I'm sure I'm not the only textmate user who finds Sublime Text hideous. I'd sooner bite the bullet on vim if I'm going the ugly route.
Personally I'm getting a bit tired of reading about how people think that TextMate is done and how we should move on. TextMate 1.5 is still my text editor of choice, it simply fit how I work. Honestly I would be happy if TextMate 1.5 is just maintained as is.
There's a lot of complaining about TextMate which I simply don't understand. Split screen editing, really, you care about that? I just open two windows. More frequent update? Why? Do you really need a new feature in your text editor every week? "The new icon is ugly"... No, it's cute, but also not important.
The main thing that Allan did wrong was starting to talk about TextMate 2 to early. It would have been much better to have said nothing and just release an alpha or beta when he was ready. People a fascinated by new versions for some reason, they apparently want version two, just because two is higher than one. Perhaps if Allan hadn't said anything people wouldn't feel to entitled to a new version (wrongly entitled in my opinion).
Also, let's try to remember that it is actually a pretty complex piece of software that a lot of us will be getting for free.
As for Sublime Text, as a replacement for TextMate, yeah, I pick Vim a head of Sublime any day. Then again I would pick Idle a head of Sublime Text.
For example opening multiple windows works alright until I want to Find in Project at which point I have to switch to the project window. A minor annoyance but day in day out that gets old fast.
Hell yes I care.
"""More frequent update? Why? Do you really need a new feature in your text editor every week?"""
No, I just need tons of features 1.5.x lacks. I could care less if they are delivered all in one release of a couple of them in frequent updates, but as we've seen "infrequent releases" doesn't work for Alan.
Seriously though, I agree that some incremental fixes to Textmate 1.5 might have been a saner option than a full rewrite. I for one did not wait and moved on in the meantime.
I repeat, what's the complaint?
TextMate2 is a bit rough, yes, but I don't expect better from a prerelease. As it is, it's more than enough to offer me hope that it'll be finished and that it'll be a good product.
Also, my Textmate regularly crashed whenever I tried to open something larger than a meg or two.
Cure for ST2 ugliness: https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme
Initial impression with ST2 is like playing jigsaw puzzles, it's a mix of mouse clicks and some weird text editing until you're comfortable with Cmd+Shift+P. I remembered my experience trying to adjust font size went on like this: Open preferences, hey wait what is default global settings? user file settings? Hm, let's try this one... wait I have to edit settings file? I better use Emacs then! Where I can find all available configuration options? Google search? Oops, that's for Sublime Text 1. ARGH!
Even though I do enjoy using it now, it still feel like playing jigsaw puzzles but with majority of pieces in its place. (Like recently: wait, ST2 can do split screens? Hmm, Cmd+Shift+P split... nothing? Let's try Google... none tell me how to enable it. 20 minutes later Ah, it's in the View/Layout!) I can see the whole picture now, just missing a little bits here and there.
Another issue with ST2 is that, like you mentioned, for whatever reason, it's very hard to find answers to your questions via Google. You always either end up at some release notes that tell you the feature you want exists, but not how to use it, or at some forum posting from 200 years ago that's wildly out of date, and full of the usual wildly-stupid comments one finds in most internet forums. There are number of features that I now use daily that I only found out about through word-of-mouth. (To be fair, this last part is probably true for many people with many editors: "Oh, you can do $x in $EDITOR? Show me how.")
Actually, I always found Textmate the best editor for reading and small edits. When I do huge work on a file, I switch to Vim by habit.
Having tried Textmate 2, I will continue to do so - its still very snappy, especially now that it can handle remote folders fine.