I Spent the Day On Windows, Just to Use Chrome

Some people might think the typical Mac user has a superiority complex, and you could be excused for thinking so, if the Mac vs. PC commercials were any indication. But every once in a while, a cool "must try out" app comes along that leaves us a little envious ourselves - making us feel like we're being considered lesser beings. Today, Google's debut of Chrome, their next generation Web browser, was for Windows only, not for Macs. But putting my better judgement aside, I was willing to fire up VMware Fusion and stay in Google Chrome for the day to give it a fair shake. While it wasn't light-years ahead of anything I've ever tried, I'm glad I spent the time to check it out, and it's going to be fun seeing it get developed and ready for my preferred platform.

I believe the world is moving away from an operating system-based model to that of the Web browser. More essential applications are moving to the browser, and with the exception of Microsoft Office apps and Adobe PhotoShop, I could spend virtually my entire day just in the browser or on e-mail. This does two contradictory things: #1, it makes it easier for people to switch between operating systems, like from PC to Mac, and #2, it makes the differentiation between Macs and PCs less important to begin with, making the tie-ins with Web properties and creative applications like iLife and MobileMe just that much more critical.

When Google finally opened up Chrome to the masses around mid-day today, I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines, so I fired up VMware Fusion, with a Windows XP environment, opened Internet Explorer, and downloaded Chrome. A few minutes later, I had one of the fastest, most minimal browsers out there. While I didn't import any bookmarks or my own user history, it wasn't long before I was using corporate e-mail, and opening new tabs to check all my usual sites, without any issues. Pages loaded quickly, and with the exception of needing to install a Flash plug-in, all the content worked.

Curious if Chrome would be allowed to visit more secure sites, I logged onto Wells Fargo Bank and eTrade and didn't get any issues of the bank not supporting the browser. Interestingly enough, my own SiteMeter account recognized the Chrome visit instead as a variant of Safari (thanks to the underlying WebKit foundation), which likely explained why it was so smooth.


Awwwww.... Snap!
I only encountered one failed tab, which responded with an "Aw, Snap!" with an accompanying unhappy face. But other than that small failure, browsing was quick, and not much different than any other browser. The main differences on the surface had to be seeing my most frequently-visited sites in grid form as I opened new tabs, and seeing the tabs themselves along the top of the browser.


My popular visits (scrubbed for work), seen in Chrome
Pretty much the only complaint I have so far is I don't know how to customize my most "favorite" pages, so I can remove some from the grid, like corporate Web mail or the Intranet. If there's a way, I haven't seen it yet, but it's not a showstopper.

Typically, using an application under Windows emulation on VMware is remarkably slower than its native equivalent. But I didn't feel bogged down by Chrome, as I mentioned on Twitter. It just worked. I even enabled the "Unity" setting so the Chrome browser window floated above all my other Mac apps, and it seemed just right.

Will it be enough to make users turn off Internet Explorer? So far, I'd say not yet. Nothing about the browser made it amazingly better for the unwashed masses who have grown used to accepting Microsoft's half-hearted attempts at software. But I can't see any good reason I'd ever use Firefox or Opera or Flock again. Chrome is going to be my alternative to Safari on Windows and I'm interested to see if they can sway me on the Mac side, hooks and all.

Even Virtual Windows Can Drive You Nuts

I've been a very happy VMWare Fusion customer for a few months now. Getting into the world of dual operating systems on my MacBook Pro has been almost universally rewarding from day one - starting with ditching my old Dell laptop, and being able to use Microsoft Outlook, use Internet Explorer 7 and other applications unavailable to us Mac folks - but in a single virtual window, letting me use the Mac the other 95% of the time.

Yet, the other day, while working on e-mail or catching up on RSS feeds, I heard the familiar "Windows is shutting down" chimes, and confirmed it by looking at my VMWare Fusion application. In full text, Windows was informing me my settings were being saved, and indeed, the operating system was shutting down. And no, I didn't tell it to, and no, I don't have any idea why. I told a friend at work, who laughed and said, "Windows needs a reason to shut down?"


I caught Windows in the act of bailing on me this morning...
It happened again yesterday morning. Going to my VMWare Fusion application, I sent the Ctrl-Alt-Del command to the Windows virtual machine, and it didn't come up. I closed Fusion and reopened it. Still no dice. I went to my virtual machine library, selected Windows XP and hit "Run". Nothing. It actually took rebooting the Mac for the Windows virtual machine to launch correctly again!

So guess what... 10 minutes ago, I heard the chimes again. Windows is shutting down. Again. Without rhyme or reason. Again. Now, I have to see if I can trick it into relaunching without making me reboot my Mac. Again.

I'm happy I'm not using Windows as my primary operating system, but even this is annoying. How do people live with themselves day to day in this type of OS hell? Ridiculous.

Windows XP On My Mac!

With VMWare Fusion, I've now got the option to run Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X, all at once, on one single speedy MacBook Pro. I've had the software for about 24 hours now, and can't say enough good things about it. With that said, I tried to post a quick summary over on The Apple Blog.

See: VMWare Fusion On Mac Delivers My Best Windows Experience Ever

Our Intel Mac Is Back

My first week with my Intel-based Apple MacBook Pro is a bit of a misnomer. After all, for just about the full duration of the week, it spent some quality time in the repair shop, not with me at all, after the laptop bizarrely stopped responding to any of my keyboard or trackpad input. (See Prior Post | The Apple Blog) But this evening, as I was wrapping up at the office, I got a call from the Apple Store saying Cupertino had resolved the issue - after replacing the keyboard, the trackpad, and mysteriously, dabbling with the machine's internals.

