For a slow news/rumor month, there’s an awfully lot of change going on. Believe it or not, it’s already been practically a year since the M1 SoC turned the concept of computing upside down. You can accomplish what with 8GB RAM?

Not to be left in the rearview mirror, software is making some moves. The first, of course, was the ever so popular subscription model. Say what you want but developers have to eat. And the idea that they’re continuing to keep their software as current as possible in a timely manner you could argue makes it worth it.

Right now, there are two betas dipping their toes in the water with changes, one of them with enormous changes. So, I thought I would give them a bash and write a separate article about each one.

And we’re going to jump in feet first to the one that is causing the most uproar. And I think for the most curious of reasons.

Introducing the new way of browsing that is Safari Technology Preview. I know people who’d sooner toss their own mother under the bus than use this browser.

The majority of Apple users I’ve spoken to hate it with an unbridled passion. They don’t like the URL field moving about, they don’t like the header adopting the color of the website, and on and on.

Apple has heard them and started to rewrite it so you can have it either way or a combination of the two. I want to say that I love it.

From the complaints I heard, it strikes me that they primarily don’t like the changes as browsers have always been laid out in one fashion, no matter which one you used.

They have a muscle memory no matter which browser they use that allows them to get things done as they have lo these several decades.

I take the opposite stance. I feel the way they have set it up, using groups instead of tabs, benefits my workflow multifold.

Anyone who has used a browser, at some point, has had a collection of dozens of tabs open at once. I myself have bookmarks that I have collected over more than a decade. Once and a while, I’ll try to clean them out. Click on the bookmark and the site vanished ages ago.

As I do much research to do these reviews (alright – some) I wind up opening numerous bookmarks to gather the information and graphics. But wouldn’t it be great instead of having a clothesline of tabs, to have a group of tabs for a specific reason that I could open with ONE click?

Think about it. You could set up a group of tabs and call it “social.” With ONE click, it would open Facebook, Slack, Twitter, what have you.

In my review example, I could delete that group when finished. The bookmarks wouldn’t be aging like wine in my sidebar. That would greatly would streamline my workflow by clearing out the cruft.

Another example. You’re renovating the family room. You’ve found the sofa you want, the OLED TV you crave, and some cabinets you like. You could group the bookmarks under “renovation.” Once the project is done, delete the group.

Don’t get me wrong. You’ll have to reteach your muscle memory. And at first it will take some time to have it feel normal. Think of it as the equivalent of having the driver’s seat smack in the middle of the car.

But every other move that Apple has made that we complained about (the heresy of replacing 5 1/4” floppies with 3.5” floppies, the removal of optical drives, etc.) all became the norm within months, with other manufacturers following like lemmings after their initial complaints.

We never got round to giving peace a chance but surely trying a new format for browsing isn’t gonna end the world. Humans will take care of that regardless.

©2021 Frank Petrie