I Hate the Modern Web

[B S Magnet]

Mmmm, scrapple porridge! 😋

Be aware! Scrapple porridge is cold, it is unseasoned, and it is indiscriminate in its contents! It could even be comprised on the off days of soylent green. It’s a simple cell protein with amino acids. It has everything the abrogator’s body needs, even if it’s usually like eating a runny bowl of snot.

 

[TheShortTimer]

To be fair I didn't miss it. I was replying to the global state of the thread. I agree with you.

Fair enough.

Boycotting websites is perfectly feasible unless there's a monopoly.

At the same time, a boycott can create the opportunity for alternatives to emerge which will break a monopoly.

As for TFL, worth using the TFL app instead or the popular "Bus Times" app if you use the bus. The web site is horrible and always has been so anything that leverages the background feeds is somewhat better.

TFL is actually the canonical example of my point. The app is a better tool for that kind of utility.

Ah, my phone is jam-packed and cannot accommodate any further apps - hence my reliance on the TFL site when indoors. I actually find the low-tech method of sending an SMS to TFL requesting the bus times on my street and for bus stops in general to be fast and simple. My network contract provides unlimited SMS' so that's a perfect solution for me.

“Adult Entertainment” is a thing because there’s demand for it.

A huge demand: the viewership outstrips that of Twitter, Amazon and Netflix combined with a net worth of $97bn.

I think this ship has long sailed.

Apple used to be the disruptor. To some extent they still are, because that culture was built into their corporate image. But at a certain point they became simply a business, like all businesses eventually do.

Yeah, the mavericks became the conformists.

From this:

To this, within just over ten years:

Yes, they still do some things better and they still have some vision. But, where people run into problems is that they think Apple's vision is for the customer. It's not. It's for Apple and it's designed to sell them more product.

I've observed for several years that Apple nowadays is selling consumer electronics products as seasonal lifestyle accessories and fashion pieces - their modus operandi is closer to that of Louis Vuitton, Nike or Prada than a computer company.

You know those kinds of people who always used to say a thing and then time passed and they don't say it anymore? It's because things changed. And they don't want you or others to remind them about what they used to say. That's Apple now. They aren't mentioning the things they mentioned in the past because they can't stand behind them anymore.

The Charles Foster Kane of the computer world...

Look at Starbucks. Back in the 90s people went there not only for the coffee, but the experience. Some people, such as myself, drove 45 minutes just to get to the few stores that existed then. It was good coffee.

What now? They are on every corner and the only thing Starbucks has is speed and consistency. Do you go to their stores for a good to great cup of coffee and good atmosphere? No. They have become the McDonalds of coffee.

Good analogy. Personally I find a better atmosphere when I visit independent places. To expand, I'm ever reminded of Andy Rooney's 30 year old critique of the retail and service sectors which force poorly paid and poorly treated employees to wear fake smiles when really they've got little to smile about.

Again, that's Apple. What Apple still has and they are trading on, is that past reputation. Eventually they will run out and people are going to realize that Apple is just another device/computer company.

Many of us within this forum and its companion piece - the Early Intel Macs forum have come to this realisation.

 

[B S Magnet]

Many of us within this forum and its companion piece - the Early Intel Macs forum have come to this realisation.

Careful! Arn might shut us all down! D:

 

[antiprotest]

My pet peeve has to do with web sites that interrupts your audio, not just once, but every several seconds, possibly for tracking purposes. CNET is one example. On the iPhone or iPad, you can't really listen to music or play YouTube in the background and browse the site.

 

[eyoungren]

I was going to text the shortcode, but then I thought about it. It would seem that shortcodes can be country specific. So…if I do that, it doesn't go through, but my carrier charges me for an international SMS anyway.

On second thought…

Good analogy. Personally I find a better atmosphere when I visit independent places. To expand, I'm ever reminded of Andy Rooney's 30 year old critique of the retail and service sectors which force poorly paid and poorly treated employees to wear fake smiles when really they've got little to smile about.

Yes, that seems to be the way of it. In 2016, SB had a rewards program change I didn't agree with, so we found an independent store. That was great, they serve good coffee there (and crepes). But eventually they were expanding such that it got to be standing room only. Have not been back in quite some time.

They opened a second store a couple of years ago, but the one closest to my house still seems to be very busy so we still have not gone back.

But yes, lots of people go to McDonalds because they are hungry and they know what to expect. You aren't going there for a really good hamburger and fries. You get that somewhere else. Same thing.

It's unfortunate, there isn't much differentiation between Apple and PC makers now.

 

[B S Magnet]

But yes, lots of people go to McDonalds because they are hungry and they know what to expect. You aren't going there for a really good hamburger and fries. You get that somewhere else. Same thing.

McDonald’s sell you a guaranteed number of calories with a guaranteed list of ingredients, at a reasomably fast turnaround. Which is really helpful to know when one is on the go. And McDonald’s know this, too.

