“One of the most interesting feature that didn’t quite make it into the final release of Firefox 3 is ‘Private Browsing,’ a.k.a. porn mode. The only other browser with this feature built-in today is Safari (another reason to try it in case you haven’t), however, Microsoft may also be building a similar feature into Internet Explorer 8 if two trademark filings are any indications,” Long Zheng reports for istartedsomething.
MacDailyNews Note: Version 2.0 of Safari, released on April 29, 2005, first offered “Private Browsing.”
Zheng continues: On July 30th, Microsoft filed two trademarks for:
CLEARTRACKS
IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer programs for accessing and using the Internet and the world wide web; and computer programs for deleting search history after accessing websites.
INPRIVATE
IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer programs for accessing and using the Internet and the world wide web; computer programs for disabling the history and file caching features of a web browser; and computer software for notifying a user of a web browser when others are tracking web use and for controlling the information others can access about such use.
Zheng speculates that Microsoft may be rolling out “Private Browsing” in Internet Explorer 8 here.
MacDailyNews Note: In what’s sure to be thrilling news for tech illiterate Web surfers the world over, according to various reports, Internet Explorer 8 is supposedly due this November. Better than usual, Microsoft: you’re only three years and seven months behind Apple on this one.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Price Check” for the IE 8 release date info.]
This is the difference:
When Apple enters the market behind the curve, it’s because they see the current state of affairs and decide they can do it significantly better. The iPhone is a great example (multi-touch instead of all the other one-finger b.s. phones). Aperture is another good example – they took the market concept and dramatically improved it.
When Microslut and others enter the market behind the curve, it’s only to meet the status quo and attempt some feature parity in the interest of monopoly maintenance. Great example: Zune, or Verizon’s Voyager, or countless other asshat products from crappy companies.
I hope you can sleep better tonight with the added enlightenment.
The only time I need IE is to access the work website. Those guys have “standardized” on IE6. When the IT guys installed XP in Fusion on my Mac, they installed IE7. Well, that wouldn’t work. So I asked them to downgrade. Impossible, they said. You have to reinstall XP all over again! So finally it works.
And now we will have IE8. What for? People haven’t even moved to IE7!