rare pattern thoughts in a blog

As a citizen and computer user, I agree that Apple is wrong to push Safari on Windows users:

Debate is raging today over the news that Steve Jobs has made good on his summertime promise and is now sending Apple's browser Safari along for the ride when Windows users are prompted to update iTunes or Quicktime.

Users can deselect the additional software download, but let's be realistic - there's got to be millions of people unwittingly downloading Safari onto their computers right now. Downloading software has to be opt-in, not opt-out.

As a web developer, however, I am quietly thrilled that there's a real possibility that a significant number of people will stop using the crapware Internet Explorer -- especially IE6, which cannot die a soon enough death, in my book. Microsoft's browser has been a huge sap on productivity in web development, thanks to its continued refusal to adopt CSS standards.

So "boo" to Apple, but a bigger and pre-existing "BOO" to Microsoft. Here I prefer the lesser of two boos.

A few weeks ago, I started telling friends my wild and crazy prediction that Apple will own a majority share of the personal computer market within three years. Apple's biggest weakness is in their vertical monopoly over their own hardware. OSX is fabulous, but their hardware is crap, let's face it. You simply have to figure the cost of Apple Care into any Mac purchase because you can count on some sort of hardware problem.

Despite this -- and who's to say Apple won't change its tune regarding hardware? -- Apple's star is definitely rising, while Microsoft's is in a self-inflicted crash and burn.

Paul Graham, in is post, "Microsoft is Dead," has the quote of the month:

Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.

The same could be said for a number of companies. Graham recognizes that a number of folks will scoff at these assertions.

Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news.

Graham still succumbs to the notion that all "applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop." Such black-and-white thinking may provide a poetic flourish, or add drama to pronouncements on the future, but my own sense is that the general public is going to start noticing the pound of privacy flesh web companies, like Paul Graham's employer, demand for the convenience of the services they offer.

The desktop is not dead, but it is changing. So is the web (duh), and just as desktop übercompany Microsoft is feeling the heat for their business practices and strategic decisions, we might see the same thing happening to the übercompanies of the web before too long.

This is hysterical!

[Hat tip to MacMerc.]

So after blogging about how Yahoo and Microsoft have adopted Google's sitemap standard, I thought I'd go ahead and re-submit some of my websites with these search engines. After all, now that they were going to read the sitemap, it couldn't hurt, right?

Here's an instance where Microsoft gets it and Yahoo doesn't: When you're trying to build relevance of your search engine, you don't make people jump through hoops.

Take a look at Yahoo's submission page.

Actually, it's not a submission page — it's a login page. Yes, that's right. You have to have or create a Yahoo account in order to submit your site to Yahoo. In other words, their claim of a "free" submission is a bit misleading, because they aren't considering the fact that you're required to give your name, your birthdate, your email address and your zipcode as being a cost. Yeah right.

Okay, so I figured, What's the big deal? I have an account somewhere. Unfortunately, after all the email system crashes and hard drive failures I've had over the years, I could not find my login info. So I figured I'd just make a new account.

Ah, but there's another catch: They want your site browser to accept cookies.

Now call me a tinfoil hatter if you want, but ever since I read about Yahoo's we-track-every-website-you-visit-and-add-it-to-our-database-on-you policy*, I've been a bit cagey with regards to Yahoo. At some point along the line, I did more than opt out of their rather offensive privacy-invading program — I started blocking Yahoo's cookies.

And of course that came back to bite me today, when I was unable to create a new account with Yahoo. Mark me down as a casualty of not wanting to give up my privacy to some faceless conglomerate just so I can add value to their product.

As a contrast, take a look at Microsoft's submission page.

Very simple. Enter your URL and they send their 'bots a 'crawlin'. In other words, Microsoft wants you to help them add value to their search engine. (Even their captcha is easier to decipher.) After all, if they don't have accurate and comprehensive search results, their relevance will diminish and they will lose market share.

This is something Google has known for a long time. While they like you to register for things like analytics and testing your sitemap, they are perfectly happy to index your site even if you have not given them your identification portfolio. After all, what good is a search engine that arbitrarily makes it hard for some sites to be indexed?

Hello, Yahoo! Are you paying attention? Microsoft gets it and you don't. Am I alone in finding this very ... ironic?

*Which I am totally aware may not be all that unique.

[Update: I removed the direct link to the ftp site because, as small as rare pattern is, every little bit counts, and I don't want to hurt Mozilla.]

As I write this, it's still not "officially" released yet, but I've just installed Firefox 2.0 after downloading it from the Mozilla FTP site (Mac versions here), and I'm loving it. I've not yet explored the preferences and all that, but so far nearly all of my extensions still work, including the web developer tools, Performancing and weather.

And so far no websites are breaking. Aren't web standards wonderful? I'm good to go. I can keep working (or writing this blog post), and not have to fret about mysterious problems.

Too bad the same cannot be said for users of Internet Explorer 7, which, with its new Microsoft-only quirks, is creating all sorts of new headaches for website owners and challenges for web developers. Some websites won't work at all in IE7.

Why Microsoft has such issues with worldwide web standards, I don't know. At least we have Firefox. Maybe, with these simultaneous releases of new browsers, more people will get fed up with IE and try Firefox. After all, if a browser is breaking websites, why use it?

So far, all the buzz is pretty much about IE7's "new" features like the tabbed browsing that other browsers have had for years now, with some mention of the upcoming Firefox 2 release.

But just wait until websites start breaking. Internet Explorer has always required non-web-standard hacks. The net effect of this has been my thumbnail estimate of 30-40% of loss of productivity in the web design field while developers work around Microsoft's "we don't need no stinkin' standards" attitude and break out the duct tape and chewing gum to make sites that work in every other browser work in IE.

IE7 honors some more web standards, but still has its own quirks -- some new ones, apparently.

Let the kvetching begin!