In Canada, our analogue to this is the Tim Hortons coffee: no matter where one is, and no matter what kind of water is available locally, that double-double you get will taste the exact same no matter what! (Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Starbucks or Second Cup Coffee.)

It's unfortunate, there isn't much differentiation between Apple and PC makers now.

No, there isn’t. You get an appliance and you will like it, or you will not buy it.

 

[B S Magnet]

Very cute. Thanks for the laugh.

A girl can dream…

 

[Brandon42]

Secondly, a whole new class of "genius" (quotes for facetious effect) decided the best approach was going to be to make another layer of abstraction over the top (now the idiots have two problems) to make life easier of this and introduced JavaScript frameworks.

 

[Dhonk]

My most hated sites are pretty much anything on an iPhone/iPad. I can be casually scrolling down and accidentally touch an add to open an Apple Music ad. The irony is I already have Apple Music, and it's trying to get me to subscribe. One of the worst apps for this is ESPN. It's a terrible app, but unfortunately no other sport score apps are as good. Yet every time scrolling through games I accidentally click on the Apple Music ads

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

NoScript puts an end to that. I don’t have it on my iPhone, which helps reminding me of how invaluable it is. I just plain hate browsing on my iPhone.

Where do u have it ? On mac only? Have u a link?

 

[mrmacuser69]

People are going to complain regardless. Site doesn’t tell you the track you with cookies? Complaint. They inform you they are using cookies? Complaint. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

 

[Nermal]

People are going to complain regardless. Site doesn’t tell you the track you with cookies? Complaint. They inform you they are using cookies? Complaint. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

How about not tracking in the first place?

 

[mrmacuser69]

How about not tracking in the first place?

That would be nice, but would limit the functionality of a lot of websites. I’m no web engineer or anything, but from what I understand one of the things cookies do is keep you signed in across multiple tabs so you don’t have to log back in every time you open a tab. I sure as hell don’t mind being tracked for that convenience. It all depends on the application, whether it’s meant to help improve the consumer experience, or to make the company more money.

 

[headlessmike]

How about not tracking in the first place?

MacRumors is one of the worst sites that I regularly visit in this regard. Ironically, Facebook is one of the sites with the least trackers (just their own). I don't have an account there but a local organization I frequently visit use their Facebook page as their only website. It's always amusing to see Facebook at the bottom of the list of sites with trackers, when many of the trackers on other sites belong to Facebook.

Another issue is the question of cost. Google offers "free" analytics for website owners. A small business that I help run uses Google Analytics on its website since there are no other options that come close for a reasonable price. All they ask for is the souls of the site's visitors.

 

[eyoungren]

That would be nice, but would limit the functionality of a lot of websites. I’m no web engineer or anything, but from what I understand one of the things cookies do is keep you signed in across multiple tabs so you don’t have to log back in every time you open a tab. I sure as hell don’t mind being tracked for that convenience. It all depends on the application, whether it’s meant to help improve the consumer experience, or to make the company more money.

MacRumors is one of the worst sites that I regularly visit in this regard.

I have uMatrix installed, which aside from ad blocking allows me to tell websites that I've just dropped in directly, despite my cycling from website to website via bookmarks. No website is seeing the previous website I am coming from. MacRumors is one of those.

Yet I stay signed in.

So cookies can keep you signed in - they don't have to be tracking you from site to site to do that.

 

[Amethyst1]

Where do u have it ? On mac only? Have u a link?

https://noscript.net/

 

[BadMacRumours]

Most modern web design is almost entirely client side. Hardly any processing happens on the server anymore, unless you are referring to tracking.

Tell me you don’t program without telling me you don’t program.

 

[MysticCow]

MacRumors is one of the worst sites that I regularly visit in this regard.

10,000,000% agree. I need uMatrix for the iOS browsers because it actually heats up the phone...JUST FOR WEB BROWSING...AND THIS IS AN IPHONE 12 PRO. Way too ridiculous.

Ironically, Facebook is one of the sites with the least trackers (just their own).

But every other site utilizes Facebook tracking. Games phone home...TO FACEBOOK.

Again, I need uMatrix for iOS.

 

[ricketysquire]

I feel the same way too. It's frustrating to watch a site with just text and images like Reddit use up a gig of ram. Or just reading Youtube comments freeze up my browser and cause the CPU to ramp up. We had text and video sites in the mid-2000s, that didn't behave this way. We had far less computing power back then too. It's ridiculous really.

Part of it I think is due to all the tracking/scripts as others have mentioned here, tech companies are overzealous when it comes to "understanding" their users (to "optimize" and track clicks), but weirdly enough they don't understand how their crappy sites are slowing our computers down. Another aspect of it, is that tech companies have this need to regularly push down code and introduce new changes, as well as experiment on their users. Personally, I'm of the attitude that if it "Ain't broke, don't fix it". Last thing a user needs when checking their bank account in the morning is to see the account page completely "Revamped" to a more confusing and resource intensive interface and no ability to switch it back.

