Some new software services and applications quickly get such a following that they turn into a movement. Even more so when the applications are bold and try to change the way you do something that you do a lot. I just this week had various experiences in that respect.

Observation 1: I uninstalled iTunes. It's a nice app and all but in the end I just couldn't take the behavioural model of iTunes: The default setting of assuming complete control over all my music, organizing it so it makes sense for the software but not for me, and finally - and most obnoxiously - the default idea that music is wallpaper continuously running in the background - that what I'm after is this player that just keeps on rolling over my entire collection whenvery you press play. I simply can't stand that. Whenever I click on some song on the disk, it wouldn't stop at the end but just continue running over some other music elsewhere in my collection.
Observation 2: I got a GMail test account through a kind reader of classy.dk who had seen my personalized advertising rant. Initial impressions: The advertising is rather toned down, in fact more so than on the search pages. But the new way of organizing all email into threads by default is another one of those blue pill moments. A slightly nauseating loss of control sets in. I guess my ideal mailsystem is not really a mail system at all. Instead it is email stored as easily tooled text messages, end then actually having those easiliy made tools at hand. It would be the UNIX maildir if not for conveniences like recipient defined metadata and indexing.
Bottom line is that it is impossible - without significant mail volume - to tell if the threaded dialogs for all email really works. I'm not sure I'm confident enough that it will to start using Gmail as my main thing right away. That underscores the other well known problem of GMail: Data ownership. I know I only use server based mail for junk at the moment because I like to have my mail close. (Yes I DO back it up).