My Hamilton Pocket Watch

The 27th of March, over two weeks ago now I was introduced to the world of pocket watches and for some lizard brain related reason I am completely fascinated with them. After receiving a tour of the genre from Lee Silverman (the next door neighbor of my friend Matthew Stecker down here in Philadelphia, PA) who is an expert on the subject I'm completely taken by a particular model.

Hamilton Railroad Special Pocket Watch Grade 992B Stainless Steel Case Model 11 Size 16

I searched on eBay and found just such a watch for sale. Then, in a supreme techno-idiot moment, I failed to win the auction. The reasons are too pathetic to describe here. Suffice it to say that I made two rather basic mistakes. Something that you wouldn't expect a 10 year veteran of eBay to do. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of me.

I was so distraught from the loss that I set out on a non-stop search for another source. eBay was tapped out, no more on the site. The web is littered with references to this type of watch, thousands of sites had some combination of words that I used to search. I even found a site selling stock certificates from the now defunct company and it turns out that the brand name is now part of the Swatch Group.

The more I searched, the more I knew that this was the watch I had to have. Not surprisingly, I found that this particular style was very rare. Its quite hard to find a working one in excellent condition. I had just seen one, my odds of finding another seemed slim. I was becoming distraught and at the same time more and more rabid as I continued my search.

Late that Sunday night, I was rewarded for my feverish and obsessive/compulsive search. I had found one. I would have to wait until the morning to place the order at Bob's Watches. It was agonizing but somehow I knew I could now sleep having found a way to redeem myself and obtain the watch I was lusting after.

Morning came, I called and emailed Bob but did not make contact. The call connected me with an antique tape based answering machine and a message that sounded like Bob's wife. It was a personal message, it sounded like a home phone. Clearly, if I'd reached the correct phone number, this was a small home business. Likely a requirement of the wife to sell off some of the collection of "junk" Bob had acquired over their many years together, I don't know. The email was sent using Bob's site based email, I had no idea if it had worked or disappeared into some broken down web infrastructure. Bob's 540 area code indicated that he, and his wife I assume, lived in Timberville Virginia. It was at that point that I noted his calling hours on the web site, 6PM-9PM EST M-F. I'd have to wait until later in the day. This was getting on my nerves. Good thing I have a real job to keep my mind off things. So I waited.

The watch I found is circa 1954, a Hamilton 992B Railway Special pocket watch. It has the elegant double sunk Montgomery hand painted dial. The 21 jewel movement is adjusted to 6 positions and temperatures. It is stem wound and lever set, the lever is hidden. It appears to be a 16 size which was rare and indicates a later production date. Hamilton's grade 992B was the last U.S.-built standard pocket watch, in production until 1969. This model is renowned for it's superb balance and precise motion. Bob's site indicated that it is in near mint condition and all original right down to the glass crystal.

I'm told that the watch is in excellent running condition and that it keeps good time. Good time for this model watch was +/- 30 seconds each week. Even if a watch is 99.9% accurate, it may well still be off by a minute and a half in only 24 hours. The Hamilton movement's accuracy is about 99.9977%, or +/- 3 seconds a day. A modern quartz watch is 99.9998% accurate, or +/- 1 second a day. The atomic clock, for comparison sake, is estimated to maintain an accuracy of accuracy of +/- 10^-9 seconds per day. Another important point to consider is that the nature of the variability in quartz watches is different from mechanical watches. A quartz watch off by +0.5 seconds a day will consistently increase the time by that amount. By contrast a mechanical watch's variability isn't consistent. One day it may be +2 seconds, then next day -1.8 seconds. The fact that mechanical watches vary in an inconsistent manner in both positive and negative increments changes their relative overall accuracy when compared to a quartz watch. Mechanical movements will tend to be more accurate given a similar degree of variability when compared to quartz movements. So when this effect is taken into account, the watch is likely to have a 99.9999% overall accuracy, and that's good enough for me.

Finally enough time had passed, it was 6:05PM. Bob should be available by phone. So I called. Bob's answering machine picked up as per usual. Bob keeps some odd hours. I called again at 7:00PM, 8:00PM and 9:00PM. Each time Bob's wife greeted me from their answering machine tape. I called again, this time I put the call on speaker phone for Matthew to hear. He was delirious with laughter, I was furious. Where could Bob be? Didn't he realize that he had a business to run? Here I was, a paying customer and he was no where to be found. And so the search continued for another watch. Could I find a third one?

