Steve Rubel is right on ( for the philosophically inclined):
From adolescence onwards, you’re in a perpetual beta mode. As an adult you’re constantly learning new skills and capabilities, even as you age. The best and brightest among us are constantly growing. As a human being, you really don’t “ship” (as the technology parlance goes) until you’re dead.
For the geeks among us :
This week Apple, a company that certainly strives for perfection, launched a new beta version of its Safari Web browser. It’s buggy on both the Mac and Windows and lots of people are grumpy. It even broke several of my Dashboard widgets.
Yet, Apple, as a technology company, seems to be allowed to make such mistakes. They are permitted to learn and grow out in the open by slapping the “beta” label on products and services. Everyone else, however, is expected to be perfect. That’s like asking Curt Schilling to pitch a perfect game every outing. It’s ludicrous.
And so, in a eureka moment, I figured out why Google has two thirds (maybe more) of its software with a Beta tag, even though the software works perfectly well.
Seriously, people ( or should we say beta testers??) are more forgiving with Beta software. I mean, that’s why we’re testing the software in the first place.
I must say I’m impressed with this addition to the browsers I have installed. Along with Firefox and IE7, Safari rounds everything off in minimalist style. It invokes the Apple user in be to start clamoring for a Mac (or a Microsoft version of Boot Camp).
Its a Beta and an Apple App running on Windows, so crashes are de rigueur for this kind of thing ( forgive my french) . And, yes, its crashed more than a few times since I switched to it full time last night (read: 24 hours ago).
As luck would have it, Safari crashed as I was reading this TUAW post. Specifically, it crashed as I read the line:
It has tons of new great features as well as the cursed instability issues…
In using any Apple app, you can expect the design ethic of His Steveness to permeate every aspect of the UI. Any Windows app feels like a chain saw in comparison ( that’s right, that goes for those toolbars).
I had one problem with regard to actually surfing. The booking process at easyjet.com broke down in Safari round about Step 4. The Safari team might want to look at their asp page support.
In the final analysis, Safari for Windows lives up to all the hype and is all that we’ve come to expect from Apple
Hmmm. What’s new in an install process that I can say?
I’m still doing a little testing of beta 2 it seems, since this is the second time today I’m trying to remove one of my drives so that I can copy all my data off to said drive to save said data being turned into random bytes by the uncontrollable, tyrannical Redmond installer. Ok, that was a bit theatrical, but you get my drift.
I downloaded said installer last night and set the server to remove the drive in question this morning. said drive still shows up as still being connected despite the wizard being left for “several hours” ( that’s the only time estimate given,which is useless).
I’ve now got to burn said installer to DVD while I wait. While I go and do that, you can look at the these installer screenshots, if you’re geeky enough.
Update: The Wizard has been running for 3 hours now, and the progress bar is less than a fifth of the the way across. I’m thinking of taking more radical action.
Update:Soon after posting the above update, I used remote desktop to bring up the Management Console, changed drive letters for my external hard drive so I could access it and started copying files over like mad. It took , oh, 6-7 hours to copy every thing across. I’ve actually got it installing now. Here’s to the install working first time.
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Posted by rbonini
