safari going windows

Apple announced that it is releasing a version of Safari for Windows [link]. This, according to the BBC, reignites the ‘browser wars’. It has been suggested by some developers that this might be because of the impending release of the iPhone. It should be noted that like other browsers, Safari ‘earns money for Apple every time a user searches Google via the integrated search button on the browser’s toolbar’ and:

Google pays a share of ad revenue to Apple. According to one report, Firefox’s developer the Mozilla Foundation earned over $50m in search engine ad revenue in 2005, mostly from Google.

The BBC notes that

Up until now, Safari has captured just 5% of the browser market, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer accounts for 78%, and rival Firefox 15%.

I’m not Fake Steve Jobs

Gates and Jobs meet at the All Things Digital Conference May 29-31, 07 and took the stage together [link]. Gates began by clarifying jokingly that he is NOT a fake Steve Jobs. One of the most amusing and revealing things in their talk is how Bill explains, and Jobs acknowledges, that the Apple II  actually used Mircosoft’s Basic to run. Here’s Jobs’ version of the story:

My partner we started out with, this guy named Steve Wozniak. Brilliant, brilliant guy. He writes this BASIC that is, like, the best BASIC on the planet. It does stuff that no other BASIC’s ever done. You don’t have to run it to find your error messages. It finds them when you type it in and stuff. It’s perfect in every way, except for one thing, which is it’s just fixed-point, right? It’s not floating-point.
So we’re getting a lot of input that people want this BASIC to be floating-point. And, like, we’re begging Woz, please, please make this floating point.

We’re begging Woz to make this floating-point and he just never does it. You know, and he wrote it by hand on paper. I mean, you know, he didn’t have an assembler or anything to write it with. It was all just written on paper and he’d type it in. He just never got around to making it floating-point.

So who comes in? Bill Gates comes in and writes the floating point for the Apple II.

Read the transcript or view the video:

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