The next day on my return train trip from Philadelphia to Boston I thought of a new angle. I'd track Bob down by contacting the site design company who built his web site. For sure they'd have a way to contact Bob, clearly he would be updating his site as inventory turned over. So, I looked up Web King Site Design. I kid you not. They have a nifty crown logo and all. I'll not pass judgment on their capacity as a design firm, for all I know Bob had specified "crappy site" when he contracted the Web King and they were simply following orders. So I called the Web King up. The first number was disconnected without a forwarding number. Not a good sign. Their second number, an 800 number, connected. Someone answered the phone, they announced some business name in a garbled tone. I inquired, "Yes, I'm trying to reach the Web King." I felt silly. "You've reached him, how may I help?" Amazing, I had reached the Monarch himself. Maybe my luck had changed. "I've got an odd request for you sire, I'm to reach Bob's Watches. You did his site. His phone doesn't appear to be working, I keep getting his wife on an answering machine. You see, I'm interested in a watch he has advertised for sale. I'd like to pay him for that watch. Can you help me out? You wouldn't have his new phone number would you? Even email would help at this point." Silence, then a chuckle. "Just a second." I was placed on hold. But, this was one of those cheep Radio Shack type after market phone hold devices. A poorly tuned radio station played Steely Dan in the background. I was amused by the frugalness of the King. "You still there?" he asked. "Yep, did you find Bob?" "No, did you try the web based email on his site?" "Yep, I did. No response. I suspected that like his phone the email might not be working. I'm very interested in this watch you see." "Okay, well I can't give you his phone number. Confidentiality you see. I can take your information and pass it on if you'd like." This was better than nothing. "Okay, tell Bob that Gregory Burd, that's B-U-R-D, like bird but misspelled with a 'U' called..." and I gave him my cell phone number, email address and the item number on Bob's site I wanted to purchase. "Okay Greg, I'll pass that on to Bob." "Thanks, tell Bob I'd like to give him money, that might get his attention. Thanks again." "Okay, will do." At this point I felt as though I'd at least confirmed Bob existence. Before this point I had begun to question even that. Again, I waited.

Despite having His Majesty as a message courier to Bob, I continued to feel uneasy about the situation. It seemed prudent to continue the search, surely Bob wasn't the only person with such a timepiece for sale. I spent some time on eBay. Again, no luck. The model I craved after was an uncommon occurrence. I did find a slightly older Hamilton with a different, less desirable movement, a gold filled case and a somewhat cracked and poorly repaired face. It was currently valued at $67. As I'd had no luck finding the exact model. I challenged myself to find the components thinking that I could have them reassembled by a master watch maker. The final resulting watch might not be perfect, but then again I might get the pieces at a steep discount. In the end, I could either a) keep this watch and stop looking, b) keep this watch and find the perfect one at my leisure or c) once I'd found the perfect watch sell this one as my intermediary. This felt like progress, so I searched the depths of eBay.

Standard time in the United States originally came into existence because of the railroads, and much of the country subsequently ran on railroad time. Railroad standard time became a reality in the United States on Nov. 18, 1883, and within days, approximately 70 percent of schools, courts and local governments adopted railroad time as the official time standard. For the first time in history, Clark Blaise writes, "Boston and Buffalo, Washington and New York, Atlanta and Columbus, San Francisco and Spokane, all shared the same hour and minute." [Time Lord: Sir Sanford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time] As the purveyor of standard time the railroad companies set forth some of the most stringent standards for the construction and operation of time pieces. The precise schedule kept during the railroad travel era played a central role in the life and times of the people. You would frequently set your time piece using the rail station's clock. What was at first a simple necessity for predictable operation later became a matter of pride. This watch was essential to that task. Sadly, today's Amtrak is hardly a model of on time arrival. That said, I am a huge fan of Amtrak and I use it with regularity.

These days standard time is managed by an atomic clock with a radio beacon positioned in Fort Collins Colorado at the continental devide. In recent years the development of the GPS which relies on a highly accurate sense of time to calculate relative positions has become a popular accurate source of time. Computers use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize with devices in turn synchronized with the atomic clock or the GPS clock. Some cell phone networks synchronize with the GPS and atomic clock and pass on that accurate setting to the consumer handsets. Someday, cell phones may contain atomic clocks. Today, time is everywhere and is highly accurate. This availability and accuracy is something we tend to take for granted.

