America Online (OS X) 10.2.1

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  1 stars

  Version: America Online (OS X) 10.2.1

  "Buggy, slow, insecure, ugly garbage"

  on December 13, 2004

  Summary: AOL's OS X client is one of the worst pieces of software I have used on OS X (apart from AOL Communicator). It is slower than even the discontinued IE 5 (and just about as crash-prone) and tends to lock up completely when accessing mail, etc. It has a hideous pseudo-Aqua interface that looks even uglier when placed next to any other OS X browser (maybe with the exception of Opera). Like AOL Communicator, it is also a resource pig. I regularly work with programs like Quark XPRess and the Adobe products, but AOL is one of the few programs that can actually bring my machine (an 867MHz Quicksilver with 1.25 GB RAM) down to a crawl while doing the most mundane things. Additionally, some features (such as personal web space) can't even be accessed because the AOL client is unable to connect to them.
  
  AOL completely disregards OS X's secure design and instead dumps all user data in the Shared folder, where it can be read by ANYONE (I tested this by logging into my computer as a non-administrator and tried opening up stored addresses, etc. for my main account).
  
  I now use Mozilla Camino/Apple Safari (for browsing quickly and elegantly), Adium (not officially endorsed by AOL, but still worth it) and Apple Mail (for cleaning the heaps of spam out of my AOL IMAP mail) and would ditch AOL entirely if other members of my family weren't so dependent on it. AOL makes horrible, horrible software, requires you to use said software to go online, and almost completely ignores OS X users. The only good things I can say about the OS X version are a)you can actually close the AOL Welcome window, b)it doesn't install any spyware (yet) like the Windows version supposedly does, and c)it doesn't boot me off for being inactive (when I'm downloading large program files, OS X updates, etc.).

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