# Macintosh unfriendly



## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 9, 2002)

Is it just me, or are these boards incredibly unfriendly to Macintosh computers?

When I use my PC at home, or the IBMs at work hooked up to the microscopes, everything works fine.

When I use a Macintosh (as I am forced to most of the time at work), I have to manually dump my cache to get pages to update, and everything runs at about half speed.  When it doesn't just crash the browser, that is.

I've tried every setting and modification I can think of (and I'm reasonably compu-savvy).

Is there something I'm missing?


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## Morrus (Oct 9, 2002)

I've heard similar things from other Mac users.  

The best way to get something done about it is to head over to www.vbulletin.com and harass the developers of the software; with luck the next version of vBulletin will be more Mac friendly.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 9, 2002)

As long as it's not just me.

Oh, well.  The discouragement from posting at work is probably a good thing, anyway.

Thanks


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## MeepoTheMighty (Oct 9, 2002)

You should be in your own anti-switch commercial.

"The best part about the Mac is how it can't load any webpages I want to read!  On a PC, all I have to do is click on a link, and voila, the page loads!  

My name is Canis, and I'm a gamer."


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 9, 2002)

LOL

Yeah, it's probably more irritating than it should be.  I'm supposed to be doing research and teaching and, incidently, learning about the brain.  NOT learning about a strange combination of the Book of Vile Darkness, new crunchy bits, and Dragongirl's relationship status.

But some days I just want to let the brain go hang.

btw- I could give you a litany of macintosh evils, the LEAST of which is their effect on my web sites and gaming.  I honestly believe that Macintosh's ridiculous market penetration in academia is responsible for SEVERELY slowing down scientific progress.

No B.S.  No facetiousness.  I am _dead_ serious about that.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 9, 2002)

Another thing...

I went to the website you mentioned, Morrus.  They're not exactly user friendly.  As far as I can tell, to get to an e-mail address to even send in a complaint, you have to be a registered owner of their software.  Yeah, that makes sense for a web production company.

I don't suppose anyone here has their e-mail address?  I'd be more than happy to send in a polite complaint.  Maybe we could even get a petition together signed by all the Mac users on the boards (and those PC users like myself, who while they would rather chop off their own leg with a chainsaw than use a Mac, are forced to at times by the ridiculous circumstances of their job.)


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## Quartermoon (Oct 10, 2002)

Canis said:
			
		

> *those PC users like myself, who while they would rather chop off their own leg with a chainsaw than use a Mac, are forced to at times by the ridiculous circumstances of their job. *



Wow.  Nice to hear that we Mac lovers are not the only ones forced into such situations by work machines!  

A petition sounds like a good idea, if someone can get an address.


Edit:  What about this?

"General Inquiries

For all other queries (business development, general comments, suggestions or feedback) please send email to info@vbulletin.com."


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 10, 2002)

I'm almost tempted to ask how you found that.  But on second thought, it will probably make me feel dim.

Any thoughts on how to draw the attention of others on the boards who, for one reason or another, find themselves using Macs?


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## Quartermoon (Oct 11, 2002)

What OS version are you using, and what browser?  A guy from vBulletin has replied to me, and I want to give him more info.

I guess posting on the General Discusion page is a no no, huh.  Maybe change the subject line to "Page Refresh--Mac Users Help" or something to get more people to check this out.

I'll let you know what he says...


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 11, 2002)

Hmmm.  I didn't get a reply yet.  Maybe they're a little backlogged or something.

Anyway, O.S. 9.0.4

Internet Explorer (5.0) is buggier with the non-refresh issues and slowness and such.

Netscape (Communicator 4.7) just crashes a lot, but I'm not sure if that's vBulletin or just Netscape (worst browser, EVER)

I've been considering grabbing a copy of Mozilla, so if he recommends that, I'll jump on it.


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## beta-ray (Oct 12, 2002)

Well I am a Mac user by choice..

I too have noticed that I get several errors. This only started to happen recently as the new format was adopted. I get a lot of java language errors.


I remember very slow load times when the last reformat happened too. Oh well. The price of living in a windows world.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 12, 2002)

beta-ray said:
			
		

> *Well I am a Mac user by choice..*




Sorry about the rant.  If it bothered you, I didn't mean to imply that PCs were superior in all respects.  There are a number of things Macs do better, graphics being a big one.  But for my field, they just don't make much sense, but people insist on using them because that's what they "grew up on" academically.  It rubs my pragmatism the wrong way.  

