Thursday, September 13, 2012

I'm Not Trendy

In October of 2011 we had a Burning River Developers meetup that I unfortunately missed (because I was on a plane returning from Europe!).  I learned from people who attended that during his presentation Dan Shultz said that I am "not trendy".  I guess he was saying something about how Knockout is not as trendy as Backbone, and that I'd appreciate that.

Here's the thing, he's right!
When I bought my mac, it was probably one of the few examples of a time where I allowed the popularity and trendiness of something to sway to my decision.  And I've given it lots of time and lots of patience, but last night I finally admitted that OSX is rubbish.

Why?
  • Everything about Finder is broken.  EVERYTHING.
  • Window management is garbage.  How do you minimize and restore w/ out the mouse? (I know about command-H, it's no good either)
  • The only app I like is chrome.  Guess what, it runs on every OS!
  • mail.app is sluggish and ugly
  • iCal can't sync correctly with google
  • iPhoto doesn't scale and doesn't organize in a way I find useful
  • iTunes music file management is totally inflexible, to the point of unusable
  • The dock is dramatically inferior to Windows 7's task bar
  • Lion is slow to boot, and has worse battery life
  • I see no compelling reason to upgrade to Mountain Lion at all (except to remove the stupid skeuomorphic stich graphic from iCal, which as mentioned above, I don't use anyway)

The only thing I like is the swipe motion to switch spaces.  But the only time I use that is when I'm running windows in a VM, so if I was in windows I WOULDN'T NEED IT.  The only other rare time I use it is to maximize a window, which just goes back to how crappy window management is on OSX.

I thought I might like that it was a unix, but the truth is it's a crappy incompatible unix (and it doesn't even have a decent package manager that doesn't break across upgrades).  And any time I've wanted to do something unix-y, it's just been a headache.  

The hardware is pretty though!  And the trackpad is the best I've ever used, so it's certainly got that.  Also the keyboard is pretty great.  So bully to the hardware.  But, I'm being honest here, that's all I can give it.

So why is the mac so popular right now?  Just because it's popular.

Even as I write this, I'm aware of how unpopular this opinion is.  But it's just my opinion, and you should be skeptical of it.  Especially because like Dan said, I'm not trendy.  

Everyone likes Dynamic Languages?  I prefer static and functional.
Everyone's excited about Node?  Looks like an immature waste of time to me.
Backbone is all the rage?  I'll stick with Knockout, thanks very much.
IPhone?  "Meh" at best, I'm happier with Android.
Pair programming?  Code reviews.
Startups want to cash out quick?  Nonsense, build a sustainable business that tackles hard problems and makes an actual difference!
Pop music? Techno? Dubstep?  It's jazz for me.  And even within jazz, I don't like bee-bop (arguably the most popular right now), so I'm totally fringe there too.

This is totally a rant, and if I have a point at all, it's this:  1) I'm not trendy 2) OSX is garbage.  And I guess my other point is just that it's OK to not get caught up in the trends.  You don't have to join the Lemmings, you're allowed to have you own taste and opinions!

I reserve the right to change my mind about all opinions contained in this blog post at any time without notice.
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