Apple, Apple, Browser Ballots

An eventful little week this was, but mostly because Apple grabbed the spotlight in various different ways. For the rest, we focussed on Microsoft’s proposed browser ballot screen, we took a look at KDE 4.3RC3, and Microsoft and Yahoo finally got to do their thing.

Let’s start with the browser ballot screen. Microsoft’s proposal for the ballot screen was ridiculously detailed: the ten most popular browsers in Europe with a share higher than 0.5%, the top five browsers get prominence. Microsoft also said that Windows XP and Windows Vista users will get the browser ballot too. Opera suggested that it might be a good idea if Mac OS X and Ubuntu included a ballot screen too.

Apple got a lot of negative attention this week when it removed all the Google Voice applications from its App Store, while also rejecting Google’s official client, with the company citing it usual bogus reason that they duplicated functionality. A lot of people were upset, and so is the FCC: they have started an investigation into the matter. The fallout was also felt on OSAlert when our owner David Adams detailed his views on the matter.

Apple got more negative headlines with its filing to the US Copyright Office. This filing detailed Apple’s reasons why jailbreaking iPhones should remain illegal, and it was rather nonsencical and completely over the top; in other words, a classic case of ‘fear, uncertainty, and doubt’ most of us were able to punch through in a heartbeat. Hopefully, the US Copyright Office will too, but I’m not keeping my hopes up.

Earlier on in the week, we talked about KDE 4.3’s latest test release, release candidate 3. I installed Fedora 11, the KDE version, and upgraded to KDE 4.3RC3. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found; this is shaping up to be a very nice KDE release.

We also finally got the news that Yahoo and Microsoft will be cooperating in the online search and advertising business. Few OSAlert readers seemed particularly shaken by the news – one way or the other – but at least it put a stop to the endless stream of “are-they-going-to-or-not” articles.

7 Comments

  1. 2009-08-02 7:16 pm
    • 2009-08-02 7:37 pm
      • 2009-08-02 8:08 pm
    • 2009-08-04 10:10 am
  2. 2009-08-03 10:30 pm
  3. 2009-08-04 10:12 am
  4. 2009-08-05 11:15 am