The good news? The repairs cost me nothing. So, all I was really out was 4-plus days of MacBook Pro goodness, and the annoyance of once again synching up my data between the new machine and the older PowerBook G4.

Now, after a second, more complete, migration from the old machine to the MacBook Pro, we've managed to reduce the available hard drive space to a mere 125 gigabytes - which I'm looking forward to consuming with all sorts of new applications and virtual machines on VMWare Fusion - enabling me to run both Mac and Windows programs side by side.

The bad news? I don't exactly trust the machine at this point. It's fast. It's responsive. It's bright, and the keys feel great. But I'm just a little less secure, knowing we already ran into a major issue with the hardware in the very first day. Now, I'll be absolutely sure to routinely back up my most important data, and just maybe, I won't sing Apple's praises for hardware quality all that much for a while.

Geeking Out With a New MacBook Pro

Today, I unpacked one of the most-anticipated items to reach our shipping facility in the last few years - my new Apple MacBook Pro. Aimed to replace a 7-year-old Power Mac G4 desktop and a frustrating Dell laptop at the same time, I'm ready to migrate all my major applications over, and start using this magnificent machine for both Mac and Windows work - as soon as I can get hold of VMWare Fusion or another OS emulator, which would let me run Microsoft Outlook, Project, Visio or any other Windows-only apps alongside my Mac environment without hassle.

For the last hour or so, I've had my two laptops sitting side by side, the first in FireWire Target Disk Mode, as I migrate files, applicatins and preferences from my PowerBook G4 (1.25 GHz/80 GB) to the new MBPro (2.2 GHz/200 GB). Yes, that's right. A whopping 200 gigabytes - enough room for all my applications, and all my files, including the more than 30 Gigs of music I've ripped from my CDs and downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.

We're just getting started, but there is no question the new machine is faster, the keyboard is more responsive, and even the speakers sound much better than my 2-year-old laptop. I can't wait to run speed comparisons between it and the year 2000 model I've got at the office...

Windows XP Machine Infiltrates Apple Computer!

With Apple's relatively recent move to Intel processors, it seems everything in Cupertino is up for grabs. Just yesterday, I received a visitor to this blog from "APPLE COMPUTER", one of the few thousand checking in on last week's surprisingly popular post on the growing practice of internal linking. While that in itself isn't all that newsworthy, the visitor's configuration caught my eye.

The APPLE COMPUTER visitor was running not Mac OS X, but Windows. And not Vista, but Windows XP. And their browser? Not the new Safari for Windows, but Firefox. Do you think Apple knows that a "Firefox" has gotten into the henhouse?


Above: The Win XP/Firefox user caught red-handed.

Update: The prior version of this post said the visitor was running NT. That was due to a combination of sleep deprivation, carelessness, and the NT 5.1 designation next to the Firefox detail. Mark, in the comments, noted my mistake.

New TAB Post: Seeking .Mac for Windows Safari

Last night, I got out the Dell laptop from the office and decided to finally do two things: accept all Windows updates I'd been neglecting, hopefully speeding up the device, and more importantly, add Apple's recently introduced Safari 3.0 browser for the platform. After a quick download and reboot, we were using what I believe to be the best Web browser out there on a decidedly sucky platform. While the application is great, and I've already made it my default browser for Windows, I was disappointed to see I couldn't log in to my .Mac account and retrieve all my bookmarks. I hope Apple plans to soon integrate this feature into the Windows browser.

That's the background behind my most recent contribution to The Apple Blog, titled Seeking .Mac For Windows Safari. Per agreement with them, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided a link. Enjoy.

WWDC: Apple Introduces Safari for Windows

WWDC and Macworld Expo come only twice a year - and that's too bad. Because twice a year, the Mac community gets all excited when Santa Jobs comes in bearing presents and we all can't wait to see what's there to unwrap. I've been following each of these keynotes for the better part of ten years now, and while some have been disappointing, the surprises outweigh the doldrums.

Today's surprise? Apple announcing that the browser wars aren't over by a long shot. After the company's success with iPod and iTunes for Windows, they're branching out by bringing the somewhat popular Safari Web browser to the forbidden platform.

Web browsing on Windows today is yucky. I noted here a while back that I actually preferred Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser to Firefox for Windows, but that just goes to show how bad the offerings are over there in Redmond.

Will Safari take off on Windows the way iTunes has? I really don't know. I think the barriers to entry in the Web browser market are very big. Microsoft went to court to defend their monopoly in this space already, and many a browser has come and died in the face of the IE juggernaut. I also don't know that there's a groundswell of Windows users begging for Safari, which isn't perfect in itself.

But if I ever have to power up my Dell laptop again, you know one of the first things I'll be doing is downloading Safari for Windows and seeing if it's as fast as Steve Jobs told the WWDC crowd it was just this morning.

I'll say one thing though. Apple never gets boring.

Windows Vista: Lipstick on a Pig

Noted Web pioneer Dave Winer chimes in on the hype around Microsoft's latest release to the Operating System formerly known as Longhorn...

"$500 million of marketing can't hide the fact that these days it's hard to find anyone who cares about Windows."
Via Scripting.com (Jan. 31, 2007)