Anyway, if you're still around Quartermoon, add the java errors to the list o' bugs.  I had almost forgotten about them.  I still haven't heard back from vBulletin, myself.  Maybe I'll send another message if I don't hear anything Monday.


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## Femerus the Gnecro (Oct 12, 2002)

Canis said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Sorry about the rant.  If it bothered you, I didn't mean to imply that PCs were superior in all respects.  There are a number of things Macs do better, graphics being a big one.  But for my field, they just don't make much sense, but people insist on using them because that's what they "grew up on" academically.  It rubs my pragmatism the wrong way.
> 
> Anyway, if you're still around Quartermoon, add the java errors to the list o' bugs.  I had almost forgotten about them.  I still haven't heard back from vBulletin, myself.  Maybe I'll send another message if I don't hear anything Monday. *




As another mac user, I'll accept your apology on behalf of us all 

Seriously though, I prefer to have a two computer household, so I can game on my pc and do everything else on my mac.

-F


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## Danzilla (Oct 12, 2002)

hi, my name is Dan and I’m  MAC USER.....



and yes I do have the same problems with pages refreshing....at home and at work...

and I had the java error message popups happening quite a bit for a while...I think it was the news ticker and since I’ve turned it off I ahven’t had that problem...and insteresting sidenote to that was reading through some of the java error popups I noticed some decidedly porn sounding references and links...

not a prude or anything but it was popping up on my work computer and things like that always make me skittish...hard enough explaining the hobby/habit (hobbit?) I can’t even ignore while creating ads all day...

What’s that, why is there a dragon image in your ad...?

I thought it would sell spaghetti better...

Danzilla


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## beta-ray (Oct 13, 2002)

BTW Canis... It didn't bother me... much  

Again it's my choice.


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## Zappo (Oct 13, 2002)

Canis said:
			
		

> *Netscape (Communicator 4.7) just crashes a lot, but I'm not sure if that's vBulletin or just Netscape (worst browser, EVER)*



4.7 is no longer supported; the current version is 7.0. Because of this, the number of sites that won't work with 4.7 is constantly increasing, of course. Mozilla/Netscape 7 (they're basically the same) display the boards perfectly both on Windows and Linux; don't know about Mac, but I guess it should be the same.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 13, 2002)

Not to be argumentative, but...

1) Netscape 4.7 crashed every 4 minutes when it WAS supported.

2) I'm assuming Mozilla doesn't have all the Netscape brand crap attached to it, making it much more attractive to those of us who hate software bloat (also the reason I'm considering dumping IE).

3) ALL my browsers have _always_ run fine under Windows and Linux, even ones that weren't designed for it, or are bloated beyond recognition.  Only on Macs does it become a problem.


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## Quartermoon (Oct 17, 2002)

You can see and I believe participate in my conversation with vBulletin support by going to this place:

http://www.vbulletin.com/contact/issue.php?issueid=21365&authcode=7ccea0ee

Also, by threads above (http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27808) I am thinking this problem is more widespread (and sneakily vague) that I first thought.

Interestingly enough, I occasionally have java errors/crashes myself, but never on this site!  :/  But I always thought that was a browser version problem...if I ever get the tie to upgate Netscape, maybe it will go away.


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## Kesh (Oct 19, 2002)

Canis said:
			
		

> *Not to be argumentative, but...
> 
> 1) Netscape 4.7 crashed every 4 minutes when it WAS supported.
> 
> ...




For 1 & 2, Netscape has always been buggy, yes. Mozilla is _slightly_ less bloated than Netscape, but not much.

One thing you'll find is that many websites use code that violates HTML standards. Netscape and IE understand the bad code, and should display it properly... but not always.

If you have a system that supports it, upgrade to MacOS 10.2 and you'll be much happier. There's a program called Chimera, which is essentially a slimmed-down verison of Mozilla. It's fast, stable (for a 0.5 beta!) and has no trouble whatsoever with ENWorld.  Plus you get the stability of OS X and plenty of other nice abilites that OS 9 lacks.

If you can't get to OS X, then I suggest you at least upgrade to 9.2.2 and grab the latest Mozilla available for it. That'll be the best combination of stability and proper web features.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Oct 24, 2002)

Having installed Mozilla on the Mac at work, I can tell anyone who's interested that it doesn't suffer any of the java and updating problems so far.  Granted, it's only been 4 days, and a good chunk of that time the boards weren't available for testing purposes.

But still, it's a vast improvement over IE and Netscape.


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