I happened to notice this when my internet wasn’t working today:
Safari's Error Message
That’s the error message I get when I’m not connected to the Internet on Safari. Contrast that with this:
See the difference? When I’m on Safari, the computer is telling me that I am not connected to the internet–not that the program can’t connect to the internet, nor that the computer can’t connect. I personally cannot connect.
Firefox, on the other hand, is itself not connected to the internet.
This is an example where Safari beats Firefox, as the former is a much better approximation of the invisible computer. I don’t have Internet Explorer on this computer, and I have no personal experience with Chrome or any other browsers. Does anybody what these programs delay when no connection is available?
“Does anybody what these programs delay when no connection is available?” Haha slow down buddy.
Also, safari can do this because it is all tied in to your operating system in super secret apple proprietary fashion. Firefox can only tell you that firefox is not connected, b/c that is all Mac OS will allow it to know. Mac OS selfishly limits the knowledge in order to support the famed Mac stability. (stable=all programs written by apple, or run externally) So, the same integration that lets your browser tell you you have no connection prevents you from using all the sweet add-ons and features of an open source browser like Firefox. Pluses and minuses man.
Frankly, i’ve been using the internet long enough to diagnose my own connections quickly. So the inability to use the ever expanding number of helpful add-ons drastically outweighs the seconds i save learning i am not connected on those rare occasions that i am actually not connected.
Whether you use Mac, Windows, or something different, there is almost certainly an applet that provides more information about internet connectivity than your browser.
I’ll grant that in this particular instance, Safari is doing a better job at relaying information. However, I’m not really familiar with the Safari error messages. Does it give you a different message when you have an internet connection but can’t reach the server? What about when you have a LAN connection but lack an external connection?
Apple has a tendency to over-simplify things in order to make their OS easier. Usually they succeed at easy, but they often withhold a lot of information for the sake of simplicity. Maybe great for average users, but as a fairly tech-savvy individual, I’d rather have the details.
An excellent example is the Microsoft blue screen. Yes, it’s real ugly, but it actually provides an error code that can usually be diagnosed. I’d take that over a frowny-face or spinning wheel any day.
I’m certainly not trying to make this a Mac vs doze thing. Hell, I avoid both of them when I can. But like Shane said, different users are going to want vastly different things from their apps/OSes.
Mike,
That’s the only error message that I’ve noticed with Safari. Down the screen, there is a button which takes the user to the automated diagnosis applet.
I wonder about the effectiveness of the blue screen for the typical user. My hunch is that, for the average user, the error codes actually don’t do much, other than tell them what to tell tech support over the phone. Not really sure how they could go about it differently (because the system essentially can’t function when it gets to that point anyway).
Plus, the ugliness of it all probably just infuriates most users.
Shane,
You missed the point entirely.
The whole point of that post is that the language they used communicates very different ideas to the user. I’m not sure if what you said about the technical side of the issue is correct, but it ought to be entirely irrelevant.
What I was getting at here is (and I knew you would hate on this), this is a (probably insignificant) example of why Apple has done so well against arguably superior competition. There’s absolutely no reason that Firefox couldn’t just say “You aren’t connected to the internet”–even if it couldn’t be certain on a technical level that this wasn’t the case. Both of those browsers faced essentially identical situations, but their responses demonstrated a different view of the connection between the user and the machine. Safari sends a message that it isn’t really even a thing worth noticing, it’s just a window to the internet. Firefox called attention to itself. That’s a big difference.
You can talk all you want about superior features and your own ability to diagnose connectivity issues. But the fact is that you aren’t a typical user of the internet, and until the open-source movement understands that they aren’t, their programs aren’t going to be better for most users–even if they are ‘better’ in absolute terms.
Ultimately, what makes technology interesting isn’t the tech itself, but the ways it interacts with society. So the job of creators of technology has to always focus on making innovations more palatable to people who don’t want to think about technology at all. That’s the idea of the invisible computer I referenced.
This may be a structural weakness in the open source movement in general, or it may just be something that open source isn’t good at yet. I can’t really say either way, but those who are really committed to the idea ought to take it to heart, rather than have a knee-jerk reaction regarding the superiority of Firefox/Linux/etc.