To think that, just five years ago, the only Mac browser of note was Internet Explorer, and the rest were also-rans. Today, you can depend on several applications to deliver great online experiences, starting with Apple’s own Safari. Internet Explorer has been relegated to a relic of the past that you need on a rare occasion to access sites designed by people who were mistakenly led to believe it is the only browser on the planet.

Internet Explorer has even begun to lose momentum on the Windows platform, but that story is beyond the scope of today’s commentary. In addition, I’m not going to address the perception that the Windows browser experience is superior to the one on the Mac OS. I have no complaints and much of what I observe is more dependant on the speed of the online connection rather than the limitations of one platform or the other.

With recent updates on a number of Mac browsers at hand, it’s fitting to take a look at the state of the art, so to speak. My opinions will, as usual, but quite arbitrary and I expect lots of disagreement. In addition, since Netscape 8 doesn’t exist on the Mac platform, and Mozilla remains a development concept, I won’t cover them here.

Camino 0.9a2: This is the Mozilla variant developed in Mac OS X’s native Cocoa language. Although Firefox gets the lion’s share of attention, Camino is a worthy alternative. It’s still not quite finished, but, unlike most Mac browsers, it launches fast. Like Firefox, it delivers quick, accurate rendering of most sites. It has the basic features that are required in a modern browser, such as pop-up blocking and tabs. There’s no built-in RSS reader, however, which may or may not be of concern to you.

Firefox 1.0.6: With 75 million downloads and counting, it is the first credible alternative to the Windows version of Internet Explorer in years. Current estimates put USA market share at near 12%, and it’s approaching 14% in Europe. With simultaneous development for the Mac, Windows and Linux versions, you can jump platforms and still enjoy the same browsing experience. It also has a serviceable RSS reader, plus the usual standbys, such as pop-up blocking and tabs. Alas, it isn’t quite as Mac-like as it could be, and the Privacy preference screen never sizes correctly. Launch times are glacial, although rendering times are as quick as any browser on the planet. One hopes that the forthcoming version 1.5 will be better optimized for the Mac, but it is still the most credible alternative to Safari.

OmniWeb 5.1.1: It may seem odd to want to pay for a browser, when there are so many free alternatives, but OmniWeb remains as feature-complete as any. Now that it uses Apple’s WebKit, the rendering engine that powers Safari, you can expect reliable and accurate display of most of your favorite online watering holes. You’ll also cherish its Workspace feature, which lets you restore all the pages you had on display whenever the application is reopened. I won’t even try to list the features here, but it has an overwhelming number of capabilities that distinguish it from the competition and is well worth the $29.95 price for a user license. The only downside of note is that it remains slow to launch for some reason, although that may not be a particularly significant factor in the scheme of things.

Opera 8.0.2: This is the browser that pioneered many of the features that we take for granted, such as pop-up blocking, tabs, and the ability to save sessions or workspaces. Although it has boasted of being the fastest browser out there, that’s not always true, nor is rendering always as accurate as the competition. However, its JavaScript performance is top-notch. Unlike the other browsers listed here, it sports serviceable chat and email clients, although you can find superior alternatives in both categories. I could fill an entire article on its feature set, but one of the most intriguing options is something called Fast Forward, which, says Opera Software, “will detect the most likely ‘next page’ link and greatly simplify navigation in multi-page documents.” But it’s not free. The user license is $39, but if you opt to accept the free version, you’ll simply have to put up with a small, relatively unobtrusive, ad banner.

Safari 2.0: It may not be as full-featured as some of the others, but it’s your Mac’s default browser nowadays, and it keeps getting better and better. Apple continues to toil away at making it more and more compatible with commerce sites, and to speed up rendering performance. It launches as quick as Camino, if not quicker, but in Apple’s efforts to keep it simple, its pop-up blocker is simply bare bones, either on or off. You can’t, for example, selectively allow pop-ups on certain sites that require them for proper navigation, such as Federal Express. Maybe that’s something I should put in my Leopard wish list. On the other hand, the RSS reader that debuted in Safari 2.0 works pretty well.

