MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

May 07, 08 - 11:13 am Comment from: Ampar

I didn't realize AOL was still around.

May 07, 08 - 11:16 am Comment from: Mac Plus

AOL???? who cares?

Some people have been waiting for that day since the last 15 years... to the point AOL doesn't represent anything on the web scene nowadays

Ummmm......NO THANKS!!

May 07, 08 - 11:22 am Comment from: cptnkirk

Gone are the days when people need training wheels on their internet experience.

AOL was of some value back in the days before public internet access but, like M$, the internet has greatly passed them by.

May 07, 08 - 11:25 am Comment from: The Other Steve

My sister will be happy. The last (non beta) version of AOL was completely unusable. Not to mention unsupported by AOL. I was uneasy having her use the beta version but we had no choice.

This is very late for Mac users but welcome.

May 07, 08 - 11:33 am Comment from: Cubert

Great! Now we can hear, "you've got mail", ad nauseum.

in the words of Matt Foley:
" Well la-de-frickin'-da!"

CompuServe and Prodigy also released web clients this week. They now support 256 colors.

Why would I voluntarily put spyware on my Macs?

Yay! - I can't decide which one to install first! AOawfuL or Microsuck Office.

"Leopard-ready for your new Mac" as it slows it to a crawl.

Another big flop in the making.

No thank you.

May 07, 08 - 11:58 am Comment from: Macintosh

Gone are the days of AOL... I used it back in 94' when it was dial-up, and basically considered the internet. I hardly used the web browser for anything, as there were hardly any websites worth looking at. They charged a few bucks per hour after you passed a certain amount of hours, kinda like a cell phone nowdays.

The best part was when it had trouble connecting, I would call tech support and they would ask me to hold the phone next to the modem so they could listen to the fax-like sounds it was making.

Or when your modem would call a long distance number to connect and my phone bill would be an extra $100 or so.

Awesome.

May 07, 08 - 11:59 am Comment from: Ampar

"CompuServe and Prodigy also released web clients this week."

I'll stick with GEnie, thanks. This 300 baud modem may need an upgrade though. It's hard to tell if these line by line images are worth downloading until I get past the shoulders.

AOL... DOA? Now there's a target for Ballmer. Just think... you can get your face on the cover of Time every time ... with full editorial control.

May 07, 08 - 12:12 pm Comment from: Macintosh

eWorld... Nuf' said.

May 07, 08 - 12:16 pm Comment from: Tommyr

AOL??? ROTFLMAO! You're killing me!

I just downloaded and installed the new AOL and I have to admit for a novice user it's pretty nice. It's decently fast and very easy to understand. For a lot of people, especially older people, AOL is the only way to surf the web and it's refreshing to see AOL make a strong attempt to win over Mac users. I sell Macs for a living and I can now honestly tell customers that say AOL is a must for them that they'll be happy with AOL for the Mac.

May 07, 08 - 12:29 pm Comment from: LateRegistrant

Not much point in upgrading if I still can't screen dump to my ImageWriter.

I'm not from the US so pardon me for asking this: why is this news? What's so important with AOL Desktop?

May 07, 08 - 12:53 pm Comment from: jonahan

From the screenshots it just looks like safari/mail and ichat running. Jeeze where do they come up with their ideas?

May 07, 08 - 12:54 pm Comment from: Uncle Al

I'll stick with Apple's own eWorld, thank you very much.

May 07, 08 - 12:55 pm Comment from: Uncle Al

And…I'll read the previous posts more carefully. Sorry Macintosh.

"AOL has released Desktop for Mac ..."

Oh, give it up.

One would have thought AOL had seen the pointlessness of trying to trap the public in its walled garden by now and had given up writing software. The shareholders should be asking questions, if they still are. Someone's wasting their money hand-over-fist on schemes that will not work

May 07, 08 - 01:30 pm Comment from: macmyke

HUH, what for? no thank you

Okay, so no one's big on AOL or AIM, but iChat runs the AIM standard. What good are all the built-in cameras on iMacs and MacBooks unless you convince your friends and family who are also using Macs to fork over for a .Mac account? The option for Windows users to at least attempt to video chat so we can use iChat is for them to sign up and use AIM.
Does anyone have a better solution?

May 07, 08 - 01:33 pm Comment from: Ampar

"What's so important with AOL Desktop?"

It's another prop to distract owners of TWX from the futility and inevitability of AOL's future already obvious to most of the rest of the world.

May 07, 08 - 01:33 pm Comment from: Think

For some people that wanted to have tight control over young kids, it was great in the day. Now Apple has great parental controls in the OS, so this is almost not needed any more.

@jonohan

"From the screenshots it just looks like safari/mail and ichat running."

I can only see a single, tiny screenshot:

http://www.aolcdn.com/ch_daol/desktop-for-mac_980.jpg

But I may be missing some content. I'm running Firefox with NoScript right now, and while I've temporarily allowed aol.com, NoScript is telling me the page is also using:

aolhat.com
aolcdn.com

and

yieldmanager.com

AOL could be supplying further content that I can't see via JavaScript from one of those domains.

I've also got page content disappearing under a brown bar at the bottom of the page, as if there's something to scroll to, but nothing to scroll with. Maybe that's down to scripted content, too -- maybe the page is partly built with JavaScript and doesn't "degrade gracefully" when scripts are off.

@ Apple Cider

"Does anyone have a better solution?"

Sure. Get those Windows users to use Trillian or Pidgin or any one of a number of multi-protocol chat clients.

Even better get 'em to use JABBER. It's an open XML-based protocol. Apple iChat understands it, and so will any decent chat client on Windows. Google uses it, too; so it has backing from at least one big player.

Here you go -- excellent article.

The The What and Why of Open IM:

http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1155867

May 07, 08 - 01:53 pm Comment from: Ampar

"For some people that wanted to have tight control over young kids, it was great in the day."

Strong rope and lots of Barney DVDs?

May 07, 08 - 02:14 pm Comment from: El Guapo

Sounds like they're bringing back Netscape Communicator. Remember version 4.7? It had everything. Those were the days!

May 07, 08 - 02:57 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

Two things come to mind when I think of AOL:

1. People still use AOL?

2. Anger--For the way they screwed me and continued to charge their monthly fees to my credit card for over a year after I cancelled their service, and for the way that for several years, I couldn't go anywhere without being attacked by those stupid discs!

May 07, 08 - 03:15 pm Comment from: rasterbator

Right on, Ampar. I miss those days… signing in, the roar of the modem, and the five minutes of icon updates before I can actually view my AOL home page or "gotmail".

May 07, 08 - 03:25 pm Comment from: alansky

Crap + crap = More Crap

Strictly for those who can't bear the thought of freeing themselves from AOHell.

May 07, 08 - 03:42 pm Comment from: Ampar

To rasterbator: I had my three initials plus @aol.com for an e-mail address. Over the years, several people offered to buy it from me when they had to settle for something like . I'm not sure if that was even possible. I was also a frequent beta tester for the AOL Mac team in the early years. Then, AOL got really old and tiresome (like random and unannounced TOS changes?) when the actual internet got more interesting. I remember logging in to the bombardment of artwork and icon updates. And random disconnects.