Since the release of the iPad just over a year ago, it seems like tons of different companies are trying to emulate the look and feel of the iOS, or at the very least find a way to work with it.
Even Apple seems to be a bit blown away with the popularity of their newer operating systems, rolling out iOS 5 this fall in part because of all the different things a new iOS can do. The iOS platform has been so popular in fact that if some companies cannot completely imitate the iOS then they want to be featured on it. Even a browser like Opera, which has seen plenty of success on regular computers has released the Opera Mini 6 so that they too can take advantage of use on the iPhone and iPad. Still, Apple has cornered the market on the iOS browser with their version of Safari that runs on those devices and now it appears that Apple wants to start incorporating their iOS functions even on machines that don’t really run that software.
The newest clue that Apple wants to bring parts of the iOS to other devices is that the Safari 5.1 beta‘s new download manager appears to be quite a bit like the iOS download manager. While Safari has long been quite a bit like the Internet explorer download tab in which a new page pops up on the screen showing the download working, there is not a little icon that pops up on the upper right corner next to the search bar.
When the icon is clicked on a dropdown list of current and past downloads and when you click on a completed downloaded file it will open. If you click on the magnifying glass next to the download the finder will open and you can move the file to another part on the computer if you want to. This particular way of handling downloads mean that the download window doesn’t get lost when you have quite a few different windows open. It also makes it extremely easy to find where downloads have gone if for some reason you forget where you told the download to go.