Thursday rolled around, no word from Bob. I'm quite disappointed in the Web King as well. In the mean time I've located pieces of the watch I want each in different eBay auctions (4972329314, 4973022113, 4973023439, 4971907499, 4970493647, 4970325927). A face here, the movement there, and a stainless steel case else where. I'm bidding on a bunch of the items, once I've won (and paid more than I would have for that first auction if I'd been smart about things) I'll take the pieces to a watch maker here in Boston for assembly, service and tuning. In the end, I'll likely end up with more than one watch given all the auctions I'm now following. Once I have a single satisfactory watch, I'll resell the other one and any remaining pieces on eBay and make some of that money back in the process.

Hours passed online in a vain search for the "one watch" I had to have. I had learned a great deal about this watch and its history. I stumbled on a wonderful chronometer – circa 1942 WW-II Hamilton Model-22, 35 size, 22 jewel with original double boxed enclosure, gimbaled Ships Chronometer as was commissioned by the "U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships", and felt compelled to purchase it. Still, my thirst for the watch was not satisfied.

Pieces of the puzzle started to arrive, a replacement Hamilton face (almost exactly what I wanted, it didn't have the words 'Railway Special' on it making it slightly less desirable to me) and a somewhat tattered Hamilton 992 (not 'B') with a cracked face and a busted up case. The other 992B movement I'd found on eBay as part of my reconstruction effort had the words, "Adj. temp and 6 positions" written at the edge next to a screw rather that along the curved opening (see the top picture and compare it to the middle movement only picture), this too was less desirable to me in some inane way. I'd spent quite a bit of money on eBay already and I have two more parts to acquire (a 992B Movement and a 16s Hamilton stainless steal case) before I'll have enough to construct two nearly perfect watches. I needed a watch repair shop I could trust and work with near by. Boston is a wonderful town, I can almost always find exactly what I need within a mile or so of where I live. In this case, Small Pleasures at 92 State Street (with a second store front on Newbury St.). There I found Angelo behind a glass case in his subleased portion of the shop under the stairwell. Angelo is a young guy, somewhere near my age (early thirties). While young he appeared to me to be talented and well trained. He studied under Jack Kurjlonak of Stonham Ma., a master watchmaker who still offers courses in the trade. Angelo liked the 992 I showed him, he put it on his Accutron brand Vibrograf to test its accuracy. It was way off, so out of tune that it wouldn't even properly register on the machine. I don't know if you've seen a vibrograf before, but they are rather cool devices (see below). For $85 Angelo is going to clean up and repair the movement back to perfection over the next week. During that time I expect to win and receive the remaining parts.

While searching for authentic Hamilton watch advertisements for fun on eBay I found it. The "one watch". Identical to the watch Lee showed me a week ago and to the one I'd lost on eBay later that day. I was ecstatic, and at the same time a little introspective. It had only been one week's time since the last watch of this ilk was on eBay. One week. Despite that I had been in a buying frenzy resulting from the loss of the first watch. If I'd not lost it due to stupidity I'm sure I'd have been more calm during this past week. After one week I'd spent quite a lot of time and money on this obsession. I'm happy with the results, I will win that auction and get the exact watch I covet, but it will have cost me quite a bit by then. In the end I'll have three of the watch in question. I'll finish out the repair and restoration of the other two, then I'll sell them both on eBay.

Amazingly I find that there may be a genetic reason for my recent obsession. My Grandmother's father on my mother's side of the family was for some time a watch repairman for Montgomery Ward & Co. This might help explain the attraction.

For years now I've not worn a wrist watch and I've purposely not used an alarm clock in an effort to find my own regulated rhythm in life. In doing so I've become more at ease with the passage of time, and I discovered that I have a hard time living in places where time is palpable. New York and San Francisco seem to pulse every second in a perceptible and almost tactile manner. This grates on my nerves. Boston has a pulse, but it is long and slow, its movement is annual almost. It seems to beat one cycle per year as regulated by the school year and seasons. This slower pace is enjoyable to me. Somehow I'm more relaxed as a result.

Its takes something extraordinary to change my basic habits, I'm rather stubborn. This particular watch has had a profound effect on me, not many things do. Its going to change my basic daily routine, and it has opened up an interesting new hobby to me, horology. I plan to carry this watch in my pocket everyday and keep it in good repair and running as accurately as possible.

ACCUTRON Spaceview B Yellow Dot Watch

My new past time continues in full, I've found something else distinctive I'd like to have someday.

There are quartz movements, mechanical movements and then there is the ACCUTRON movement. It is unique in many ways. It the timekeeping capability is governed principally by the "designed in" characteristics of a tuning fork. The tuning fork has no pivots or bearings, its timekeeping is free from the effects of lubrication. ACCUTRON watches employing the tuning fork movement have a very distinctive sound. The sound is due to the tuning fork oscillating 360 times per second (360 Hz). This unique, and patented, movement exhibits amazing accuracy.

