Why is this at all a concern?
Honestly, why has this topic garnered so much attention...from Mac users, no less? MSN and AOL are not attractive options any longer for several reasons. One, they are the most expensive ISPs. Two, the service is simply not good. If you think you see the "spinning beachball" too much with OS X, try using AOL. It seems they are never able to handle the size of their customer bases, no matter how much they up their server capacity. Three, they no longer have any proprietary content. By this I mean, neither offers much in terms of content that you can't get anywhere else. While it wasn't always like this, it is well true today. Years ago, for example, "Keyword" APPLE COMPUTER brought you to a "Knowledge Base" of sorts within AOL's own software and was served presumably from AOL's own servers. Now, most often, when you enter an AOL Keyword, you are sent directly to the company's website. In addition, e-mail, stock portfolios, etc. are all available, for free in many cases, from other sites. Chat software, i.e. AOL Instant Messenger, is free as well and lets you communicate with all of AOL's members (and has a much better feature set than the actual client). Four, Mac support is notoriously atrocious with AOL, at least. The software hasn't been updated in years, and even when it is, the components are hardly cutting edge. For example, the AOL v5.0 browser (OS 9) is based on Internet Explorer 4.x technology. That is so last millenium. I do believe the OS X v5.0 utilizes the latest release of IE, though just to beat a dying horse, IE is among the poorest performing browsers on the OS X platform. Also, the Windows version is already at v7.0. While I cannot comment on as-yet-to-be-released service from Microsoft, one should be apprehensive. The Microsoft Mac Business Unit has been doing some nice work as of late, though I am concerned that with the late entry, Mac customers are destined to be second class citizens on MSN. Chances are that feature disparity will be common. I'll bet there will be some functions that are "Windows Only" as Microsoft ties more and more of it's "Middleware" products directly to the OS. Conclusion: Why bother? Get a highspeed connection through any reputable ISP, fire up Apple's stunning Mail program after you sign up for iTools, AOL Instant Messenger, OmniWeb, and head over to Yahoo's Finance page and enter your stock portfolio. And if you want to book a trip...just type "Keyword" TRAVELOCITY in your browser. Mac browsers are intelligent enough to add the "www." and ".com" at the end.
