I downloaded Mac OS X 10.1.3 last night and today when I started IE 5, I was surprised just how quickly the app cranked up. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect Apple was optimizing OS X so that X wasn't just faster overall but explicitly optimized so that IE 5 was faster than it'd been before.

If I had half a brain, this wouldn't surprise me. Apple's done the same for Photoshop; Photoshop was certainly the first thing to take advantage of dual processors in OS 9, just to name one example. The point I've figured out "all over again for the first time" is just how big an advantage IE has on Windows.

Imagine -- not only do the IE programmers have insight into Windows that the people at, say, Mozilla don't have, the people writing Windows are going to do their darnest to work together with the IE programmers to ensure the fastest, most stable, and all around most pleasurable web browsing experience can be attained through the combination of Windows and IE. If Apple's giving Microsoft's products priority in OS X, just imagine the priority Microsoft is able to give itself when it comes to IE. Makes you appreciate the job the people at Mozilla are doing quite a bit more!