Nelson
Nelson Muntz. Nuff said.
O2, who hold the UK exclusive on the iPhone, provides a useful online ordering tool for those looking to get the latest Apple hardware - as long as you're not using Apple's Safari browser. Everyone else is most welcome: Firefox, Internet Explorer and even Opera Mobile can all connect and apply for a long-term contract. But …
To buy an iPhone from an Apple store you find one of their geniuses who takes you over to one of their display iMacs, fires up VMware and logs in to a virtual XP machine so they can then use O2's tool for registering the purchase.
"I know" was all the 'genius' would say to my derision... when I asked why VMware instead of Parallels he said it was because Parallels wasn't up to it.
Oh dear...
Safari on the desktop is crap owing to the availability of much better browsers (e.g. Firefox).
Safari on the iPhone is pretty damn good because it's got the best interface and means of displaying web pages compared to awful things like Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile. Unless Chrome is better on the Google phone, I've not tried it.
Still, I was hoping this might be some statement from O2 about why they've decided to charge a fortune for the new iPhones (and upgrades and tethering)...
O2's site is littered with pretty poor browser support. When setting up a blackberry with a new email address (admittedly about 12months ago now) I was forced to use IE, nothing but IE, and believe me, as a mac fanboy, I tried. Eventually used VMWare.
When the first iPhone came out Parallels was used to run WinXP and IE on the macs so as the Apple Staff can use the o2 portal. I guess VMware got the deal for the Apple Store shopper's face time; there is no noticeable difference in performance at this fairly menial task between Parallels and VMWare.
Safari 4 is the fastest browser I've ever experienced. I know I have mentioned already that I am a fanboy, but it launches faster and renders pages faster... What else do I want?
Before you answer ... I also consider myself to be fairly well versed in the CSS and JS quirks that are to be found in ALL BROWSERS, and as a responsible developer work out a way around them; as opposed to over use of uppercase letters and exclamation points to deride them!!
Although, O2's shoddy support for Safari and even FF!!!! DON'T GET ME STARTED!
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Perhaps next time the reporter could do a little homework and:
1.) Verify that the problem actually exists
2.) Do a tiny bit of digging to reveal what the issue is, and whether or not it ACTUALLY applies to that browser, since the message suggests that O2 are just sniffing for a browser that their code is incompatible with.
@AC It's all relative...
If you had cited Camino as better than Safari, I might have agreed, but not FireFox, not anymore - v3 is just too bloated for words, almost as bad as IE these days.