Thursday, August 7, 2003 |
10:41 - Taking it to heart
http://www.mac.com/1/iTour/tour_bookmarks.html
|
(top) |
Wow... someone at Apple really took those calls for bookmark synchronization seriously. Now, not only can you have iSync keep all your bookmarks current on all your machines at once, now there's this new .Mac Bookmarks deely, which lets you access your same set of bookmarks no matter how you access the Net-- even from, say, an Internet cafe.
It's actually one of those Web pages that's disguised as a standalone app. The idea is that you go to the .Mac website, no matter what machine you're on, log in, go to the Bookmarks link, and this little palette pops up. It's got a Preferences pane and everything, where you can set options like opening in a new window or remembering your password. The bookmarks are all listed in hierarchical List View.
And it syncs back and forth with your Safari bookmarks and iSync, too; they're the other side of the architecture and continue to work as before. But now you can also add bookmarks via the .Mac Bookmarks thing, and they'll be propagated back to all your Safari browsers with their next syncs.
Kinda cool-- the first time you log in on the .Mac page, it prompts you in-browser for how you want to sync for the first time (replace the stock .Mac bookmarks entirely, merge them with your own, or turn off syncing on the .Mac side). The sync process happens right in the browser and doesn't pop up iSync or anything, which makes sense since it's all server-side.
I imagine the next step will be for the Safari team to add a ".Mac Bookmarks" item to the Bookmarks menu, so you can pop it up immediately from anywhere; all you have to do right now is type in "http://bookmarks.mac.com", so it shouldn't be more complex than just a go-to action.
I noticed some bugs-- slowness, mostly, and once there was a database connectivity error-- but then the iTunes Music Store was pretty glitchy the first day too.
I don't know if I'll use this myself (probably about as much as I use the webmail system, which is to say not at all); but for people who demand more flexibility and personalization from their login experience regardless of circumstances, this is a nice little feature-- very well executed, with as much attention to detail as though it were the next killer feature that Apple's future depended upon, rather than as though it's just some silly little afterthought. It's something they didn't by any means have to do; but they could, so they did.
Woo-hoo.
|
|