That's one of the reasons I'm not a fan of Apple releasing new OSs every year, there's no need on most of their products. It only really makes sense on new products where the hardware capabilities are making huge improvements with each iteration and the software needs to catch up. A good example of this was when the iPhone first came out, the first iPhone's hardware couldn't handle multi-tasking, copy/paste and a number of other features. These features were added overtime with each year's iOS release as the hardware improved. Its one thing to provide regular bug fixes and security updates, it's another thing to introduce a completely new software that could potentially slow existing hardware down as well as introduce new issues and bugs.

We really need a more "humanistic" approach to the web and software. When it comes to design, planning and implementation we need to take a more empathetic approach and ask ourselves "is this necessary and will it benefit the end user". We need to slow down, and design things to be resource efficient as well.

 

[PauloSera]

Not sure if this is the appropriate forum but given its focus is on older systems I thought I would express my frustration here.

Trying to review a new car and on the J.D. Power website reading information about it. Every 30 seconds the page refreshes! Which means I'm reading along and boom! A page refresh causes me to lose my place and I have to relocate the information I was just reading. By the time I do that I read another partial or, if lucky, another sentence and boom! A page refresh. This is ridiculous! It's like you're reading a book, someone comes and rips it out of your hands, and then hands it back to you. Only to repeat the process again.

Also what's with the cookie alerts? Yeah, I know...it's a rhetorical question. Does anyone actually do anything other than click dismiss, OK, or what have you so they can move on to the content. This is with almost every website these days.

Have website developers forgotten what the purpose of a website is for? To convey information. I remember the good old days when one could go to a website and actually read the content without annoying interruptions. The J.D. Power website is one of the worst I've ever experienced. The constant, frequent refreshes make if almost impossible to keep a train of thought.

/rant

Actually what you hate is webkit and the god awful Safari browser that is built on it. I'm sure that website will work fine in Chrome.

 

[KeepCalmPeople]

Cookies are the bane of our online existence. I miss the days where you could visit a website and the only trace of your visit was in your browsing history. Why does EVERY SINGLE website have to keep a cookie on your device to "improve your browsing experience"? I call BS - we all know it is to gather as much data about you as possible. Since 95% of Internet users don't understand what a cookie is, asking permission whenever you visit a page is pointless.

 

[crimsonRE]

/me, fitting onto my head the royal crown as Queen of the Internet for as long as this reply takes…

< 👑 _queen_mode >

“In my solemn duty as Queen of the Internet, I hereby ban 100 per cent of all e-commerce activity from the internet, effective from this proclamation. The commercial realm are now tasked, immediately, to invent their own interlinked, networked system which does not and cannot rely on inter-networking-based technologies derived by or descended from the original DARPAnet/ARPAnet, research arising from Tim Berners-Lee, CERN, or that of the IEEE.

“If the e-commerce realm truly and sincerely are what they claim to be and are as essential to everyday life as they contend in their marketing messages, then they shall no doubt find a novel, electronic, networked commerce system whose entire activity will not and cannot encroach upon the internet or rely upon its standards. Abrogators of this proclamation will be subjected to no less than twenty years inside a windowless room and a Pentium desktop from 2004, browsing closed, backed-up archives of commercial sites my Duchess of Archives has organized to have saved to an air-gapped intranet. A second abrogation shall be lifetime consignment to an Amazon warehouse and a bottomless bowl of scrapple porridge. A privy shall be made available. There shall be no recourse for appeal.

“So it is Proclaimed, on this day of our Common Era, the thirtieth of January, Two-Thousand Twenty-Three.”

< /👑 _queen_mode >

O My Queen, if it could only be so... Having moved out of the IT sphere quite a few years ago, I now play with machines and development for fun only - on the platforms I collected years ago, as the MS/Intel hegemony kicked into high gear: Apple 68k & PPC, NeXT, Sun, Silicon Graphics before they disappeared. The Old Ones lie dreaming - long life to the Old Ones....

 

[Amethyst1]

/me, fitting onto my head the royal crown as Queen of the Internet for as long as this reply takes…

Thou art forever the Royal Queen of the Early Intel and PowerPC Macs subforums. 👑

 

[crimsonRE]

https://noscript.net/

Look for the last version that works with Firefox 45 - something like 5.1.9 - from before Mozilla kicked XUL to the curb (all add-ons from the Mozilla addons website will not work with TenFourFox/InterwebPPC, SeaMonkeyPPC or TenFourBird). Add-ons from the PaleMoon project will likely work (their base is even older, Firefox 38, I think)...

And for those other little dastardly in-client trackers: the "Self Destructing Cookies" extension, if it can be found,

 

[hagjohn]

Here's the exact website I am having problems with while viewing it on my iPad Air 4:

2023 Subaru Outback Review Update

At its core, the 2023 Subaru Outback is a safe, practical, comfortable, and useful vehicle ready for nearly any weather on any road. But the devil is always in the details, and Subaru has a few to refine.

www.jdpower.com

I have a 22 Legacy Limited XT and it is great. It is pretty luxurious for the price.

I use Adguard and it helps block a lot of the craziness out of the web.