Bulova delivered this market during the time of the Apollo moon landings. An amazing time for space travel and one that inspired a great deal of imagination and consideration for the future. A futuristic watch was a perfect match for this time.

Another unique facet to this is that it was the first commercial product with a transistor, which was the heart of this electromagnetic tuning fork based movement.

The ACCUTRON was guaranteed accurate to plus or minus one minute per month, this transistorized device is about ten times as accurate as a conventional fine-quality wristwatch of the day, advertised as 99.9977% accurate. Coincidentally, that's the same accuracy of the Hamilton Railway 992B movement of my pocket watch.

Spaceview versions of the ACCUVIEW have become popular with collectors. With popularity comes piracy and profiteering. Many advertised Spaceviews are in fact recently refitted non-Spaceview models. By removing the face and swapping out the crystal its easy for the unscrupulous to profit. When purchasing a Spaceview you should look carefully at the seller, in this case a reputable dealer so this is likely to be genuine. The fact that it has an authentic ACCUTRON stamped band added to some weight to that as well.

Notice how there are no lugs in the sides of the case. Rather the watch is set on the back side using a dial. Next to the dial is the watch battery door. Again, elegant and well done.

There were ACCUTRON Railway approved watches due to its accuracy. Note that the numbers are of a certain size, font and quality. The hands as well. This must have been part of the standard.

Seiko Kinetic Wristwatch

Seiko kinetic watches are rather interesting. They have quartz movements, so they require electricity to function. Normally this would come in the form of a replaceable battery, but not in this watch. Here we have a little electricity plant and battery all enclosed in the watch itself. No need to change the battery, ever. Quite nice.

The watch's function can be broken down into the following parts:
1. Oscillating Weight

The everyday movement of your wrist effects the balance of a weight. The weight rotates about a center as a result of gravity. The weight is visible through the back of the watch.

2. Gear train

The gear train amplifies the rotational movement of oscillating weight 100 fold and transfers it to the rotor.

3. Rotor

The rotor's function is to translate motion into magnetic charge. The rotor on this watch can spin at 100,000 RPM.

4. Generating coil block

A high density coil transforms the magnetic charge created by the rotor into electricity as any other generator would.

5. Kinetic energy unit

Essentially a highly specialized battery. This energy unit stores up the electricity created in the coil for slow steady use by the rest of the watch.

6. Circuit block

The stored energy must be dolled out in a precise manner to the watch in order to keep proper time. The block controls the voltage and amperage and in so doing induces the quartz oscillation in a precise manner.

7. The quartz oscillator

Oscillating at a predictable rate of 32,768 cycles per second (hz) this is the heart of the watch's timing.

8. Step motor

The step motor converts the electrical pulse of the quartz oscillator into a precise rotation motion.

9. Gear train

The motion is transmitted to the hands through the gear train.

10. Hands

Finally the hands mark the progress of time against the watch's face.

I've had this watch for years. Its seen a lot of action and continues to function well. A nice everyday sturdy watch. I have Katy Howden to thank for this watch. She gave it to me for my 25th birthday. She's been a friend of mine since middle school, 7th grade at The Albuquerque Academy to be specific. Recently I've been very enamored with mechanical movement watches, but I have to say that this watch's kenetic system and its use of titanium are interesting enough to keep it in my set of enjoyable timepieces.

A Proposal for Apple's Win32 Strategy

Imagine running Half Life 2, Doom 3, Outlook, Internet Explorer and all the other favorite Microsoft Windows on your Mac OS/X machine at native speed. Wouldn't that be cool? Outlook running in a window, doing its thing. Word running in another window. A suspended game of Half Life 2 miniaturized in the dock waiting for you to rejoin the fight. Wouldn't that be nice? Now imagine that without running the Windows operating system. That's right, no installation of Windows XP at all.

Impossible? A pipe dream? I believe it could be done today with technologies available right now. It would only take a little effort on Apple's part for all of this to come together.

To have a Windows executable, an .exe, to run on a Mac you really need two things: something that understands the IA-32 instruction set memory architecture of your average PC, and something that understands the Win32 APIs on which all Windows programs depend.

