I didn’t like John Gruber. I’d come to the Mac by way of an avid interest in NeXT and it’s related technologies. I bought my first Mac when Rhapsody was announced. Apple said they’d have something shipping within six months. They didn’t and I ended up using the classic Mac OS for a lot longer than I’d have liked. I was coming from OS/2 and Windows NT and the idea that dragging a scroll bar would stop a download felt positively Palaeolithic. Gruber, I felt, was an apologist for the antiquated Mac OS and too harsh a critic of the far more modern and forward looking Mac OS X. Did window resizing performance stink? Yes, sure, but having fully buffered windows and the Quartz compositing model was The Right Thing To Do. And his lack of appropriate reverence for the Cocoa APIs and tools was infuriating. Stupid Gruber. I rage read Daring Fireball voraciously.

Happy tenth, John. Your writing has changed the way I think about products, design and quality. Or I’ve had a stroke from getting so steamed.