Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Microsoft Retiring Older Versions of Skype for Mac
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Cool, thanks, getting there. One more thing - how to access things like the history in that case?You can just drag that aside if you want though and it vanishes. Then enable "open chats in new window" and the sidebar never reappears.(ergo there is no giant main window anymore)
Image
You know what, I could see that happening if everyone I knew had an iPhone. Using iMessage is way more convenient than pulling your phone out every time someone texts you, and a lot of people have abandoned every form of communication except texting.
I guess I fell out of the loop being a T-Mobile customer! Because texting was at least $5/mo extra, I never bothered adding it on. When I first got a smartphone, google voice was good enough for me. Except it wasn't, and really, nobody texts me. I've also never picked up the "here, have my phone number so we can be texting buddies!" reflex that it seems like a lot of people have.
So I might be a little bit of a luddite lol.
I don't use Skype and don't know anyone who uses it so it's a null issue for me. Don't know why people whine so much. I mean like anything else tech things are bound to get out dated. Would be like me getting mad because Microsoft didn't support windows 98 lol.
I think it's a trend in society towards extremism in all facets of life. People are becoming less and less tolerant towards others ideas, choices and beliefs whether it be religions trying to cram their beliefs down your throat (from trying to deny birth control to people that don't share your beliefs to the extreme of cutting people's heads off in the Middle East that don't believe in Sharia law), gun control people trying to take your guns away and the other side trying to turn the country into the wild west (two extremes) or allowing you to choose how your own desktop looks on a Mac. It's all symptoms of the "do it MY way, *not* YOUR way". Might makes right.
Intolerance, in all its ugliness keeps rearing its head over the ages. People simply can't stand other people disagreeing with them. They have to be right, all the time. The consequences are wide and far reaching in every aspect of life. Steve Jobs wanted every Mac user's desktop to look pretty much like his. The word "option" wasn't in his vocabulary. He pretty much said he didn't want user feedback. He wanted his "vision". Well, there you go. I'M right. I'M a prophet. I'M important. I'M special. I'M the center of the Universe. (While everyone else is nothing.) I think social tools like Twitter and Facebook with all the "friends" and "likes" have insulated people even MORE over the past decade, making people feel like they're the center of their own little Universe and they forget their place among BILLIONS of other people who all are starting to think the same way as well. Extremism will only get worse if trends continue.
I've always used the NOIA theme across all platforms to get a consistently nice look whether I'm using a Mac, PC or Linux box. It seems the author has gotten sick of the Mozilla folk constantly and unendingly doing every thing they can to screw developers over for add-ons as they BREAK them 2-3x a year, causing all add-on developers to have to go back and do a lot of work to get them working again or just quit. I've seen other software do similar things where the core team doesn't give a crap what effect their actions have on everyone else. It's a symptom of the above, once again. MY way or nothing My vision or nothing. He did post one last update that got it working again for 29/30. With the addition of Classic Theme Restoring, Setting Sanity and an update to ForecastFox, my browser now looks exactly like it did before they screwed with it in V29 (i.e. tabs are below the quick bar where I like it, not at the top like Chrome, the Add-on bar is back with Forecast Fox back at the bottom right where I like it, etc.). All those things Firefox tried to make me use something that looks like Chrome. If I wanted Chrome, I would get Chrome. Firefox always advdertised themes for customization, but they keep BREAKING THEM, so what good are they if they don't work? Firefox may be their full time job, but most add-on people are just doing it for a hobby and don't have time to constantly fix what they break and they break it CONSTANTLY and updates happen more and more often, making it hard to get a nice STABLE version as well.
We see that with Apple as well. The OS just settles down with Mountain Lion being all nice and then Mavericks comes out and breaks it. They're just starting to get things fixed in Mavericks and Yosemite will come out and break new stuff! The cycles are too fast and don't allow for stability for new features and with Apple they expect everyone to update immediately and so support gets dumped for older OS versions (especially iOS versions) very fast.
