dethroning Manjoo
A couple of weeks ago, Farhad Manjoo instructed us that we have no legitimate reason not to be on Facebook. Now he informs his readers that “If you’re still tied to a desktop app — whether Outlook, the Mac’s Mail program, or anything else that sees your local hard drive, rather than a Web server, as its brain — then you’re doing it wrong.”
I’ve made my views on Facebook known, but I adore Gmail and wouldn’t go back to a desktop email app at gunpoint. What I’d like to know is this: Who died and made Farhad Manjoo Commander-in-Chief? I prefer tech columnists to give me information; I don’t really mind when they give me advice; but when they start actually telling me what to do and what not to do, I am rather inclined to demur. Therefore, I hereby declare my independence from Farhad Manjoo! Give me liberty or give me death! Do your worst, Manjoo: I defy you.
UPDATE: But you all understand that this doesn’t mean that I’m abandoning Gmail, right? Just want to be clear about that.
Manjoo should spend less time buffing up his geek credentials by posturing and distancing himself from hoi polloi and more time columnizing about trends in tech. Of course, he’s writing on Slate, which is an entire periodical dedicated to posturing, so what can you do.
— sidereal · Jan 31, 12:59 AM · #
Does anyone share my privacy and control concerns re net apps? I read all these recent scifi books and it seems to me that the best policy is to control your own information and applications. Like say I was a working on a plan to invade and dictate Texas ala Arron Burr? Would I really want my plans on some distant server for the feds inspect? This is a hypothetical, mind you.
— cw · Jan 31, 01:01 AM · #
Of course it’s not clear that that’s what Burr was doing. Damn, if only he’d used gmail!
— Sanjay · Jan 31, 01:34 AM · #
OMG – what a zipper head.
What is this idiot going to do on a plane for 3 or 4 hours and has to get work done? Yell at the flight attendants about the lack of Internet capability?
Zeros like this guy drive stupid web trends. I remember when we were all going to be running Java based terminals. And then we were going to be using tablets. And then we were going to be useing “Lay-zers”.
sheesh
— M00se · Jan 31, 04:21 AM · #
Farhad Manjoo sucks.
— Freddie · Jan 31, 04:51 AM · #
OK, now you’ve done it. Prepare for my wrath, Jacobs.
— farhad manjoo · Jan 31, 05:00 AM · #
I would appreciate it if someone could take some time out of the geek warfare and help me use gmail to its potential.
I get the ease of access that a net based app provides, but I just stare at the interface and am lost. Labels? Archiving?
My wife loves it though and when I told her it wasn’t intuitive, she told me to think of the lables as ‘piles’ if that helps.
— Jeremy R. Shown · Jan 31, 03:31 PM · #
Manjoo, it seems to me, pushes “cloud” solutions long after they’ve lost steam. Gmail is so 2004/5. Facebook is so 2007. Twitter is so 2008. The real computer story is the massive advance of Linux, especially outside of the U.S. But what do you expect from a guy who finds Ubuntu too difficult? http://www.slate.com/id/2202664/
Tech columnist indeed!
— Dave · Feb 1, 05:10 AM · #
I don’t read Manjoo. I read slashdot. There you’ll find an actual nuanced discussion of the pros and cons of web vs. desktop apps, including technical aspects like server loads. There’s also some interesting comparisons to the pre-P.C. mainframe model.
— Ethan C. · Feb 2, 02:59 AM · #
Whatever. I have 5 e-mail addresses that I use regularly (2 college-based and 3 web-based, while last summer I has a work address as well) and while Gmail is my main one it will never ever be my only one because I don’t trust them enough. But the multiple-address thing really requires either relying on unreliable “auto-forward” settings or a desktop app. And I do nearly everything on a laptop, and like to be able to catch up on mail even outside of hotspots.
All of which is to say that I am, and expect to remain, a strong partisan of Mozilla Thunderbird.
— Joey · Feb 3, 08:02 AM · #