The point of using (now and even after Chrome is released) Stainless is its nifty "parallel sessions" feature (i.e. log into the same site with different accounts simultaneously) -- something Chrome, FF and Safari don't have.

if (you == BALLMER)
throw CHAIR;

Bank on it...

Traditional revenue models for pushing consumers to retail are beginning to show their age esp. in their transition to mobile, but app developers are already exploring location-based delivery of coupons and promotions that can be scanned at point of sale (e.g. on the iPhone: CardStar, Coupon Sherpa). Things are changing fast and the consumer, as usual, is poised to win.

Luck and prodding aren't likely to result in a Universal binary: V8 isn't going to be ported to PPC anytime soon.

Chromium (the open source basis for Chrome) is available to download and compile, and you can also download unofficial binaries if you're really dying to see how Chrome for OS X is coming along.

And if you want to experience what a one-process-per-tab feels like on the Mac, you can check out the Chrome-inspired OS X browser, Stainless.

...that this professor's research is funded by the American Bacon Association (interestingly one of the largest recipients of pork project earmarks).

Seems like an apropos article to throw tangential news at: the WebKit based Stainless (for Mac only, Leopard req.) introduced a completely new browser innovation yesterday, which IMHO is more important than raw speed:

From MacNN:
Version 0.5 of Stainless introduces the concept of "parallel sessions," which let users log into a single site with multiple simultaneous accounts. In accessing Gmail for example, three different inboxes can be loaded across three separate tabs. The content is further integrated into bookmarks, allowing several site logins to be loaded in short order.

Original article here.

The Future of Apple Safari

Cool. I first played Zork on a VAX at Bell Labs, right before Infocom was formally formed in 1979.

There's a great student paper (research project?) from MIT that quite nicely recounts the history of Infocom, the making of Zork, and their fall etc.:
http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/infocom-paper.pdf
(yeah, PDF sorry)

Abstract from the paper:
The success and failure of Infocom, a company founded by members of MIT's Laboratory
for Computer Science, resulted from a combination of factors. Infocom succeeded not only
because it made Zork, a text-adventure game, available on personal computers, but also
because it developed an effective system for supporting new platforms, maintained an
engineering culture that excelled at writing computer games, and marketed its products to
the right audience. Similarly, Infocom did not fail simply because it decided to shift its
focus to business software by making Cornerstone, a relational database. Infocom failed
for many reasons that were closely tied to how the company managed the transition to
business products. Behind the scenes, the transition created a litany of problems that hurt
both the games and the business divisions of the company. Combined with some bad luck,
these problems--not simply the development of Cornerstone--ultimately led to Infocom's
downfall.

Stainless (multi-process browser) + WebKit Nightly frameworks (SquirrelFish Extreme) = a decent preview of Chrome on OS X

If the number of rated charge cycles isn't over 800, these things are going to die way too quickly.

The new MBP battery is rated for 1000 recharge cycles, or 5 yrs of typical use.