When I got home from school today, I saw an IM from Seth suggesting he thought I being cranky. Really? He said:

Oh boy, here we go again. My emails are often misconstrued as being angry or overly critical. Not sure what it is, but words can be a bitch. Unfortunately, (at least) one of my readers missed my point entirely, as it appears I did when I read Seth's article.

Seth made some assumptions about his readers that I didn't see, so I read his post more literally and generally than he was expecting. (Not only that, I'm apparently not in the post's target audience, so his advice apparently doesn't apply to me :-)) The assumptions lead to some logic getting reversed in his argument. If you want the details of my interpretation of his post, read my reply to Seth's reply of my original post. One major point I'd like to make here is that your Mac will run maintenance tasks overnight if you are logged in, as Seth confirmed.

Seth explained that quite a few "regular" Mac users he encounters have reliability problems with their Macs. I believe him of course, but it surprises me, because I don't have problems, despite "asking for it" with the kind of stuff I ask my Macs to do for me.

So am I offended in being told to log off? Of course not!

As I said, "I won't dispute that logging out and in 'cleans things up' and wouldn't hurt the reliability of your computer". As in, I agree. What offends me is the idea that computer users should accept having to log off their computer every night (regardless of the benefits), just as it offends me that Windows users are told to accept fighting spyware and viruses every single day.

Computer users shouldn't have to put up with spyware, viruses, or unreliable software.

Seth felt I sounded "cantankerous" (def'n: bad-tempered, quarrelsome) by saying I'd switch to Linux if I had to log off every day. I would be bad-tempered if I had to put up with an unreliable computer! How many bad-tempered, quarrelsome people do you encounter (in person or through the media) in a day? (Recall that Windows is the primary operating system used in roughly 90% of computer systems)

Reliable computers lead to good-tempered people. :-)