I sure as hell don't want Firefox to be Chrome also. You see similar trends in automobiles where everyone copies each other until all the cars look so similar, it hardly matters which one you buy. It's kind of the group/mob mentality side effect of the total conformity push above. Everyone is buying Ford Fusions, so let's make our car look like it.... Hell, bring back car fins! At least they LOOK DIFFERENT!
Exactly. I don't know what they were thinking. Now I need to get a theme if I want to make it look like Firefox. The super-minimalistic Chrome theme with the extra-trapezoidal tabs makes it harder to use unless you're used to it. I was more annoyed that the interface on it was noticeably laggy on slow computers, while FF 28 was not.
Most of the things were, as you said, because the software makers had to go to the extreme side and ignore their users, but some of them were just less stable than earlier versions. Mavericks was often unresponsive on my computer, my brother's '09 MBP (fresh installation), my friend's '10 MBP (fresh installation), and especially on my mom's '11 iMac (since the OS got corrupted). The minimum RAM requirement seems to have doubled. It was the first time I had ever had performance problems with Mac OS X, and it came with the most recurring crashes. loginwindow would die every week or so and log me out without saving anything. Really irritating when it does that as I'm writing server code in C. I have since then downgraded my Mac and my brother's to Mountain Lion and now have no problems.
And also the new versions of LinuxMint and other Linux-based OSs lag on slow computers that used to run them fine. The stupid Cinnamon toolbar, basically a regular one but black and laggy. I know because my brother was doing some e-waste computer resurrection thing for community service and must have installed LinuxMint or Ubuntu on about 14 different PCs. Plus Ubuntu has that weirdo interface.
Last edited:
Isn't it amazing that word processors could run just fine on a Commodore 64 with 64k of memory and WYSIWYG ones ran fine on a Commodore Amiga with 1 Meg of ram. WTF do general purpose computers today require 8GB of memory just to run the operating system??? It makes no sense. The CPUs are supposed to be more efficient and faster and yet what is with the memory sucking? I'm STILL just running the same basic programs, email, browsers, iTunes and a few other things 80% of the time and yet they ran fine with 1GB of memory just a few OS versions ago. I do NOT see ANY features that would justify needing 4-8x the memory. I must have missed something. Having more memory for MY benefit is one thing. NEEDING more memory because programmers have become LAZY is quite another. Imagine what you could do with resources if you didn't need them just to get by. Saying "it's cheap" now is just an excuse, IMO. I can see more specs for better games ,etc. But for a word processor, email and browser? Web Sites have gotten SO BLOATED it's ridiculous. I used to get by with a dial-up connection once upon a time. Now I need 3x a T1 line just to load a damn web site that STILL takes 30+ seconds to load with a QUAD i7 and a 15Mbit connection! RIDICULOUS.
I'd rather have TEXT based web sites that load instantly than a lot of complicated BS that just ends up getting hijacked by hackers anyway (i.e. flash, Java, etc.) all just so they can SPY on you and shove ads in your face every which way but loose while sites like Facebook, etc. steal your ideas and posts since once you post it on their web site it generally becomes THEIR PROPERTY, NOT YOURS even though you made it. People just let these companies STEAL their stuff all the time. It's unbelievable. DON'T JOIN THEM, I tell my friends. No, no, they HAVE to keep in touch. They don't want to meet up or use a phone. They want to text and post crap on Facebook. My god, what a racket. I've never joined it and I never will (Twitter either). F-those social sites. They're all up to no good and making money of you and you get nothing.
Doesn't matter - he/she is right.
The internet was useful in about 2001, since then all the useful stuff as been dumbed down - once upon a time Google did search well - it actually searched for what you wanted - now it assumes I can't spell and auto-incorrects me, then we have social media - i.e. stupid people telling other stupid people stupid things.
BTW - from one of your earlier posts - I'm still on ML cos Apple has removed local wifi sync from iTunes and I don't do 'the cloud'.
