on 11/11/02 2:33 AM, Joel M. Sciamma at joelsciamma_at_compuserve.com wrote:
> Perhaps it's hard to see the problems unless you choose the right
> perspective and have already absorbed certain ideas but when you do you
> can't avoid seeing them. We all use things every day quite happily until the
> absurdities are pointed out to us, then suddenly they look silly.
Like dragging a floppy disk to the trash? I remember back in '87, when I
first encountered a Mac. I bought myself a floppy, and wrote a paper on one
of the school's Macs, and saved the file to the floppy. When I wanted to
leave, I couldn't remember how my friend had showed me how to eject the
floppy disk! I finally found the "Eject" command, and got my disk, but there
was a "ghost" of the disk still on the desktop. I didn't know what to do
with it, so I left it there. Later, I found out that when somebody else
would try to eject it properly, they would suffer from the "Please
insert..." dialog box, and be trapped, because they didn't have the
floppy--I did! :-) It was absolutely counter-intuitive to drag the icon to
the trash can. I thought that was how you deleted a floppy. _That_ made
sense, not drag it to remove it from the desktop! Of course, I discussed
this with others, and nobody ever did come up with a better analogy that the
average idiot--er, novice could figure out. :-) (Dragging off the edge of
the desktop did not occur to me at all) I think the eject command should
have been broken in two--eject and remove. In any case, this is an example
of what you described.
So, does the Newton have any of these quirks? What may they be?
-- -Jon Glass Krakow, Poland <mailto:jonglass_at_usa.net> <mailto:glasshaus5_at_aol.com> "[The] law established by the Creator, which has existed from the beginning, extends over the whole globe, is everywhere and at all times binding upon mankind. . . . and is paramount to all human control." --Rufus King, signer of the Constitution-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Dec 02 2002 - 22:02:28 EST