You’ll notice that I no longer list iCab as a credible browser alternative. It remains in eternal preview mode, and its rendering accuracy is sub par. Maybe that’ll change some day, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m also going to omit Shiira, a browser that is built on Apple’s WebKit, though I watch its development with interest. It’s marketed as a superior alternative to Safari, it has potential, but it’s not quite there yet.

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In the scheme of things, the day an operating system is released probably isn’t terribly significant. But since there was a huge publicity run-up to Tiger’s debut, April 29th was important for many of you. But now, as the Tiger era ends its first three months, maybe it’s time to sit back and take stock of what Apple has wrought.

It’s highly encouraging to know that Apple managed to get Tiger out on schedule, which is an achievement you’ve got to take seriously, considering that Mac OS X, since its original release, has appeared like clockwork. Microsoft must be jealous. At the same time, it’s clear to me that 10.4 could have simmered in the development labs a few more weeks to massage away those early release bugs. Since Apple seems to prefer Friday release dates for its operating systems, June 24th would have kept it on its preordained path of the first half of 2005, yet yielded a more reliable product.

It’s not that many of you confronted a raft of mysterious crashes when setting up Tiger. Most of the problems affected business users, particularly when connecting via VPN to corporate networks or hooking up with Windows computers. The problems, some of which still exist, have been well documented at John Rizzo’s MacWindows site. Since easy cross-platform networking is widely touted by Apple, it’s particularly significant that things haven’t quite worked out as planned.

To be fair, the 10.4.1 and 10.4.2 updates fixed a slew of problems, dozens and dozens of issues affecting a number of areas. Even if you aren’t concerned with networking with Windows boxes or using VPN, you’ll appreciate the improvements in widget management, particularly the superior control over installation and removal. No doubt there is a 10.4.3 on the horizon that will address even more early release bugs. I am quite certain that Apple’s operating system team is dedicated to making Tiger as trouble-free as possible. In fact, my experiences have been almost uniformly positive, perhaps because I haven’t been impacted by any of the irritants others have reported.

In fact, I have upgraded a number of clients to Tiger in the past three months, and nobody has complained. But, once again, I deal mostly with home and small business users, folks who aren’t affected by the more serious problems.

But Apple is at the crossroads. For the first time in years, the Mac’s market share is on the increase. Whether the alleged iPod “halo” effect, or ongoing disgust with Windows doesn’t matter. There are hundreds of thousands of new Mac users and, as I’ve said before, first impressions count for a lot. Things are supposed to be better on this side of the tracks. The operating system is supposedly easier to use and more reliable. Windows switchers no doubt cherish the freedom from viruses, spyware and mysterious system slow-downs. To be sure, we’re probably just lucky that there haven’t been any Mac viruses, other than so-called “proofs of concept,” in the past few years.

But if Apple fails to deliver on the promise of a computing appliance that just works, you can bet these Windows switchers aren’t going to give Macs a second chance. What’s more, with Microsoft apparently beginning to get its act together with its newly minted Windows Vista, it’s clear that Apple will be facing a huge challenge over the next year to remain a viable alternative. Microsoft will be dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a marketing campaign that will make Vista appear to be the greatest operating system ever created by man. It won’t matter that many of its most significant features are already available, today, in Mac OS X. It won’t matter that it’s late, that some of the highly touted features either won’t appear, or will show up at a later date.

By the fall of 2006, personal computer users will be inundated with broadcasting, print and online advertising claiming that their next personal computer must come with Windows Vista. The name may, in the scheme of things, seem silly, and you can make all the jokes you want about its various definitions. But one thing is certain: When Microsoft’s marketing machine runs fill tilt, it’ll be difficult for any alternative to get a fair shake.