Attachments
Doesn't matter - he/she is right.
The internet was useful in about 2001, since then all the useful stuff as been dumbed down - once upon a time Google did search well - it actually searched for what you wanted - now it assumes I can't spell and auto-incorrects me, then we have social media - i.e. stupid people telling other stupid people stupid things.
BTW - from one of your earlier posts - I'm still on ML cos Apple has removed local wifi sync from iTunes and I don't do 'the cloud'.
Are you going to have a decent experience on the dumbphone for the things you can do on a smartphone? Go ahead, play decent games on it or have a decent web experience on it. Also, autocorrect can be turned off on an iPhone.
http://m.wikihow.com/Disable-Autocorrect-on-an-iPhone/iPod-Touch
Yes, you will need more updates on a more sophisticated phone. If you don't like that, you can still buy a dumbphone.
What he said isn't true, really. He might not need the new features, but there have been vast improvements between Commodore 64 and today in terms of Word Processors. It's obvious he's engaging in hyperbole at times.
Last edited:
Of course there is some hyperbole, but for me WordPerfect 5.1 did all I need a word processor to do, as for the dumb phone / smartphone thing, I have mSecure, MacJournal and Things on my iPhone, but I still mainly use it for making phone calls and for that my dumb phones are better - they did seem to drop a lot less calls.
I only upgraded to an iPhone when Apple stopped me using iSync - my laptop died and the new one couldn't run the older OS to allow iSync. I get the feeling that there seems to be a large market for people sitting on public transport for an hour or more each way going to work and back and for them a smartphone/tablet/phablet whatever is really useful, but seriously, most the 'progress' of the last 13 years has been irrelevant.
In 1999/2000 I had a Psion 5mx and Ericsson SH888, so I had email, SMS, web browser, contacts sync, calendar sync, word, excel and phone - my iPhone does about the same but the Psion ran for 30 days before needing new batteries and the SH888 would do a week, the iPhone is quicker and in colour but needs recharging every day - not much progress !
I didn't mean Google search on iPhone, I meant Google corrects my requests if I ask for something that is spelled similar to more mainstream stuff
Just your use of the non-word "dumbphone" speaks volumes. You try to compare my mention of a C64 being able to word process (yes, it's a very different interface, but the end results can be just as good for basic letter/paper writing. I know since I did all my middle and high school papers with it (yes I'm getting close to 40, but I'm not there yet). I had cursive fonts and all kinds of stuff I don't even see in current word processors these days. The POINT is that the end result (typing a paper) WORKED then and it worked later with the WYSIWYG ones (I had ProWrite on the Amiga and for what I typed (college papers), it worked beautifully. What was I missing from Word 2013 that I "needed" so badly?
I then mentioned WYSIWYG word processor development and moved forward to a few years ago to make comparisons. You have the NERVE to say I don't know the difference between the word processors? I *USED THEM ALL DUDE*! I had Office 1999 (Windows), Office 2004 (PPC), Office 2013 (current Mac) and other versions at work. Your arrogance is unbelievable for someone that strikes me as a teenager or early '20s and apparently think you know everything.
When you get on the Internet you are generally looking for INFORMATION. Well, let me tell you that information doesn't need Flash and it doesn't need HTML5 and it doesn't need butt loads of adware and tracking cookies. All those things are designed to either attract attention or generate money for someone. They're not there to give you the article you wanted to read military drones. That's just TEXT with a picture or two added. That could be done easily in 1994, but even back then they wasted bandwidth with needless crap. I designed my own web sites (I ran an audiophile review site back in 1996-2004 and I regularly got praise how FAST it loaded and yet looked good and presented information wisely. It could load pages in seconds on a modem for reviews. No ads. No garbage. No unneeded animations that do NOTHING for you getting the information you want to read faster. Try loading an article on Lady Gaga or whatever on today's sites. They throw 100 more articles and ads and other things to click on the sides of the page plus social links, etc. all which take TIME and BANDWIDTH to load and have NOTHING to do with the article you wanted to see/read.
