> Off topic warning! > >>> Exactly why would anyone expect Apple to still support seven-year-old >>> machines? >> >> To most people, the web is a utility. Until the digital switch two years >> ago, a TV that was 50 years old would still receive contemporary shows fine >> (modulo color, of course, but the image and audio were still perfectly >> legible), and even the digital switch required only a $20 add-on >> "accelerator" to keep the old set serving well. I have 50-year-old dial >> telephones that continue to serve me fine every day, and a 50-plus-year-old >> radio that still receives radio broadcasts. Heck, email clients that work >> the same way they worked 20 years ago still process email just fine. >> >> The difference is, the web is being treated as something that exists to >> benefit the ego of the information provider, instead of the convenience of >> the consumer. > > Off topic warning! > > The difference is amount of complexity and it in turn comes from information > handling. You choosed an example very well suited to enlight this. The > relative complex internet conected computer is so complex compared to the TV > that it acctually incorporates it as a small but very important part of it's > design. A part that isn't considered nearly as complex as the parts handling > the digital information. A hint, compare the number of transistors in a > computer to the number of components of all sorts together in a TV. > > The attitude towards what goes on web sites and not is reflecting this > complexity. We are intuitively accepting more faults were things are more > complex and also when it is new unproven ground. It is actually rational to > accept more faults were the underlying stuff is complex and here it is a show > case for the amazing stuff we can do today. > > You can take the evolution of life as a good comparison. It was not until the > processing of information got a more important roll things escalated and put > as on a good lead over the rest. And we got here relatively fast and we would > have to learn a lot from scratch if we were beamed just 1000 years back in > time. We are not compatible with the life from the past one could say.
<Warning ... don flame retardant suit now> The world wide web's primary function is to display pages of text and graphics, with hyperlinks. That was HTML 1. It works, and works amazingly well. Since then, there have been a very few basic changes: 1. Scripts, to move some processing and checking of input to the client. It is possible to test for scripts being available. Even if they are not, you still process all input on the server. You always have to test inputs on the server -- you never trust a client. 2. Formatting improvements. However, even without CSS support on the client, you can still write pages that look OK, and better with CSS. 3. Tables. Forms with multiple "submit" fields. Aka HTML 2. Somehow, the idea of "web application" and "general web page" got merged somewhere. While web applications won't run well without good javascript support and an HTML 4 client, very few web pages need web application support. Lots and LOTS of pages are written for it, because a lot of web authoring tools basically assume "lots of CPU, modern browser, so lets be fancy and do things we don't really need to, but can." There is no good reason -- NONE -- that 95% of the web won't run just fine on a 68040 system with 8 MB of memory, table-based layout, and no scripting or CSS in the client. (Ok, so the first table-based HTML 2 browser was slow, that got fixed later.) There are a lot of crappy pages that insist "Oh, I need to use scripting on your end to generate advertisement loading, because I won't use server cycles to modify the page I send you to have ads". Or "I need to use scripting on your end to track and bill for the ads I send you". Etc. There are a lot of crappy pages that insist "Oh, everyone has CSS, so I'll do lots of things in CSS to override all your system settings. After all, what looks good to me on my monitor will look good to you on your monitor". What did we have back in 2000? Windows NT and Windows 98, both of which I believe ran relatively modern browsers -- well past the HTML 2 barebones stage. Any of those should be just fine, if people wrote pages properly. Is there any reason that a 7 year old machine should not be supported? NONE. A 7 year old machine should run the web just fine. A 7 year old machine should still get OS updates. If the official opinion is that the hardware cannot support new OS's, then the last available OS should be open sourced so people can maintain/fix it on their own. The idea of saying, "We know this software is released with bugs. We will stop fixing those bugs at some point. You are buying a box that will become broken, by design, no matter what you do, and you will have to upgrade your hardware box in 3-7 years" is bogus. No other industry is allowed to produce devices that don't work and are designed to break so quickly. Something about consumer protection laws. What are reasons to upgrade? 1. Newer machines using less energy. 2. Newer machines not using a fan, or being quieter. Once I've got a quiet machine, that works well, and fast enough? It won't get slower, louder, or hotter with time, so why upgrade? Oh yea, software feature rot/creep. "Beware the creep! Beware the zerg :-)." So, you have bad pages out there, because of bad page authoring tools, and servers that rely on client scripting/cycles to work because they won't check things server-side like they need to. Right? Grumble grumble grumble. The web / modern browsers need the concept of a "web application mode"; when not in this mode, what can be done with scripts and CSS is highly restricted to protect the browser/computer (basically restoring the read only / form submit only system), and very few sites wanting or needing "web application mode". </em takes off the flame suit now.> _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
