::scr tell me why you're using OSX, you big geek

[Piers Cawley]

simon wistow <simon@thegestalt.org> writes:

[... Discussion of one rodent button or two ...]

> But they've added confusion to the interface in MacOS 7 (I think) when
> they introduced symlinks/aliases/shortcuts [DELETE as appropriate] which
> have no real world metaphor (apart from cross referencing I suppose).
> Plus they let you plug in two button mouses - couldn't they have had a
> control panel option that was off by default that let you turn on dual
> button support and then shipped their laptops with two buttons. Although
> the argument here is that laptops have their meeces on the laptop anyway
> so Ctrl-Clicking is probably easier than right clicking.
>
> Anyway, my real point is that people argue that this could confuse users
> so they haven't done it. Which is fair enough. I mean if they argued for
> ages over symlinks being confusing then ...

I used to be a mac support engineer and I remember the confusion that
aliases engendered. People seemed to 'get' them in one context whilst
being utterly confused by them in others. And different users were
confused in different contexts. 

People got confused when apps got complex enough that you couldn't
just move them from folder to folder, or (later) when you couldn't
just move the folder they were in.

People are apparently still confused about the breakdown of the 'one
folder/one window' rule, but I thought that rule got broken when
system 7's hierarchical view came along...

Mac users do tend to get confused when the interface changes. But it
could be argued (and it seems that it *is* argued by mac users) that
that confusion is at least in part because the changes are moving away
from a strong, unified metaphor by introducing exceptions that you
have to take into account. 

It seems that the apple engineers were right to worry.

> And then they go give users, who they expect to be confused by right
> mouse clicking and symlinks a Bash prompt.

I didn't think they got the bash prompt by default, you have to say
'yes, I really know what I'm doing' at the install stage to get one of
those don't you?

-- 
Piers

   "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a language in
    possession of a rich syntax must be in need of a rewrite."
         -- Jane Austen?