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Editorial: No more excuses
Photoshop Express is a stunning piece piece of code. Porting a cut-down version of the world's best-known professional photo editor to the web was no small undertaking. Whoever suggested it clearly had more faith in the development teams than I would have done.
Its brilliance can't be overstated but what I most like about it is the way that it shames other non-Mac web developers by showing what a sham their protestations really are.
How many times have you been told that a particular site or service is unavailable to you because you're using a Mac? How many times have you been urged to switch to a PC just so that you can access your online bank or order a delivery or pick-up? Too many, most likely.
Yet let's not forget that these companies are usually shuffling around nothing more than a few digits and letters. They're
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The sad truth of the matter is that most of these sites which claim that they don't work with Safari or the Mac in general actually do.
It's been long understood that if you force Safari to identify itself as Internet Explorer running on a Windows PC by tweaking it through the hidden debug menu, these sites generally run without any complaint, proving their developers to be little more than cheeky fibbers.
If they were to replace the incompatibility messages with the truth - something along the lines of: 'We're sorry but to support your platform would mean hiring a couple more staff, and that costs us money which, frankly, you're not going to earn us, so run along now and try somewhere else and come back if we ever get it fixed.' Then I'd have more respect for them.
And you know what? I might just come back if they did ever, indeed, get it fixed.
As the Mac grows its market share things are slowly improving but we've still got a long way to go. My hope though is that as those for whom coding is a passion push things forwards with releases like Photoshop Express, those for whom it is nothing more than a nine-to-five, bookended by a commute, will be finally shamed into action.