This doesn’t mean that Apple can’t overcome the “Redmond Machine’s” marketing muscle. During the second half of 2006, the first Macs with Intel Inside will no doubt become available. Apple will be putting the final touches on Leopard, 10.5, and it will have its chance to raise the bar even further with capabilities that Microsoft won’t be able to emulate for years to come.

The initial round of Macintels must be as trouble-free as possible, and I just hope that Leopard isn’t rushed to market, as Tiger was. The stakes are far too high for Apple to fall down on the job.

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Years ago, if you wanted to get online with your Mac, you had to buy an external modem. For portables, you bought the PC card version. But someone eventually realized that Internet access was a perfectly normal part of your computing experience, so modems became standard issue. In fact, the number of people who never go online is a small minority, so you’ve come to expect a modem jack on your new Mac.

But things are changing. More and more people have converted to broadband, and the chirps and buzzes many of you customarily hear when you connect to the Internet will eventually become relics of the past. But not yet. As of the end of 2004, some 54.69% of home users in the U.S. used some sort of broadband connection. Most use cable for Internet access, but the local phone providers have cut the price of their DSL services to the bone, less than dial-up in many cases. A price war is in the making, although the cable providers are, for the most part, ramping up speed to retain customers.

Those figures mean, however, that 45.31% of U.S. homes still connect by dial-up, and not all use 56K modems. In some cases, particularly for folks who live in rural areas, broadband may be limited to a costly satellite connection. What’s more, millions of people don’t see the need for faster connections, simply because their Internet excursions are limited to occasional email from friends or family and perhaps a commerce site or two. It’s going to be difficult to change their opinions, and it may take years before market penetration reaches the point where dial-up is no longer a significant factor. And don’t get me started about faxing.

Modems are cheap, particularly when the circuitry is hard wired onto the motherboard, so why would a computer company scrimp on this important feature, except to cut costs to the bone? Why indeed! Yet, Apple is doing just that with some of its Macs, and the internal modem isn’t something you can just plug in later on. Your choice is to either place a custom order for the Mac you want, or choose from one of the small number of external USB-based modems that are still available.

Now maybe Apple believes that the vast majority of Mac users have broadband, so analog modems are no longer needed. Consider this week’s Mac mini update. You get a modem, standard, on the entry-level $499 model. But if you opt for the faster models with larger hard drives, the modem is a $29 built-to-order option. Is that supposed to be the trade-off for getting 512MB RAM standard? I suppose Apple might believe that if you have AirPort, you don’t need dial-up? But what if you don’t use an AirPort Extreme Base Station with built-in modem? What if your broadband connection goes down, which happens all-too-often for some of you, and you have a cheap dial-up account to use in case of an emergency?

Now I can perhaps understand where Apple needed to cut corners on its cheapest Mac to keep the price down, but what about a $1,999 Power Mac? Yes, it’s a $29 option there too. Talk about cheap! Is it fair to assume that professional users must have broadband, or, being in an office, use the corporate network to get connected?

Perhaps this isn’t such a big deal to you, but with millions of dial-up users out there, Apple ought to consider sacrificing a small amount of its profits and restore the built-in modem. Even the $299 Dell Dimension 2400, a bare-bones PC box by any standard, has one.

Now maybe I’m being a little too picky. I can accept that. But a Mac is supposed to be a better value for the money than a Windows box. It’s supposed to have, standard, the equipment that is optional on the typical Dell or HP. You shouldn’t have to place a custom order to get a component that over 45% of home users in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of potential customers around the world still require.

Perhaps Apple is just trying to set the trend again, as it did when it ditched the built-in floppy drive and the standard SCSI port some years back. It is a sure thing that, some day, perhaps in the next five years, nearly everyone will have ready access to a cheap broadband connection. You’ll be able to download full-screen, high definition movies in minutes, grab those humongous Mac OS X update files in seconds. The analog modem will no longer be needed.

But we’re not there yet, and Apple ought to find other ways to save a few pennies in manufacturing costs.

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