You are on the verge of discovering why non-chronological timelines exist :) It's not hard to imagine that there are 1200 people posting at least one thing a week that you would find interesting. The trouble is, if they also post 100 things that are not interesting, how does the software surface the interesting stuff without drowning you in the non-interesting stuff? How do you do that in a way that feels fair to the user ("I never see Friend X's posts because they're drowned out by the interesting stuff posted by the other 1199 people I follow")? It's tough!
Personally, I always use chronological. I like to be able to hop on, and mingle with whatever percent of people are online and posting at any particular time.
Replying to people right after they post is how you actually get to have conversations with people, and get to know them well, imo