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Slowly we're being phased out of the internet

6 points by Entangled ↗ HN
I have a MacBook Air 2011 with Lion and Safari 6. Today Google released Meet and I can't even know what's that about, their web page won't even show me a welcome page showcasing the features with some cool pics or something, instead I get a blank page saying I am not welcome.

Sadly that same experience has been happening lately in every major website I visit, like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Medium. Sometimes I go to the Develop menu and change my user agent to Safari 7 and now they let me in, WTF? Am I welcome or not?

Some people would say I should upgrade my OS, and even if I would like to do that, my laptop only has 2GB RAM so it would be almost impossible to even open notepad without making it crawl to a halt, while right now from start up to the web it takes less than five seconds. So no, that's not an option, much less buying a new computer.

I am not saying the world should stop progress to accommodate our needs, or that everybody should feel compassionate for poor, insane and plain dumb people like me, I just say it is hard to accept that a perfectly fine computer no longer has access to the modern internet.

We're being phased out, and that's definitely a sad feeling.

4 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] thread
informatimago
That said, there are still good web sites, you can browse them:

http://gnu.org http://fsf.org http://stallman.org http://gutenberg.org http://cliki.net http://informatimago.com

Perhaps there's a pattern in there...

Entangled
Hey, these pages open fine in my old browser and that's cool enough for me. As for the pattern… I need the help of some AI for I am slow at pattern recognition :D
sevensor
Not to mention this very site, which still works fine on my 2011 Thinkpad x120. That being said, I have the same feeling. I can run a modern web browser because I use Arch, but it's slow and my poor old thinkpad gets very hot when I try to view the internet. Sites I avoid: most news outlets, all social networking sites. Sites I visit: this site, aldaily.com, software project websites and documentation, various technical fora. There's still a good internet out there, I just can't participate in the mainstream internet on my old laptop.
Eridrus
You can use a browser that isn't tied to your OS version, either Chrome or Firefox should do.

Or you could blame Apple for an OS/browser that can't run on 2GB and laptops that you can't upgrade.

Sure, everyone could keep supporting Safari 6, but there's a real cost to that and it will only keep getting paid while there are enough Safari 6 users.