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You know, some days, I like being me. No, not the me I always am, but the rather one sided me that people think of when they think of me. Not John Welch, father, fiancee, friend, lover of peanut butter and Krispy Kremes. No, I mean the me that gets a stream of intense profanity from the masses. Now, to be fair, that's a part of me. I'm…well…I'm an asshole on a regular basis. It's not all of me, but I'm a cranky, acerbic kind of guy.

So when I see this from Andy Stone, I'm glad I have the experience I have in being me. Because sometimes, I just gotta be me. I mean, really be me. I've heard it said before, and I'm going to say it again: Andrew Stone's batshit insane. I mean, 'round the bend. Yes, I've talked to him. I don't like doing it anymore, because it's like talking to a cultist or one of those people who think that because they watch all the anime, and can ask for a blowjob in Japanese, that they have some deep understanding of Asian culture. They'll talk for hours, but it's all insane crap.

I'm not the only one who thinks Andy's a nutter. It's been said, or hinted at a few times. Andy Stone may be an absolute Cocoa savant but the man simply can't design a UI to save his ass. It's not just Videator. (Okay, I have to say this..."VIDEATOR"??? It sounds like a description of an attack on a sorority sister by a cannibalistic Mafioso delivered by someone with a bad cold..."Oh Dancy? Yeah, Viddie ate her", or something from Doc Johnson: The new VIDEATOR…ribbed, for her pleasure!. I know that naming stuff is hard, but come on!). Create? Whee! Random buttons for all! iMaginator? Not only ugly, but hey, it sounds like that lame Transformer Prime makes clean the Ark so that he doesn't keep asking to go out on missions.

Even better, Andy is seriously positioning his crap as an alternative to things like iWork, or even more laughably, CS Suite. Yes, I'm sure that in Andy's mind, the hundred bucks you'd pay for Videator and iMaginator is far more of a value than such nonsense like oh, iLife, or CS Suite. (Then again, in Andy's mind, flying monkeys are a real danger, and always carry water in case you encounter a witch, unless she's in a flying bubble, in which case, sparkly red pumps are called for.)

However, out here in the real world, no, wrapping a craptacular, ugly, cluttered, unintuitive, lame UI around Core Image and Core Video is not in fact the same thing as creating a suite of integrated applications that work well together and allow you to easily work with photos, film, music, blogs, and DVDs in an intuitive, fun manner. Besides, the screen shot is giving me 7th Guest flashbacks. As far as Andy's concerned, Cocoa is Hottentot for "Magic spell that makes all software perfect". I'm sure that he can marshall all kinds of reasons why his UI is just oodles better than Apple's or Adobe's. Of course, in Adobe's case, his answer is "All Carbon applications suck, all Cocoa applications rule". So yeah, I'm not really taking him all that seriously on that. When someone cares more about the frameworks the application uses than if the application is usable, that's a sign to close the browser window and find a developer with their head attached to the correct part of the body.

Do yourself a favor…just say no to Stone. But make sure you back away slowly and smile in an unthreatening manner as you do.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Applications, Cocoa, Mac OS X, Really bad names, Really bad strategy, Technology, TEH STOOPUD

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