A first generation iPhone/iPod Touch is near worthless for surfing the Web already because of all the extra crap these sites try to load, NONE of which EVER have ANYTHING to do with the information I'm trying to look up. Why do I still have a 1st Gen Touch? Because it still works and makes a nice remote control for my whole house audio/video system. But it's almost worthless as a web browser unless you like sitting there for 5 minutes to load something that would take seconds on a brand new computer. The problem is a computer that is a few years old also takes a long time to load web pages. WEB PAGES. They're not a top of the line 3D Game. They're BLOATED. All software has become more and more bloated and THAT is my point with the old computer comparisons. Obviously, the new software is "better" in many respects, but it's also far more bloated than it needs to be. Even so, you don't need a quad-i7 to do email and browse. So they're busy trying to make things use those features with more extra unneeded crap so they can sell you next year's model.
My points about memory usage in OSX are spot-on whether you believe it or not. I do not see enough new features to justify 4-8x the amount of RAM needed from Snow Leopard just a few years ago. But you go on believing whatever nonsense you obviously believe about great experiences on the web with a phone. Personally, I use a smart phone to get on the web when in a pinch, but it's not enjoyable compared to a nice 28" monitor with a full mouse and keyboard. Typing with my thumbs is not enjoyable when I can type over 100 WPM on a full keyboard without worrying about needed joint surgery in a half-decade (as many kids today are needing from constant texting).
If you don't need it, go back to using a commodore. Heck George RR Martin uses WordStar on DOS.
You seem to have this air of self-importance around you. Calm down and back away from the keyboard. It's going to be fine. I could explain to you all of the big changes and why they take up more resources, but it's not likely to be paid attention to anyway.
Edit: By the way, using them doesn't imply that you fully grasp the importance of the changes that have been made. Aside from the UI changes, the ever increasing dictionary, the plethora of features, and the increased number of fonts, there are security features that are added to each and every Word release. These are obviously increases in the size of the code, which makes it bigger, which makes it need more resources.
Comparing Snow Leopard to Mavericks also requires a look at the features of each, as well as a look at the components that make up each release. I could look at just the Open Source components and realize that they've gotten bigger (and thus made OS X bigger). Once again, bug fixing and security features, as well as other features, bring about more code which bring about more resources used.
Last edited:
Sometimes I agree with MagnusVonMagnum, sometimes I don't.
But I'll tell you one thing. When you see one of his posts, you don't just read it...
...you sit some time aside, and commit to it.
I'd rather just read a post, not a novel, and get a quicker answer. I don't have the ability to commit.
Last edited:
I'd rather just read a post, not a novel, and get a quicker answer. I don't have the ability to commit.
Usually I'm like "hey, MagnusVonMagnum posted". Then I'll go downstairs, grab a drink, maybe make a sandwich, come back to the computer room, prop up my feet, and make an evening of it.
You aren't affected by he issue not even really grasp it becuse of that essentially, and yet feel you can draw a meaningful comparison to something (which it wasn't actually). "lol" indeed.
This is for the NSA
In order to keep America safe from the terrorists, you are all required to upgrade to this back-doored version of Skype. Yes, the NSA needs to track you and me in order to catch terrorists. Don't ask me why, General Alexander does not have a better way.
Use an open source alternative that you can trust if you don't like this.
In order to keep America safe from the terrorists, you are all required to upgrade to this back-doored version of Skype. Yes, the NSA needs to track you and me in order to catch terrorists. Don't ask me why, General Alexander does not have a better way.
Use an open source alternative that you can trust if you don't like this.
I'd rather just read a post, not a novel, and get a quicker answer. I don't have the ability to commit.
Hence why the current generation can't read; if anything consists of more than 140 characters then they don't have the attention span to comprehend it.