The Webkit team, those intrepid guys who have this forever on-going work-in-progress to improve and speed up Safari, Apple’s web browser, has unveiled a version of Webkit that incorporates a new Javascript rendering engine called Squirrelfish, which purports to jack up Safari performance to 1.6x better. Not quite ready yet for prime time, it’s still being tweaked and fixed before they roll it out.

Squirrelfish, if you really must know, is a register-based, direct threaded, high-level bytecode engine with a sliding register window calling convention made for open-source browsers. Huh?

Bring it on. All we need to know is, will it blend?

With the constant trickle of TPAs (third party applications) for the iPhone and their quick and painless installs, you tend to try everything out - because it’s just as quick and painless to uninstall them. (And believe me, there have been a lot that don’t last ten seconds on mine; the ratio of crap to good stuff is heavily one-sided.) Whatever the case, updating Installer has become a daily routine, which I expect is the same for a lot of you guys.

At the moment I have four pages of apps on my iPhone (considering that the Apple-legal stuff takes up only over half a page, that’s a lot of TPAs). The number of pages grow and shrink as the weeks go by, and staying on the iPhone is survival of the fittest; the ones that stay are either really useful or fun, or are just really good conversation pieces. The common thread among most of them is, why didn’t Apple think of these? (The only one I haven’t yet come across, but was fully expecting to appear this year, was something that let me cut and paste text.)

It being year-end, people have a compulsion to make lists, and I’ve succumbed and made a listing of apps I’ve kept on my iPhone over the many weeks. Please take note that these are personal, subjective choices. I’m sure you have others you prefer, or some you feel are moronic. But hey, it’s my list. Why don’t you post some of yours in the comment box? Who knows, there might’ve been some we missed and should know about.

Anyway, here are some that have managed to stay on my screen this year:

weTool - There have been a few other apps that individually do all the small things that weTool does, but none all together, none as well, and none in a more professional looking package. You can delete specific items in the Call and SMS logs, you can forward texts (to multiple recipients!) and contacts, you can even save texts to Notes. You can even makes calls directly from it. One of the best parts is that it has a set of visually stunning page transitions you can select that Apple is only beginning to do (as the page curl transition seen in a screenshot of the 1.1.3 preview.) Nice one.

TuneWiki - This is for the karaoke lover in you. When connected online, it will search an online wiki database for the lyrics of the song currently being played in iPod mode and will show it to you line by line as the song plays, ostensibly so you can sing along. Of course you have to manually forward each line by tapping on the TuneWiki icon on the screen, but hey, it’s free. Who’s complaining?

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Ambrosia Software has released the next gen iteration of a much loved app called WireTap Pro, which let you record virtually anything that came out of your Mac’s audio port - welcome WireTap Studio, the full-featured, full-service, grown-up version of the little ol’ app that could.

Far from just being an audio capture application, WireTap Studio does what Pro used to do, but does it way better, featuring (among other wonderful things):

• Lossless recording
• the ability to change compression later on down the road (even if you recorded at a clunky radio level you can bump it up to the highest resolution available after the fact)
• the ability to record from two sources
• Lossless audio editing
• full Audio Unit effects support
• drag-and-drop exporting to any format
• create podcasts with ease, with any compression or format
• Live Preview - to preview encoding settings on real time (this you gotta see!)

While not quite professional studio level, this baby’s far more than we can expect for something that is still shareware. (This is something my director friend Mike Cabardo would love to have on his Mac.) Goes for US$69, US$30 for upgrading from WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack Pro. The Doodler gives this one 8 of 10 Apples.

One of the Doodler’s most-favorite-of-all-time-extreme-to-the-max apps is the SRS iWow Plug-in, which tweaks audio from iTunes to create fantastic audal soundstages and environments that make you disbelieve that all this goodness is actually coming from your two cheap, tinny, bargain speakers. The plug-in lets you adjust bass, focus, stereo separation, and definition from your own preferences or the built-in presets and make you feel like you owned Wharfdales.

It’s certainly a plug-in I can’t imagine being without. It’s the best US$20 I ever spent.

Well, SRS has an update available for download as we speak. iWow 2 now lets you save your personal presets, and adds  auto-presets based on the material you’re playing (”Cruise Control”), and more of its own. Best of all, it adds Movie Mode, which has the ability to create. Virtual. Surround. Over. Headphones. (Granted, this is only with the SRS 360 Headphones, but still…)

It usually sells for US$29.99, but the introductory promo gives it to you at US$19.99, with upgrades for old users at US$11.99. There’s even a Free Trial, which I urge you to take so you can be a true believer.

Go get SRS iWow 2 here. iWow indeed.

On the heels of the release of OpenOffice.org 2.3.0 update for most operating systems on the planet this week, the group has announced that they are releasing a new native Mac version of OpenOffice, the FOSS alternative office suite, one that does not require X11 to run, in September - of 2008.

I actually did a double-take when reading the original report from Computerworld, thinking they meant this September we’re in now - which made me wonder about the odd statement; why not just say this month then?

Macworld UK didn’t even notice the year: writer Jonny Evans, citing the exact same original report I linked to, wrote totally a off-the-mark and misleading report that headlined “Mac native OpenOffice this month?” It further says:

Popular and free Microsoft Office alternative OpenOffice seems set to ship in a native Mac OS X version later this month.

A report on Computerworld claims that OpenOffice 3.0 will ship later this month, citing a presentation to be made today by the lead engineer working on the project, Eric Bachard.

If you hurry, you can still read Macworld UK’s big blooper (if they haven’t yet pulled it by now) here. (If they have, I can still show you - I saved the page, heh heh.) They should read more closely, especially if they’re just snagging a report. Macworld should be more careful. If you’re just going to crib (like me), at least get the dates right. Tsk tsk.

Ahem. Back to the story.

Development for the Mac platform has been lackluster and perfunctory of late, but with the increasing popularity and acceptance of Macs and OS X as part of the halo effect of the various Apple “side” projects, apparently the group has re-thought their commitment to the Mac community and redoubled efforts to develop the suite for the platform, and assigned a few more people to the project. But - a year?

Version 3.0 is being designed for OS X 10.5, although by then 10.6 might be the prevailing OS for the Mac.

A year might be too long for most people. Like me. This is one instance where I literally can’t wait. And I don’t mean that in a good way.