While We Wait For Chrome For Mac, Mozilla’s Camino Gets An Update
While Mac users grow impatient for Google’s Chrome browser to come to the platform, there’s a small bit of good news today: A new beta version of the excellent Camino browser.
Camino is a browser built by Mozilla specifically for the Mac. Unlike the much more popular Firefox, Camino is extremely lean and fast. It’s so fast that it’s been my browser of choice for the past several years. And the new version, Camino 2.0 beta 4, released today, offers some nice improvements. Among them:
- Phishing and Malware Protection: Camino 2.0 Beta 4 includes phishing and malware protection based on Google Safe Browsing.
- Full Content Zoom: The scale increment used by full content zoom has been reduced to provide smoother zooming. There is also a new Zoom Text Only item in the View menu to toggle the zoom keyboard shortcuts between full content zoom and larger or smaller text.
- Software Update: When quitting for an automatic update, Camino will now save and restore pages that were open before quitting regardless of whether the “Load the pages that were open before quitting” preference is enabled.
- Updated Appearance: The tab bar, Bookmark Bar, and folder icons now better match the appearance of Mac OS X 10.5 and newer.
The key feature for many users will be the last one. Mozilla has finally updated Camino to blend in a little bit better with OS X. While the changes in the look and feel definitely aren’t huge, they are subtle and nice.
But here’s the real interesting thing about Camino, its project lead, Mike Pinkerton, also happens to be the guy leading the development of the Mac version of Chrome for Google. It seems likely that most of his time is now spent on Chrome (and his Twitter updates indicate as much), but he has always maintained that work would continue on Camino for Mozilla.
Of course, it has been almost a year since Camino 2 first went into beta testing (last December) and it’s still not done yet. Meanwhile, in that time, there have been three official releases of Chrome (though, again, none for the Mac). Still, it’s nice to get even little updates to Camino. It remains a great browser.
On the Chrome end, Google has publicly stated that it will be available before the end of the year. Judging from the Chromium builds, it seems very close. No word on when Camino 2 will be finalized, but that too, seems pretty stable.
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Apple’s Snow Leopard Is a Smash Hit
On August 28th, Apple released its latest operating system Snow Leopard on the masses. The big news with Snow Leopard is that the focus isn’t on whizz-bang features, but on performance and stability improvements.
As such, the price-point, just $29 for a single-user upgrade license (provided you already have Leopard on your Intel Mac) made it a no-brainer for me to immediately upgrade all the Macs in my house.
According to analysts at NPD, I wasn’t alone. Sales for the first two weeks of Mac OS X Snow Leopard have far exceeded those of both Mac OS X Leopard (released in October 2007) and Mac OS X Tiger (released in April 2005). NPD reports that sales for Snow Leopard were more than two times higher than those for Leopard and almost four times higher than those of Tiger.
The initial sales weren’t limited to just the first week (when many members of the Apple Faithful rush out and buy the latest iProduct), NPD reports that second-week sales dropped only 25%. Considering that Leopard saw its sales drop 60% the second-week, the price-point and the low-key marketing campaign seem to be working.
Although the NPD report doesn’t touch on this, I wonder what role social media played in Snow Leopard sales. Because the focus is on performance, not features, Apple has had a relatively quiet ad campaign for its latest OS. Having said that, I know my Twitter stream (which is admittedly full of lots of Mac users) full of conversation and links regarding Mac OS X 10.6.
So Mac users, have your upgraded to Snow Leopard? What have your experiences been so far?
Reviews: Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Twitter
Tags: mac os x, Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard, Finely tuned
While PC users sweat, complain and ponder which over-priced version of Windows 7 they’ll be forced into buying to fix everything wrong with Vista, most Mac users are likely licking their chops at what Snow Leopard will bring, and how little it will cost.
You’ve heard it’s cheaper, faster and even more stable than ever before. Though Apple has stated that, beyond a few high-profile features like a new version of Quicktime, Snow Leopard is more of a maintenance upgrade for Leopard users, rather than the feature-packed blockbuster we’re normally used to with a full version number upgrade. You might call Snow Leopard a comprehensive tune-up.
As is almost always the case with Apple, though, it’s those little tune-ups to Mac OS X that can make all the difference in your daily computing experience. If you happened upon the Snow Leopard Enhancements and Refinements page on Apple’s Web site, you no doubt found at least a handful of things that brings a smile to your face.
Sure, I’m looking forward to a speedier, fully-Cocoa Finder, a fancy new version of Quicktime, and a faster, much smaller OS X installation just as much as the next guy. But of much more interest to me are all of the minor tweaks that will make more of an impact in my daily routine.
Gamma Update
For starters, and one thing near and dear to my heart; Apple has chosen to change the default Gamma from 1.8 to 2.2. For many users the benefit may not be obvious. If you’ve ever noticed photos and graphics on the Web that appear much lighter or washed out than the ones you have on your Mac, it’s because Windows, the Internet, and most television content standardized on Gamma 2.2 long ago. With Snow Leopard, Mac users will enjoy more consistent color across platforms by default.
Finer Finder
iStat calendar menu feature
The Finder’s menu bar clock will soon show the date alongside the time. You can do this now with a finicky hack, but it’ll be handy to turn it on and off with the click of a button. One thing I wish Apple would add here is the ability to display a small calendar with clickable dates that launch iCal without using any third-party utilities, such as iStat. Baby steps, I guess.
Another minor Finder annoyance are the window sidebar headers: Search For, Devices and Places. They can be turned off in Snow Leopard. I always found them to be uselessly taking up space, since I don’t use the search feature, and rarely require Devices and Places. This leaves room for three more folder shortcuts in my sidebar without resizing the window. Adjusting the size of icons via a small slider in every Finder window, saving a trip to the View options window, will be a small, but welcome addition as well.
Apps and Utilities
iChat will see numerous improvements under Snow Leopard such as a lower bandwidth requirement, as will Preview, which will offer improved image scaling and an annotation toolbar. Preview is one of those apps that most users overlook. But if you take the time to investigate, you’ll find it to be quite a powerful and useful little app. For many consumer users, there’s no need to download Acrobat Reader because Preview actually offers more features.
File sharing via Airport Express will be improved for local network users. If you have a Mac acting as a file server over an Airport network, it will continue to share those files, even if the host Mac goes into sleep mode. And now your Airport strength meter will display the signal strength of all available networks before you connect to them. Nice!
Internet Improvements
Safari isn’t the only Internet app Apple has been working on. Mail and iCal have received some much-welcomed improvements, too. Mail’s ability to reorder mailboxes in the sidebar is enough to quench my thirst alone, but I won’t complain about the speedier display of messages, and improved HTML mail composition thrown-in for good measure. iCal will also make it easier to set up your Gmail or Yahoo calendars, and being forced to open a new inspector window for each task will be a thing of the past. While business users will surely love Microsoft Exchange support, most-everyone else could care less; these modest changes will give everyone something to feel warm and fuzzy about.
In Conclusion
While none of these features are game-changing, they’re all extremely useful. In my eyes, they’re much more sexy than Cocoa Finder, OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, smaller installation size, and the other big-ticket items. These little features are the ones I’ll interact with on a daily basis, along with faster start-up and shut-down times. I liken it to the cup-holder locations in a new car — it doesn’t mean a lot on its own, but if done poorly can certainly sway your buying decision whether you realize it or not.
For a $29 upgrade price for Leopard users ($169 for non-Leopard users), you’re getting some stunning under-the-hood improvements, and some pretty darn nice refinements that may not be typical Apple front-page news, but are incredibly useful. Finely tuned indeed.
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