I am typing this in Apple's brand-new Safari browser which Steve Jobs introduced today during his keynote speech at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. As usual with Jobsian events, the whole affair was massively hyped in the weird symbiosis between Apple and the rumor sites. Add the Jobs Reality Distortion Field and you end up with an entertaining show. As a long-time Mac user I can't possibly pass up a webcast like that. My first Mac wasn't a Mac at all. At the time I had an Atari 1040ST which had the same Motorola 68000 CPU as the Mac. This led various enterprising souls to build Mac emulators for the ST, since the ST was much cheaper than the Mac and had better hardware; the first emulator I used was Aladin. Later I switched to Spectre GCR which could use the 128K Mac ROMs. Aladin was limited to the older 64K ROMs. In any case, it's been much, much longer than I care to admit. I vaguely remember those days as the period when I was marginally less old and grumpy.

So the Jobsian keynotes provide great entertainment to inveterate Mac users such as myself. Today's keynote was true to form as Jobs managed to evoke enthusiasm for many new Apple products including amazingly enough a snowboarding jacket with built-in controls for the iPod. A lot of new software also saw the light of day, of which Safari is definitely the most interesting to me. I already have six browsers on my Mac OS X system alone, and adding another one can't hurt. My first impression is that it's ugly. The brushed metal interface just doesn't look right. On the other hand, it does appear to be the fastest Mac browser I've seen, handling CSS, Javascript and all the other crud quite well. I'll be using it for a bit to see how well it performs, but it might become one of my standard browsers. Best feature yet: it uses the spell-checking services of Mac OS X. Perhaps that'll cut down on the number of mistakes I make here. The creators of Movable Type also have posted their initial comments on Safari.

Despite all the new software, Apple still makes its money by selling hardware and Steve Jobs put the focus firmly on the PowerBook line with two new additions: a small 12" PowerBook and a huge 17" version. The latter has all sorts of interesting gadgets built-in, such as a backlit keyboard and light sensors that adjust screen brightness and the keyboard backlight automatically depending on ambient light conditions. There are many other improvements too, which I shan't list here.

The new focus on portable computers is partially driven by demand, but in Apple's case it's also out of necessity. The desktop line of Macs is beginning to lag perilously far behind the Wintel world. Rob Art Morgan, who runs the Bare Feats Mac benchmarking site, recently enumerated the "Missing Pieces" in Apple's line-up. On the desktop the difference between state-of-the-art on Wintel and Mac is becoming uncomfortably large, while on the portable side Apple can still compete. Lagging somewhat behind has never been a problem for Apple, since raw performance is not what people buy Macs for. (Photoshop is a notable exception). So Apple is making a virtue out of necessity by focusing on the PowerBook line. But Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field will eventually buckle if the performance gap is not closed.

If you're interested in following the ups and downs of Apple and the Mac, I heartily recommend As The Apple Turns, the first site really to comprehend what the Apple saga is all about (confused? tune in next week...). The writing is almost Lileksian at times.

I'll be trying to break Safari now.

UPDATE: It sort of broke on me as I was trying to save this blog entry. It took me straight back to the Movable Type login screen and never added the entry to the blog. Fortunately the Back command brought me back to my turgid prose. I had to log in to MT again before it would save the blog entry properly. Weird. It is still a beta after all... oh well...