A VERY Angry Techno-Rant! (if you aren't into technology, come back later.)

I have had it with the current state of affairs between Apple Corporation, manufacturers of my beloved (not right now) eMac, The Open Source Community, who (I believe) crafted the almost perfectly beautiful FireFox 1.5 web browser, and Sun-something-or-other who farted something called Java, or JRE (Java Runtime Environment,) into the world. I am really, really angry.

A friend of mine, running a PC (of course), used his latest version of Java (1.5) to craft his website. He tested it on the latest version of IE and FireFox 1.5. He said it was exactly the way he wanted it. On my eMac,lines are running over onto one another. I can get a true rendering of his site only by using IE 5.0, (the last IE MicroSoft deemed to provide for us Macintosh users.) I don't like using IE, as it is a major security gamble, makes my machine slow down by almost 40% and I just don't trust MicroSoft.

FireFox provides a page of things you can add to optimize its performance. Macromedia Flash, Adobe Reader (if you like to frustrate yourself) and my current favorite: Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.5. They are very good with their documentation. If you aren't a serious developer, comfortable in Terminal, Object C, Carbon, Cocoa and Java, you ain't got no business messing with this plugin! When I get confused reading through the ReadMe file, I know I'm trying to go somewhere I don't belong. It gets worse. GRRRRRR!

If I don't add this little darling, (still in the beta stage,) meaning they know it will probably screw your system, (they warned you...) If I don't add this thing, my friend's beautiful website is inaccessible to me, unless I'm almost as reckless and start using IE 5.0! Here is just a taste of the ReadMe file:

With versions of the Java Embedding Plugin before , LiveConnect
methods always failed when called from an applet's init() method. Now
they should always succeed (even when "jep.asyncinit" is "true", JEP
0.8.7 and later are slightly less asynchronous than previous
versions). But for LiveConnect calls to work in a JavaScript OnLoad()
handler, "jep.asyncinit" must be unset or "false"

2. jep.jsobjectnotimeout (I think this is the continuing Terminal code I'm supposed to add - CG)

Setting this property to "true" makes Java-to-JavaScript LiveConnect
calls never time out. This was how the version 0.8.6 of the Java
Embedding Plugin behaved. Doing so made it possible for some poorly
written applets to hang the browser. But some applets (possibly the
same ones) might require this setting to work correctly.

This is a large ReadMe file, (16 KB) and it just kept getting more convoluted as I read. I finally just turned it off and am now reacting to this awful situation. Here is my guess as to what has gone wrong:

1. Apple jumped from Sys 9 to OS X 10.x and screwed everybody up. Their entire system underpinning changed, leaving customers and especially, developers scrambling to 're-code', 'patch', or 'stop supporting' their products. This causes customers to have hissy fits.
2. Sun got Java to work on OS X, but decided to change it, probably to get it to do 'something new', or do the old more efficiently.
3. All the non-PC browsers stopped working properly, sending developers back to the Beta Bench attempting to create a 'work-around'. The little plugins that could (sort-of).
4. They've gotten FireFox to work with this new plugin. Actually three programs, one of which is helpful to the browser, while the other two might blow your system to hell - when not 'time-stamped' properly. (You don't even want to know how to do THAT!)
5. Assuming you get it all working, you may still have problems, as this thing is being coded under pressure, with guesswork, using things Apple '...discourages developers from using...' and did I say, THIS IS A BETA AND HAS BUGS THE POOR DEVELOPERS HAVEN'T FOUND YET?

This is a pile of CRAP!

Sure, tell a PC user its The Yellow Brick Road over here, in Apple Land. (Somebody better spray off all the do-do, on those bricks,) before those PC users leave their Dark Tower at Redmond. Go ahead, MacPhilly, I dare you to walk me through this!

Please don't email me that: "it works for me...'. As angry as I am at this present moment, I might have a stroke! (If anyone could walk, the technically-challenged, through this systems level tweaking, MacPhilly would get my vote). Now, I leave, to find a brick to chew on, until I feel better.