that is such a weird OS + browser combination I have to take your comment as sarcasm, but the rest of the comment seems sincere enough.

That’s not sarcasm. As computer lab support back in college, iMac G3’s were the rage and the internet was new. The only working browser back in the day on those macs were IE. Good luck getting Netscape Navigator running on them (Phoenix/Firefox not created yet, Safari wasn’t even a thing yet).

Flash was the worst thing to support in those labs - some windows machines, some macs, some Solaris... gl trying to tell non-CS majors to move to a different computer...

I’ll admit, the authoring tools were great, everything else about flash was terrible.

No, not sarcasm at all. I tried Flash on a variety of different operating systems and browsers at the time -- and IE5 on Mac OS 9 was the only one that consistently delivered good results.

It seems weird, but when you consider the context at the time, it makes sense. Back in the late 90s -- when Flash was on the rise and being rapidly developed -- IE5 was the browser to have on Mac just as it was on Windows. The reasons had to do with the infusion of cash from Microsoft into Apple to keep the latter company afloat while Jobs restructured it and pivoted it to Mac OS X. At the time, companies such as Adobe and Macromedia -- which hadn't been acquired by Adobe yet -- developed and tested on Mac first and most extensively, because they catered to the design crowd. As for browsers -- Safari wasn't around yet, Netscape was boomer tech by that time, Mozilla was broken, and Firefox wouldn't come out for a couple years. That really left only IE and boutique browsers like CyberDog and iCab. So the environment that got the most thorough testing was -- once again -- IE on Mac OS 9.

When Mac OS X finally did come out, it would take a number of years for Mac developers to fully embrace it. Remember, to the Mac teams inside Adobe and Macromedia, Inside Macintosh was the fucking Bible. Classic Mac OS was The Right Thing; Mac OS X was something weird and wrong and inherently anti-Mac, as parts of it came from Unix, which was known for having user-hostility baked into its design philosophy. It was also the future, but it was a future they'd take years to reckon with. So, for a while, the native OS X version of Flash chugged no matter which browser you used it in. Meanwhile, IE5 for Mac OS 9 still worked perfectly well provided you launched the Classic environment, so if you wanted top Flash performance it was still available.

The turn if the century really was a different time.

> boomer tech

Since we are talking about events ~25 years ago isn’t all of this “boomer tech” because the boomers were at the peak of their careers at the time? Aren’t they the ones that created, like, everything?

Seems like a strangely modern phrase to use to describe what is now ancient history.

Also I’m not that old but I already see the ageism in tech. I see ideas dismissed based on age rather than merit. The normalization of this type of derogatory language makes me uncomfortable.

Internet generations seem to be much quicker, with big shifts every 3 to 5 years. Mary Meeker's yearly summary often illustrates aspects of this.

Not sure I follow.

Does “boomer” not mean “person born between 1946 and 1964”?

Does it just mean ”old” now?

Also, here’s the Mary meeker reference that talks to much quicker changes online than in real life generations.

https://www.bondcap.com/report/itr19/#&gid=1&pid=1

Yeah it is also used for anyone who is even a few years older.

Ok, thanks for clarifying. That’s a usage I was unfamiliar with.

Data point: FPS games that try to recreate the low-poly looks of mid-90s shooters are called "boomer shooters" in the community, despite the fact that boomers were already of middle age when Doom, Quake, abd Duke Nukem 3D came out and arguably outside the target audience of those games.

I think what the other post might be missing is that the gamers of the 90s/early 2000's are gen y aka millenials and often called or treated as boomers.

Ok now I’m really confused. I’m a millennial but I have never (to my knowledge) been called a “boomer”.

Doesn’t that make Halo or CS “boomer shooters”?

Maybe I’m older than I think...

I don’t think you are saying just because you haven’t experienced something means it can’t be out of the realm of possibility? And for it to be proven someone has to do the work specifically to convince you? Seems kind of evangelical, which is a foreign concept to me. But I’ll try, respectfully.

Perhaps you you look/act younger than others.

Or maybe others act/look older than you.

Or, maybe there’s people who exist who exaggerate the first difference between themselves and someone else to put distance between them for reasons like ego/insecurity.

Instead of a lens of doubt and putting the burden of others of having to educate you, it’s also possible to meet half way and ask.. what else could this mean that I’m not seeing? Our brains tend to find what we put attention towards.

Either way I hope that helps and no offence intended.

It was just a new term to me so I was asking for clarification. You’ve been helpful, thanks.

Cheers, appreciate you clarifying.

I played a lot of FPS games in my time and I have never heard that term. When did that start?

Are you suggesting that “boomer” simply means “old” now?

They are using "boomer" similarly to how the word is used in "baby boomer," as in a sudden growth. Netscape was the hot new browser. Probably one of those words on its way out, but they aren't being ageist.

Ah, yeah, that reading does make more sense. Guess I have a raw nerve.

I'm less positive of it after rereading the post to be honest. Netscape in 99 was just starting it's plummet, so it's hard to say it was booming but it also wasn't really outdated either. I probably should have thought my post through more, sorry.

> Netscape in 99 was just starting it's plummet

Navigator was already effectively dead in 1998, when Netscape announced plans to open source the code and launch the Mozilla project. Navigator 4.0 was a buggy mess, and it did not support the W3C standards of the day. It was only a matter of time before the Web broke enough to force the installed Navigator base to switch.

It'd still have been either first or second in browser share, there was a reason AOL was still willing to buy it for so much money. Technologically already dead, but just starting the plummet.

If you're a teen or twentysomething in the late 90s, your mom is probably a boomer. She's also the most likely demographic to stick with Netscape because it's the browser she started off with and it's comfortable for her.

The kids of the time already knew by 1998 that IE was the future of the web. Netscape had already made their open source announcement and spun off Mozilla in 1998. Navigator was effectively dead.

Yes, my parents are boomers. What I object to is the derogatory use of that term. Sorry if I misinterpreted your intent.

Ok thanks, since I didn't do any Flash development I was unaware of this, depsite having been around.