For the past 4-5 years, I have been a loyal user of Opera (technically Opera Next...), but that time has come to an end. For the past year or so, the direction Opera has taken in development has made it too far removed from the reason I loved it the first place. Gone are all the great features that I loved.
It seems like since they made the switch to Chromium, things have turned to the worst. I don't blame the engine, it is is superior in my opinion, and the switch did drastically help with Opera's biggest fallback at the time, which was compatibility. But around the same time, they begin to turn it into a browser for "the common people", and begin removing all the great features that allowed me to tweak it to just how I liked. The "settings" have turned into an extremely basic couple of options that really don't allow you to customize anything (Internet Explorer has more options...). I was thinking the other day, what exactly does Opera have that makes it better than the competition, and sadly, my answer was "nothing". The few things that set it apart, such as Speed Dial, are commonplace in all the other browsers now, or a simple add-on which supports even more customization to the look and feel of it than Opera ever offered.
So, with a heavy heart, I have made my switch to Chrome as my daily driver. I have already found a Speed Dial extension that suits my needs, and I have found a great deal of other extensions that have already improved my browsing experience beyond what Opera has done in a long time. I have not noticed any difference in speed, both are top-performers (both use the same rendering engine), and I have found a lot more support and interest in Chrome.
On another note, I have also since abandoned μTorrent. It used to be the best torrent client out there, without anything else even coming close in my opinion, but now it is turning into nothing but ad-ware. Since version 2.2.1 (it is now 3.4.2), I don't think anything really positive has been added to it, just different ways to annoy users with ads. Sure, I can go into the "advanced settings" and with the help of Google manage to turn off the right things to make the ads go away, but its the very principle of it all, and the direction the company has taken that turns me off to it. If anyone else feels the same way, I have found another great client over at SourceForge called
qBittorrent. It is minimalistic, and aims at reproducing the good old μTorrent without all the extra crap. I have found that it performs equally well, has all the same options that I like, comes with no ads, and is even open-source.
In the end, I am happy with the new software I am using, but I just find it sad the direction developers have taken with their products, and turned them from masterpieces, to complete crap that alienates the users that their product targets. No longer will I remain supporting software when this is the direction taken. I would rather give my support to developers who strive for satisfaction of their target audience, and not how much crap can they cram into it to annoy people enough to purchase the "premium" edition.