Nice Safari Feature

Thursday, January 9, 2003 at 8:05 am

Peter Rukavina

Here’s a nice feature of Safari: it’s very well integrated with Apple’s “keychain” service, a central, secure repository for username and password information. While other browsers allow you to save password on your keychain, Safari is the only browser that doesn’t simply “type them into the password dialog” for you; once you enter your username and password for a site in Safari, you have regular, seamless access to it.

There was a version of Internet Explorer for Windows that tried this several years ago — I believe there was an option like “enter this password automatically every time?”. Somehow the feature was removed.

Makes you realize how annoying it is to have to enter your username and password — or even just confirm it — so often.

Comments

Pls excuse; taking this space

Pls excuse; taking this space to talk Mac. I watched the two hour keynote address by Steven Jobs on my VIAO 505DL and was impressed. Impressed first with the presentation. This is the type of presentation that I’ve managed only once or twice in my life and only for 2 or 3 minutes — I dream of this kind of ability to communicate complexities to a mass audience with aparent ease as Jobs so clearly had done. And so, Keynote(tm) seems a must for presenters even if they only do it about once a year. It occurs to me that millions of dollars are at stake every time Jobs walks on stage and so it makes sense that he had a few dozen developers working on tools for him to do that the genius is that he decided to recover the cost by selling it to us and (ahem, get this) may have sold me a Power Book as part of the deal. I can’t make paragraphs in this new thing so this will have to do –––––––— Apple computers have been such dreadful technology for so long it is not surprising that people have stayed away by the millions. But, Jobs is in love with UNIX (evidence the NeXT which, clearly with 20/20 hindsight, was a precursor to OSX) and because of that he has managed to drag Apple (kicking and screaming) back to a place that makes sense. For years apple computer users have been in love with the fact that “anyone can run a Mac” but they’ve been almost entirely in the dark about the fact that “almost no one can fix one” because (heretofore) there was no way to put your hands on the entrails of the machine and rip out the bad stuff (the UNIX equivalent of a “kill -9 [procid]”. Nope, if you ~asked~ the app to close and it wouldn’t you had the freedom to ask again…and again… and again…. –––––––– Jobs torques! This guy lives computers in the head and makes sure things work like they should. OSX is the FIRST MAC OS.. the rest were poor versions of file sharing tools with whiz-bang graphics and the odd killer app (to me the only killer app that makes any impression is the OS). –––––––- Mac still has a problem. And if I don’t buy a new 17” Power Book from LMS in 2003 it will be for this reason (and I’m thrilled that it’s down to this) The mouse is crap. One button is a statement, not a design. It’s a statement that “we’re so easy to use you only need one button”. Yes, “need” is true, but I “want” more buttons. I want my logitech wireless mouse on the Mac (and I want a natural keyboard which the 17” Powerbook could have accommodated by making use of wasted real estate to the east and west of the dwarfed keyboard. I want a back or kill button at my thumb, I want options and preferences on right-clicks, and I want to scroll and click with my center wheel, and I want the one click of the current Mac mouse. I want, I want I want. Why go 5 miles from Paris and not enter the city Steve? –––––––— The new Power Books (they also have a spectacular 12” version which is simply stunning for its design) are the best computers ever built for a purpose and the first to modify “purpose” with the word “general” in that context. I absolutely love these things (as much as I love any technology