just open the Applications folder in finder and look for it. Before that point I have the Dock or Quicksilver for apps I access regularly.

French is not dying anymore than is Japanese (which I speak). In fact, Japanese is nationally spoken in only one country, as is Korean, Hungarian, Tagalog, Thai, Czech, etc. but no one thinks these languages are dying. The difference between, say, Japan and France is that the Japanese embrace foreign words and incorporate them into their language, while the French government seems to want to protect the Frenchness of their language to the point of absurdity. If dying for a language means absorbing outside influences then perhaps French is dying. Judging from the last sentence of your first paragraph you understand that languages must adapt. But let's leave the French government alone to continue believing the fanciful notion that foreign influences are killing French. French is doing just fine. The French government's idea of French? That's another story. On to your article. Only offering support to users of Mac hardware is bad idea. A separately packaged OS X would still be an Apple product. To not support your product simply because the customer didn't buy your other product is simply bad business. While it's true that value users may stop buying Mac hardware if OS X runs on cheaper Dell hardware that's still a software sell for Apple. After all, despite recent stumbles Microsoft is still the world's most successful computer company. I don't see why Apple has to make hardware for everyone. Porsche doesn't make a car for the money challenged and it's the world's most profitable car company. So low-end users will buy and use OS X on generic hardware, while Apple junkies and mid- to high-end users will buy the whole Mac package. Sounds like a good deal for both Apple and the users to me.

Omniweb gets penalized for costing and for having a small user base, but Omni constantly makes the best interfaced Mac software out there. Check out OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. I like Opera's capabilities but find its interface clunky and ugly. Omniweb has a tray that shows tabs as snapshots. Contrary to some people's quick assumption this doesn't eat more browser space than the regular top tab-bar because most webpages are full page width. Also, in addition to remembering open pages on start Omniweb can also save several workspaces. It also has individual page preferences so you can have different zoom or language settings for particular pages. My only complaint with Omniweb is similar to Chris's complaint about Safari- it tends to beach ball and crash a lot. It's also a bit slow. Safari, on the other had is the most stable browser on my Powerbook 12". and it's fast. I think each Mac reacts differently to different software. One person commented that since Tiger the beachball has disappeared. For me, Tiger beachballs me much more than Panther did.

Hi James, Of course I don't know you personally, but I enjoy Apple Matters and just want to say I wish your father the best. Keep up the good work. Terrance