Yahoo

Sunday, Jun. 04, 2006 - 1:00 p.m.

Yahoo Messenger has finally pulled the rug out from under Macintosh users, and out from under anybody who is using a dial-up line for their webcams.

Version 2.5.3 was supporting webcams of all shapes and sizes on dial-up lines and they were cross-platform. I could turn my Macintosh webcam on and interact with people across the world who were also on dial-up lines, with whatever camera they could afford. I saw Paris when Laurent pointed his cam out the window. I even saw and took screen pictures of one of Fake Andy's female accomplices, so I can identify that steely-eyed little cuntscab if the police need me to. When we were still speaking, I got to see my brother and his children and have them blow kisses at me and have them see me catch them.

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But now, Yahoo has disenfranchised everybody who owns only a basic landline and webcam. Instead, its users are told that only certain webcams will work with their broadband service -- and oh by the way, Windows only, thank you. There are no plans to upgrade the Mac version of Yahoo Messenger.

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No more users from all of the classrooms in the poorer areas of this country that have been fiited with free Apple computers. No more users who are housebound people who for whatever reason cannot travel or afford a broadband connection. People from all over the world, in countries whose economies are unable to facilitate high speed connections for home computers are now unable to use Yahoo Messenger with their webcams.

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Why did Yahoo do this? What was the point of disenfranchising so many people who used to rely on their land-line webcam services? I'm asking because I honestly don't know.

And the reason I don't know, and the reason this caught me completely off guard is because Yahoo never bothered to tell all of those people that they would no longer be able to use their webcams as of the rollout of Yahoo's new video service.

Not one word of explanation to the people who are now left to figure out some way to upgrade, or worse, who are now forced to switch platforms.

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If Yahoo had only said something ahead of time, this wouldn't have been so irritating.

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