I got a link the other day from Sean Whitton to an article about Safari 5’s Reader feature, which supposedly tears away the gunk that encrusts most web sites and presents it as straight, mostly-unadorned black text on white background, superimposed on the browser body.
This is what that article looks like, from within elinks.
And yes, they’re right. Stripping away the cluttered layouts, the pointless gizmos and the sloppy page design means better visibility, easier reading and a cleaner, more pleasant browsing experience. Those Apple demigods are so freaking smart, it must hurt. And whatever made them suspect that less is more? that carving away all the crap leaves only the best parts, and is easier to manage and enjoy? that Flash, Java, rollover CSS effects, popup logins, lightbox effects … all of those things are distractions really?
Hey. …
Hey, waitaminute!
That’s my line! I’ve been saying that for years! I’ve been trying to convince people to drop Firefox and pick up a text-based browser for years now. Because that’s what it does: It removes visual clutter and leaves you with the information you were after in the first place! That’s been my mantra since at least 2007, if not before!
Do you know what this means? Do you realize the implications here?
It means Steve Jobs is reading my blog and stealing my ideas!
Curse you, Steve Jobs! 👿
Motho ke motho ka botho 
Pretty hard to get used to, but I’ve wanted to find more excuses to play in the terminal so I’m trying to see if I can put a comment on this entry from within elinks.
I grew up on text only computers — was given an original 1980 IBM PC AT to do my homework on in 1994. (Still in mom’s attick and runs fine; pulled it out to play a text only version of centipede last month.) I’m also a typewriter fetishist, so content over form has a powerful draw for me.
Thanks for the tips.
Well, it doesn’t really come as a surprise, that jobs steals ideas, that is more or less what his whole schtick is built on, because what he does good is marketing, he builds up a zombie army of fanbois that buys whatever he puts out there for them, just look at “spaces” or what it was, the virtual desktops thing in mac, or the dock, it’s nothing new. But the thing is that Jobs is too good at just selling it into the people that are following him like a god, I have a strange déjà vu when I see that mindless following, 1930’s germany anyone?…
C’mon…
jesus… overreaction by any chance, Gullars?
Jobs = Hitler. Riiiiight.
Yeah I was exaggerating it on purpose it was meant as a joke, so I hope no one got offended,. I don’t really care about apple or what they do, the only thing that I get tired of is all the fanbois that starts talking to me all the time, usually I’m living nice in my own world not caring. And I’m sure Jobs is a nice guy, just not my type 😉
well i guess the first ones to steal this idea from you were the guys who created the readability extension for firefox and google chrome…
Yes! Those people too! Curse them too! 👿 😉
don’t forget that 75% of OSX is from the FreeBSD kernel. Doesn’t really come as a surprise.
What if OS11 was a text-based Arch Install with Apple graphics?
Fiddlesticks, it’ll be Puppy based.
Nah, then it would be way too lean and mean 😉
Apple doesn’t just steal ideas, it improves them. I’m no mac fanboi by any stretch, Debian is my main squeeze, but I recently had a stint on MacOSX and all I could think was that they had taken everything good from Linux/BSD desktops, thrown out all the crud and made it work, really, really well. And how can you hate any OS that includes xterm?
And to be honest, the reader feature in Safari sucks. Much like safari itself. Elinks is much more usable.
you’re contradicting yourself in what you are saying about apple here though. I don’t say that apple isn’t good for
anyone, or that anyone’s got it wrong when it comes to liking their software it’s just that I just don’t like that you have to be like everyone else with a mac, you have to do things the jobs way, I like my freedom, I like to control my system mainly using my keyboard, I like installing programs via the commandline and I like the freedom to play around with different window managers and paradigms when I have the chance to, so I don’t say that apple programs suck or are worthless, or at least for anyone else, for me they do though, and my freedom is a choice that I’m very happy to have, so that I can do just what I want and not really care about how I feel other people are wasting their time and effort.
That’s true. I have to say I found MacOSX a lot less irritating and a lot less ‘hard work’ than either Windows or GNU/Linux. And you don’t *have* to do things the “Jobs way”, thanks to their adoption of BSD, Macs are more hackable than ever :o)
TLDR: Why buy a flashy expensive designed machine to use it like any other. I’m also curious about when and what distro you used with linux. what do you mean with hard work?
*warning long rant*
Well, I guess you could install linux and bsd tools there, but then again I don’t really get the point of having a mac. Well, it might be me not being able to grasp the “magic” here, but I could buy probably 5 or 6 of the machine that I use now, for the price of one of the cheapest macbooks, and well, it just fits me better. but it is more or less a taste thing, I’m not into flashy design, I just want something that works and isn’t in my way, and that is just what I feel that I can do with linux.
I just don’t see your point with “macs being more hackable than ever” it’s like buying a ferrari (same thing flashy design big pricetag) and then put on it tractor wheels, wunderbaum, and start fuzzing around with it, yes you can do things with it, but still it won’t be something that really is too pleasant. When I want a system that I can do what I want with I expect to be able to do what I want, if I don’t want to use the mouse I don’t want to use it, I want to be able to move menues around, take them completely away, I want to be able to delete things I don’t use, and to be able to easily use a different filemanager or open a different menu with the left or the right click on my background that I can customize and have it fit in just as snugly as the one that came with the system. I guess I can do most of that with a mac too, but it will be something that is bought to be a status symbol, flashy design, sleek lines, white plastic, and I don’t see why you would get that kind of thing for messing around with it, when it would be easier and done for a fraction of the price with a usual computer. But well here I go on to a big rant again, and noone really wants to read that I guess 😛 so if you made it here, congrats 😉 I don’t mean to piss anyone off, it’s ones own choice, I just don’t understand, and it would be nice to get to know 😉
I get a bit curious when you say that it is a lot of work in linux, I pop in a puppy cd now and then, and I don’t do anything to get it to work, it just works. The same can be said about most of the “big” distros I don’t see how any of them are any more work than a mac, that just makes me wonder how long time it is since you actually used a linux machine, if I want something on a win and probably also a macbox I would have to find an executable or a dmg on the net searching, seeing if it is the newest version, then I would have to install it (wizard or dragging to applications) and if I wanted to update it I would have to do the whole thing again, plus I would have to deinstall the old version, in arch I pop up my terminal and do packer -S *name of command* and then it installs it and automaticly update it, I don’t see what you mean with it being more work.
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Hey, just be happy that someone makes your ideas real!
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