The IA-32 instruction set is a well known quantity. Its been around for years and is likely to outlive me and maybe my children (if/when I have any). Its so well known that there are many free and commercial software products which implement the instruction set and the basic workings of your average PC. Microsoft sells one such program called Virtual PC. There is also Guest PC as well as QEMU and Plex86 open source solutions. All of these work a little differently from one another. The most problematic aspect of a PC emulator is building in enough virtual software devices such as graphics cards, networking, sound, USB, etc. to make the whole thing really work. The easy part is the translation of the IA-32 instruction set and memory architecture into PPC instructions acting on a simulated memory landscape. There is even one very interesting company out there that builds this type of translation into chips. Transmeta is in business to sell faster/cheeper/smaller/cooler IA-32 compatible CPUs. They take IA-32 instructions and on the fly turn them into vector based instructions to be executed by their core CPU logic.

The take away points so far:

1. There are lots of ways to translate IA-32 into PPC.
2. Some of those ways are open source.
3. The hard part of an emulator is the devices.

Now, consider this. The Wine project allows users of UNIX/X11 based systems to run Windows binaries on Intel hardware. Any Linux, FreeBSD, etc. user today running on an Intel (aka IA-32 compatible) box can run some of the most common Windows applications and games without running a Microsoft operating system. Wine is a complete rewrite from scratch of the Win32 API and operating environment expected by well behaved Windows programs. Are you with me so far? The nifty thing about Wine is that it maps program requests to available system resources. So, the Wine developers don't have to reinvent the device drivers for a Windows program to work. They use the underlying operating system's device driver layer for that. Wine concentrates on the Win32 API and execution model only. Wine only works on Intel machines, it doesn't know how to translate one instruction set to another one.

The take away points for Wine are:

1. Wine takes the place of the Win32 API.
2. Wine removes the need for you to install the Windows operating system.
3. Wine only works on Intel because it's never tried to cooperate with instruction translators, there is no technical reason it couldn't run on any architecture.

Clearly you see where this is going by now. Take one part IA-32 instruction set engine and one part re-implemented Win32 API and mix. It could work. You'd have a way to run a Outlook.exe on your Mac OS/X PPC machine. It should run rather fast, and will be able to use all the available Mac resources if done properly.

Voilà, I have made gold from lead. Apple could combine QEMU with Wine and in a puff of developer synapse smoke deliver to us yet another insanely great thing. But what to call it? Windows + Macintosh = Mindows? Macintosh + Wine = Mine? (Macintosh + Wine) / QEMU = Minq? Now you know why I'm not in marketing. I'm sure the marketing staff at Apple will come up with a wonderful name for this like, 'Executioner' (get it? heh). Or 'Core Windows' (that will never pass legal muster).

Now, lets push the idea a tad further and see what happens. I mentioned Transmeta earlier. Remember that it takes IA-32 instructions and on the fly in silicone translates and optimizes them down to a core vector execution unit. Hmmm, vector execution unit, where have I heard that before? Could it be, the AltiVec Velocity Engine found in every G4 and G5 processor? Yep, that was it. Most modern Macintosh systems in use today contain a vector engine. Granted, not quite the same one or the same processing power of the Transmeta, but similar enough to make it an interesting comparison. Two more things to note. Isn't Transmeta in financial dire straits? And isn't Apple flush with cash? Hmmmm... I'm just thinking out loud here. This is pure speculation. So, if we're going to speculate lets go further. Where have I recently heard 'vector engines' talked about? Ah yes, the amazing new Cell processor from Sony/Toshiba/Hitachi. The new CPU that will redefine what it means to be "multi-core". Say, doesn't that Cell processor contain a hyper-threaded G5-ish PPC core in it? Yes, I know that I'm glossing over some important differences and working from incomplete information, but if you boil it down a bit and squint you'll understand where I'm coming from. There's already speculation that the Cell, or something like it, could become the G6 processor for Macs of the future. AltiVec instructions could easily be mapped into the Cell's 128bit vector engines. Those very same engines could become the target for Transmeta-like on chip translation of IA-32 instructions. And the whole thing runs at 6.what GHz?!! OMG. With this scenario there is no need to emulate IA-32 instructions in software, you're doing it in hardware and you're doing it very quickly. Once again, add Wine on top of this and you've got all you need to launch the Steam engine and setup Half Life on your Mac.

This idea is not without its potential issues. Microsoft has lately been making a great deal of noise about Genuine Windows Product licensing. They are clamping down on their software licensing, Windows update services, and digital rights management (DRM). They are trying to squeeze out the pirates and make more money. I won't pass judgement on them here, that's not the point of this post. Wine has been directly impacted by this. This won't prevent non-Microsoft applications from running. But that's not the point. The goal is tWine has been directly impacted by this
o be able to run Microsoft apps natively side by side with Mac apps. A deal must be struck with Microsoft that includes some payment of some kind. I can imagine many ways to make this work, but the devil's in the details on this type of thing.

