An open letter to Safari.app
Sometimes I type fast. Sometimes I type slow. Be it circadian, topical, mood dependent (anyone have a good adjective for “mood dependent”) or otherwise contextual, there it is. Plain and true.
So, for the love of all you find sacred, stop fucking autocompleting my URL whenever I pause for more than 1.9 µs.
Now, I love autocompletion. It makes my life worthwhile; without the small convenience that is autocompletion, I’d probably be pushed just over the edge into crawling under a rock to die. So don’t even think about getting rid of the feature.
Just get rid of your overly aggressive time parameter. Really, who the hell needs a time parameter anyway? A good command line uses the TAB key to autocomplete. Most web browsers (to be consistent with the GUIs in which they run) opt for the DOWN ARROW. But you, you have to try and do it automatically. That’d be just fine, if your guesses weren’t the rancid chunks of goat testes they are. No, I do not want to go to http://mathworld.wolfram.com/search/, I’d rather http://mathworld.wolfram.com/. I don’t care how many times I’ve been to the former over the later, I have never typed in the former. Don’t take me there. Don’t think I want to go there, especially when I hit the enter key just this side of too slowly and you’ve appended the “search/” before I’ve been able to react (and don’t blame my reflexes – they’re decent). I don’t care if the sites offer similar functionality, you know that’s not what this is about. I know what I want and I’m not about to be persuaded by a less than sentient, over-zealous (if otherwise likable) string of 1’s and 0’s that thinks it knows what’s good for me.
Well. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shape up fast or lose me to Firefox, which I should have been using all this time before I got attached to you.
So watch yourself. One more little quibble and I am gone.
Perhaps, Mike, your problem is that you defining the role of a webbrowser too narrowly. Clearly, you believe that a webbrowser is responsible, and solely responsible, for getting you to the exact webpage that you wish to see.
Apple, enlightened as they are, have realised that there is more to a good browser. Specifically, there are health implications. As confirmed by the excellent analysis of, for instance, http://www.health24.com/natural/Natural_approach/17-663,22926.asp,
one of the very important things in ensuring graceful aging, is that the mind remain active and engaged, in new activities. What better way to achieve this than by constantly exposing you to different, unexpected websites, at seemingly-random times.
Really, Mike, rather than being annoyed when you find yourself, yet again, at the wrong page, you should be thinking of the all the neurons you just saved. Long live Apple! (Bet you never thought you’d hear me say that!)
And wow, I did not proofread that previous post at all. Take that, the English language! Of course, it’s all about providing you with unexpected grammatical constructs, to prevent aging…
Damn those .za’n journals and their ever present suggestions of having more sex. I bet it’s all a secret international plot to further spread AIDS and destruction in African nations. And now I know you’re part of it, Paul.za.