Yep, I got an email about this today. It's really awful. I have been a subscriber to SL Go for a number of months and I absolutely adore it: I haven't been this happy with SL in years. I don't know what I'm going to do now: The native SL client makes my laptop -- a top of the line MacBook Pro -- run insanely hot even when just sitting idle or running with the lowest possible settings. It also precludes the possibility of doing more than one thing at any given time on my computer. But SL Go has been such a complete godsend, and I just don't think I could go back to the way things used to be. I started my Go subscription up right just after I bought my new computer (after I replaced my last one due to hardware failure) and have vowed to never ever run the main SL client on it again.
I was willing to pay the subscription fees for the sole reason that there was far less chance that I'd burn out another GPU because of Second Life. So I guess what I'm rambling on about comes to this... Is there a chance that Linden Labs will either: 1) Put some kind of software limiters into the SL client such that it just won't cause machines like mine to run as hot as a burner on a stove, or otherwise improve the graphics rendering pipeline such that it would have the same effect? or 2) Do some kind of in-house streaming solution sort of like the way that Steam does with their in-home streaming -- but server side to be similar to what we're losing with OnLive?
Absent some sort of solution like that -- or at the very, very least a decent SL chat app for OS X that isn't SLiteChat (which is dangerous to use if someone sends you inventory because it will just vanish into the ether -- and hasn't been updated since 2011), or Radegast (which is just a totally broken app on OS X that also runs hot like the full client and requires an entire Mono environment to run and is also not being developed any longer) -- I just don't know what I'm going to do. I won't go back to the way things were before.
Honestly, if you want to know my opinion on the matter. And maybe you don't, but I'm going to give it anyway. One of the reasons why the people leave SL is because it's tough to integrate into our lives. There are just so many barriers to staying in touch with the people we meet here. Our options for simple tasks -- like logging in to say hi to friends when we are out and about in the real world -- are limited to some pretty awful apps like Pocket Metaverse. It's one of the worst apps on iOS. You folks at Linden Labs should be making it easier for people to want to come here and stay -- not drive them away. I've thrown a lot of money at the SL economy since I've joined, but it gets harder and harder to justify it when I feel like things aren't being improved. There is always this constant threat that everything is just going to go away somehow and that we'll all be left out in the cold. Why don't you have really great first party mobile and desktop apps for all platforms? If I were inventing a virtual universe, I'd take it upon myself to design a whole suite of interface apps that blur the line between second life and first. Like a text/voice chat app for iPhone, etc, etc, etc. Just something to be really creative instead of -- oh hey, we've made the SL client into a web browser now.
I'm sorry this turned out to be long-winded, but this SL Go thing -- which I entirely recognize is Sony's fault -- really was the last straw.