So, in summary, I hope that Apple is way ahead of me and already "thinking different" enough to be working on such a solution. The end result would knock down the last remaining barrier to Mac adoption. Games. The gamers of the world are flush with money and crave the best solution for their game experience. They are the ones pushing the hardware and software limits these days. They are currently holding back, refusing to even consider a Mac because there simply is no comparison when it comes to game titles. The Mac loses that battle very time.

One last tid bit of speculation. The XBox 360 is likely to show up with Cell processors inside. In order to run XBox (generation 1) games, there will have to be some translation engine doing exactly what I describe above. Why do you think Microsoft acquired Virtual PC? Would Microsoft ever consider licensing this engine to Apple? Likely not, but its an interesting thought on which to conclude.

Update (3/4/2005):

Well, seems that I have not done my homework. The Darwine project (perfect name, better than any of my ideas) is exactly what I describe, and its been on Sourceforge since Dec 2002 (2002-12-22 06:37). For those of you who don't know what Darwin is, its the open source FreeBSD derived operating system that provides the UNIX personality on top of the Mach microkernel in every copy of Mac OS/X. They are 50% of the way finished, but they need help. The Darwine project seems like a Mac hacker's dream project. Hopefully some of you reading this will participate in some way and we'll have this capability finished soon. Personally I'm dying to stand in line for the next big PC game title release (Halo 2 for the PC?) only to go home and run it flawlessly on my Mac. Credit for the catch goes to Ernest Prabhakar of FoRK fame. Thanks Ernie.

The Queen, the Knight and the end of a dream

Today Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, has knighted Bill Gates.

The only recent knighting I feel was in any way appropriate was that of Dame Ellen Mac Arthur. Think about it for a second. Sail around the world faster than anyone else, and do it alone. Yep, that demonstrates the qualities I associate with a Knight (or Dame). On the other hand we have the worlds riches man. This has gotten out of hand. Someone (Charles) should have a chat with her (mommy, we've got to talk) and get her to stop this nonsense. Who's next? Anyway, I've always been a fan of medieval history, story, myth and all that. I'd always fancied that somehow I'd be knighted someday. Well, today's announcement changes that in two ways. First, its much more likely now. She's knighting everyone who comes over for dinner these days. But sadly, I've now lost any will to join this group of modern day knights.

A Suggestion for Apple's Switch Strategy, Safari.exe

Apple should make Safari available on Windows. If you think about it, Safari could be yet another way to entice Windows users to make the switch to Apple's Macintosh OS/X operating system. There is proof that people are switching as a result of interacting with the iPod/iTunes/iTunes Music Store triple-threat.

IE is causing more and more headaches (spyware, pop-ups, viruses, etc.). Now is the ideal time for a full out onslaught on its market share. Firefox has fired the first salvo into the IE market and has stolen 8.7% of the market, and if you ask me Safari is at least as slick. Now is the time to push hard into that very same market and continue to erode IE's market share.

So, why Safari if Firefox is already there? Well, for Apple the benefits are clear. First as I've indicated, its likely that a positive experience with IE will lead some amount of people who were to date unfamiliar with Mac OS/X to take a look. Second, if Apple wants any respect from the web designers out there it has to gain market share with its browser. What better way to do that than by releasing it for Windows users. Apple's shown with iTunes and QuickTime that it has the skills to do this.

If Safari.exe took hold and garnered the same amount of market share as Firefox, then web designers would have to start paying attention to Safari's quirks as part of site design and QA. This would also help the KDE users of the world. Safari shares its HTML rendering engine with Konqueror. The combined market share of the KHTML used on Linux within KDE's Konqueror, on the Mac as Safari and on Windows as Safari is once again a triple-threat.

So in the end, I feel that Apple needs to invest in a port of Safari to Windows. Everyone but Microsoft wins as a result. I don't however think they should port iWork's Pages or Keynote to Windows. The browser is a free commodity these days, use it for what its worth. In this case, as a trojan horse of sorts. Once the craving for Mac simplicity and elegance is sampled by your average Windows user, I'll bet that a quick demo of Pages, iPhoto, Keynote and some of the other signature Mac only applications could go a long way toward moving them away from the dark side and back into the light. The $499 Mac Mini will seal the deal.

Steve, are you reading this blog? You should be.