John Lamansky

In the middle of the Browser Wars 2.0 between Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox, a new application war appears. But it’s not about browsers. It’s about podcatchers. And it seems that history is repeating itself.

We start off in 1994 in the browser world and 2004 in the podcasting world. At these times there existed Mosaic and iPodder, respectively. Mosaic later changed its name to Netscape because of legal disputes. In the same way, iPodder later changed its name to Juice because of legal disputes concerning the iPod trademarks.

Anyway, in the beginning both iPodder and Netscape were dominant. Everyone used them. Even though the user interfaces weren’t the greatest. I mean, you can’t even listen to podcasts from within iPodder, and to me Netscape’s interface looks really ugly. But who didn’t use iPodder for podcatching, and who didn’t use Netscape for Internet browsing?

Yes, there were some other programs. iPodderX (now Transistr) was the Opera of the podcatcher world. Both were commercial programs and both had a much smaller user base.

Then one day in June 2005, Apple became Microsoft. Just as Internet Explorer usage shot up after Microsoft bundled it into Windows in 1997, so did iTunes usage as a podcatcher shoot up after Apple incorporated podcatching into that program.

Why did this happen? The simple answer for both cases: hardware. Microsoft Windows could be used on the prevalent PC. iTunes was used with the iPod. Bundle IE with the popular Windows, and IE’s share skyrockets. Bundle podcatching with the popular iTunes, and up shoots iTunes usage for podcatching.

Now we’re in 1998 in the browser world, and late 2005 in the podcatching world. Who uses iPodder and Netscape anymore? iTunes and Internet Explorer have taken over.

iPodder development has branched off into other projects, such as the PodNova client. Netscape development had branched off into other projects, such as Nvu, the Mozilla Suite, and SeaMonkey.

We arrive at the year 2004 in the browser world and 2006 in the podcatching world. Firefox, a descendant of Netscape, has come on the scene, quickly eating away at Internet Explorer usage share. Now almost everyone’s talking about Firefox, and Microsoft has responded by kicking IE up a notch with the upcoming release of version 7.

But where’s the podcatcher that will become the next Firefox?

As I was thinking about this browser/podcatcher war coincidence, I was surprised at how my plans to build a podcatcher coincided with this repeating history. I was planning to make a podcatcher, which is currently codenamed “Salamander.” Hmm, an animal name, kinda like Firefox and Firebird. I wanted Salamander to be easy to use while having really cool features. Hmm, kinda like Firefox. I wanted Salamander to be the program that would eat away at the usage share of the dominating program (iTunes). Hmm, kinda like Firefox.

Will Salamander become the next Firefox? Time will tell. One little difference, though. Salamander does not have its roots in iPodder, in the way that Firefox has its roots in Netscape.

Oh, and iPodder did not start out as a paid program in the way Netscape did.

But besides those things and few other small differences, the history of 10 years ago has indeed repeated itself. And it just might continue to do so.

Wow. Apple did it. They created a beta program called Boot Camp that lets you dual-boot Windows XP on a Mac. And according to the SuperSite for Windows review, published just today, it works quite well.

Paul Thurrott (author of SuperSite for Windows articles) gave an interesting an opinion on why Apple would do this:

One might wonder why Apple would create such a thing. After all, with barely 2 percent of the market for computer operating systems, should Apple be trying to win market share for Mac OS X and not offer a way for Mac users to run Windows? Not exactly. Unlike Microsoft, Apple doesn’t actually make a lot of money directly from sales of its OS. Instead, Apple makes most of its money–even now, in the heady days of iPod supremacy–by selling computer hardware. So one might think of Boot Camp as a win-win. Apple wins because a much wider audience of users can now consider its Mac systems, secure in the knowledge that they can run Windows if they want to. Microsoft wins because these users will still be using–and paying for–Windows. And best of all, we as users win, too, because now we can have the best of both worlds: the elegance of Apple hardware coupled with Windows, the operating system that runs all those applications we want to run.

Some Mac users don’t see it that way. They’d like you to believe that Mac OS X is all anyone would ever need, and they’re actually quite a bit distressed that anyone would want to run Windows on a Mac. Get a life: This software will open up the world of Apple to a much wider audience and if OS X is as great as they think it is, surely some of those people will start spending time with OS X instead of Windows. I can’t really see the issue there.

The review also said that:

A future version of Boot Camp will be included with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” due in late 2007. That version, presumably, will support Windows Vista as well.

I do daresay that I’m actually getting somewhat excited about this. I’ve never wanted to switch from Windows because it is, as I consider it, the ultimate progamming platform. With a dual-boot setup like this, I could still do programming etcetera on Windows and then doodle with Mac OS X if I ever wanted to. Hmm…

According to a Catholic News Service article, employees from Vatican Radio have presented Pope Benedict XVI with a specially-loaded iPod nano to honor the pope’s first visit to the Vatican Radio broadcasting headquarters.

Now that Vatican Radio offers podcasts in eight different languages, the pope has the technological capability to plug in and import the radio’s audio files.

[…]

Though the white iPod nano is tiny, it still made an impression on the pope. When the head of the radio’s technical and computer support department, Mauro Milita, identified himself and handed the pope the boxed iPod, the pope was said to have replied, “Computer technology is the future.”

The pope’s new 2-gigabyte digital audio player already was loaded with a sampling of the radio’s programming in English, Italian and German and musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. The stainless steel back was engraved with the words “To His Holiness, Benedict XVI” in Italian.

The SuperSite for Windows has some interesting articles that compare Windows Vista Beta 1 with Mac OS X “Tiger.” The site has part 1 and part 2 of the review so far. I’m looking forward to the yet-unpublished part 3, where the author will “declare a winner, of sorts, at least until we have a more feature-complete version of Windows Vista to evaluate.”

The answer? “Yes,” according to Google’s PageRank, which is an indicator of how “important” Google considers a webpage to be. I have noted that Apple.com has a Google PageRank of 10 out of 10, whereas Microsoft.com has 9 out of 10. But then again, Alexa’s ranking system gives Microsoft.com a higher ranking than Apple.com. Rather interesting…

According to this CNET review, “Microsoft has more to do on its new operating system, but this first beta suggests that Windows Vista will be up to par with Linux and Apple Mac OS X.”

However, I’m keeping in mind that Mac OS X 10.5 is due by the time Vista is released.