On water droplets and wobbling windows.

Sometime in the past (it may have been four months, but it was probably more... my sense of time degrades in direct proportion to the length of time I've existed since a given event) I coincidentally found myself on a plane with Jason. We discussed many things, not excluding our shared obsessive compulsions, the fact that we both hate take-off, and operating system GUI toolkits. Jason is a Mac guy -- complete with beard, hipster glasses, and supercool Asian girlfriend. He should have his own action figure. I'm a Linux guy -- complete with psoriasis, caffeine addiction, and a compulsion to steeple when I discuss politics or Spiderman.

I like talking to Jason a lot, because it's sort of like living Jason Said interactively. Plus there's usually beer. When it comes to GUI toolkits, we have similar opinions. Practicality and beauty both rank high on our lists, much as they apparently do for DHH -- as heard in this recent interview with Sexy MF and some guy who probably writes Visual Basic for a living. Mr. Heignarmeigher-Hansen complains that the water droplet effect in Mac OS X doesn't add to usability; "it's just eye candy for nerds like me," he says. Or something to that effect. My memory is as faulty as my sense of time. Jason had the same point of view when it came to wobbly windows: they're neither pretty nor do they serve a practical purpose.

Until you use them.

It frustrates me to move windows in Windows and OS X these days. I expect to be immersed. I want to live those windows. But I can't. And other words in italics. They are just bricks with which I build my castle. I so quickly get bored of building castles as I would as a child of constructing "real" things from Lego. I prefer to construct kitchen appliances which reverse time or glasses which give me flight. I make haste, and run back to the soft, squishy world of unstable-but-organic OpenGL-accelerated window managers. Ahhh, they're like my Mother's arms. I'm at home here.

I'll bet you my left nipple Leopard will have wobbly windows. Mr. Steve will do a great job of recreating them in his image. And they won't ever crash or miss-click. Will Jason be convinced? Only time will tell.