9.17
How in the world can Google’s Gears begin supporting Safari on OSX and that not be spread out all over the internet, loud and clear, the very second it happened? You would think news like that would be inescapable, what with Google’s grand plans to take over your mobile phone with Gears enabled web apps ‘n’ all.
It’s fairly well accepted that one of the main reasons Apple created Safari for Windows was to make a key component of OSX for iPhone/iPod Touch available to the widest possible web developer base and therefore make it that much easier for those poor souls, interested in iPhone/iPod Touch specific website development but without access to a Mac, to test their sites within an application native to that device (scroll down to where it says “SAFARI FOR WINDOWS”).
And, so the story goes, I think, for Android. Gears for Safari on OSX allows web developers on the Mac platform to more easily develop web apps that take advantage of the Gears “framework” (if you will) with an eye towards a future version of Gears that will most certainly be made for Safari’s mobile cousin. It makes it that much easier to start developing those killer, always on web apps that, it is speculated, will be the eventual heart of Android and that, Google might hope, be the future of all mobile platforms, including the iPhone. And, oh yeah, there’s always that ol’ desktop market to penetrate too. Let’s not forget that.
All that’s left is Chrome on the Mac. The mobile computing future just keeps getting more and more interesting.
6.25
Two articles from WIRED — one on the acquisition and open-sourcing of Symbian, the other on the (continuing) story of Google’s Android — centered on the inevitable “mobilization” of the computing experience.