Eric's Weblog

Opera giving up on the Mac?

News.com has a story tonight saying that Opera may cancel its web browser for the Mac now that Apple has released Safari.

I don't understand why Safari's entrance into the market makes much of a difference for Opera. The News.com article essentially says that Opera doesn't think its browser can compete with a free web browser that's bundled with the operating system. But Mac OS X 10.2 already has a free web browser that's bundled with the OS -- Internet Explorer. It's true that IE is really showing its age on the Mac, but Opera shipped its first release for the Mac before Mac OS X shipped, competing against what was then a best-of-breed IE 5 on Mac OS 9.

The only way in which Safari is different now from how IE was then is that it's an Apple product and not a Microsoft one. That's not much of a difference, though. And as the competitive browser market on Mac OS X has shown, it's all but impossible to write a browser that's perfect for everyone. The Omni Group believes that there's still a market for a pro-quality commercial browser on Mac OS X. I hope the Opera folks will come to the same conclusion once they realize that today's market isn't very different from the one they entered a few years ago.

Looking for a new cell phone

Since getting a California cell phone number means that I'll need a new contract anyway, I'm planning to get a new cell phone. My current phone, a Motorola V.8162, is wonderfully small and light but doesn't get any reception at home unless I'm standing at exactly the right angle by the living room window. I can't deal with that. It gets two or three bars if I'm standing on the street outside, but that's not much help.

I'm hoping that a new phone will get better reception. Sprint apparently lets you return a new phone and back out of a new contract within 14 days, so I can buy a phone and bring it home to try it out without much risk. The question, then, is what phone to buy. Here are the requirements:

• Better reception than my current phone, specifically at home.


• A flip phone. I keep my phone in my pocket along with a Palm IIIx and my car keys, so anything that isn't a flip phone will get severely scratched.


• A usable interface. I could design a better UI than the 8162's if I was drunk. It's awful. Windows 3.1 was more usable. I've had the phone for a couple of years, and it still takes me ten minutes to figure out how to enter a number. I don't want to deal with that again.

Any suggestions? Price isn't an issue; I'll gladly pay more for a phone that's a better fit for what I want. At the same time, fancy add-ons like Internet access aren't necessary. I can't imagine how you can do anything worthwhile on the Internet on a screen small enough to fit on a flip phone.

As for providers, I'm not tied to Sprint. It's just that I know I get great reception from Sprint at work, their rates aren't bad, and they seem to have much better phones than everyone else.