Somebody over on the geek listserve just posted this:
I’ve had three Palm Treos [i.e., Treos running the Palm operating system] and they were much more reliable then the Win OS version I currently have. But Palm is probably not going to be around forever and to stay in tune with the times I switched, but can’t say I’m happy about it.
I find myself mildly (and increasingly) outraged that someone would do this. It’s like switching from Beta to VHS before the studios stopped releasing Beta tapes. (We hung on until the bitter end. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mom still has a working Beta machine to watch all the classic movies she taped off cable.)
I suppose some people call this kind of behavior “flexible and forward-thinking,” or “seeing which way the wind is blowing.” I call it defeatist, anti-idealist, and toadying to the forces of mediocrity, conformity, and assimilation. (Not that I have a dog in this fight, being as I still use a paper Filofax, but still.)
Clarification: As Ehren and I just discussed, it’s not the switching to the new hot thing that I find outrageous. It’s the switching to the perceived market leader while sacrificing efficiency and pleasure. This is how lumbering juggernauts take over markets–because users are afraid to be loyal to the smaller feistier more nimble underdogs. (I’m having a “dinosaurs vs. squirrelly early mammals” moment.) Monoculture is bad, and this is how it happens. Grumblegrumble.