Re: Early-2014 Macbook Air and Linux Mint Cinnamon

On 2026-06-27, Your Name wrote:

> On 2026-06-27 18:22:29 +0000, Charlie Gibbs said:
>> On 2026-06-27, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On 27/06/2026 05:12, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> The only Apple device I've ever had is an iPod Shuffle that was given to
>>>> me long ago.
>>>
>>> I had a few power PCS back when I was married - my ex wife was a graphic
>>> designer weaned on MACs and Quark.
>>>
>>> I used one as a daily drive for a year or so. Mac OS-X Tiger I think
>>>
>>> Then I moved to linux and never looked back. Terrible machines.
>>>
>>> They were essentially computers for people who knew nothing about
>>> computers, and absolutely didn't want to know.
>>>
>>> Even more than Windows there was One True Way™ to use them, and heaven
>>> forfend if you stepped off the One True Path ...
>>
>> My wife has drunk the Kool-Aid - she has a Macbook, an iPad, and an
>> iPhone. The Macbook's web browser has started getting slow and
>> cranky - 
>> she went to the Apple store and they told her that she needs a new
>> Macbook because her existing one is no longer secure - something
>> about software updates not being available
>
> A web browser is just a web browser. The app itself can't get slower
> than it was originally, except if you've got a ton of bookmarks or
> keep lots of windows / tabs open all the time.
[...]
> A "cranky" web browser may be too old for the websites you want to
> use. Simply change to a more up-to-date web browser. Firefox lasts
> longer than Safari.

If you update it, it's not the same that it once was, so it can perform
worse, or better. It can use more or less resources. I guess the trend
in the past decade has been to perform worse and use more memory, even
letting alone the issue that sites themselves sometimes use excessive JS
frameworks that are heavy and do silly things like requiring 3D
acceleration, which is a recipe for performance disaster unless you're
on, I don't know, something comparable to a gaming rig? Or something
that at least is not going to do any software emulation of 3D features?


A significant change was when Microsoft dropped IE6 support. That was
followed by a boom in web incompatibility. Not because a lot of people
were using IE6, but because a lot more browsers benefited from sites and
frameworks still being IE6-compatible.

-- 
Nuno Silva