iTeen Reveals The Truth About Netscape 6
by Chris Rogers
April 27th, 2000

When visiting Internet World 2000 in Los Angeles the other week iTeen Brandon and I sat in on Steve Case's keynote speech. He brought up a lot of interesting things. For those of you who HATE AOL these "interesting things" do not apply to you. To others who do not mind AOL, or actually like AOL, listen up. He showed us some new products that AOL and Gateway have developed for getting onto AOL. The crazy part is we all know people who are OBSESSED with AOL and can't seem to get enough of it. This is exactly the type of people that AOL is targeting for their flat panel computers. Although we were somewhat expecting the new AOputers that's not exactly what we were waiting for. We were there for the release of Netscape 6.

Mr. Case brought up some things about Netscape 6 that made us literally want to change our pants. We were that happy. He boasted about it's stability, improved speed, and theme-ability. This theme-ability is kind of Netscape's version of Kaleidoscope for the Mac. Brandon and myself couldn't wait to get out and grab copies of it.

Literally as fast as the doors opened in the hall, we were down in the exhibits over by Netscape's booth. There was a giant box full of Netscape 6 Preview Release 1 CDs. We couldn't help but grab oh....... 10 or 20. After hearing about Netscape and all it's glories, we busted out the ol' iBook. We have never been so disappointed in our entire lives folks. It was a horrible and frightening experience. The installation installed over 4,000 files. Many with the .dll suffix.

Last time I checked, .dll files were PC files. If anyone has anything to say about .dll's not being PC only files, don't talk. It's obvious that even with the AOL giant behind it, Netscape still can't afford decent Mac programmers, and they simply recompiled the Mac version of Netscape from the PC version. Doesn't that just anger you? That shows just how much AOL really appreciates the Mac platform. After all, AOL did start off on the Mac, did it not? Talk about backstabbing Apple.

I'm not about to sit down on my 56k modem which only connects at 28.8 (because my phone lines stink) to download something that will take not only 2 1/2 hours but end up being slower than molasses in January. I can't complain about everything in Netscape 6, (it's slow) I mean it has a nice new clean interface, (it's slow) and it definitely seems to be very stable, (most likely because it's too slow to crash) . Actually it does have a nice interface, I give them that. What I really don't' understand is why they can't simply make Netscape a real Mac application and build it the way Mac users want it? That way they would avoid nasty articles like this one! And the nerve of them making the kinds statements that they did about the product. They lied, it's not faster!

I have always loved my Netscape over MSIE, but unfortunately I'm not upgrading this time. I tested Netscape 6 on both my G3 iBook as well as my G3 250MHz Desktop. It's a shame, until Netscape Communications can get their Mac act together, I'm going to stay with Netscape 4.7, or even use.... Internet Explorer 5. It's up to you Netscape.

A very disappointed Mac User
-Chris-