Left Versus Right
I have been purgatoriously forced to use Maribeth's Windows laptop recently, causing her to use the iBook more. She noticed that the Mac and the PC have different conventions as to whether the affirmative or negative response button goes on the left or right.However I have just witnessed something more disturbing. First the Windows laptop came up with a pop-up window saying, "Since this is a Windows machine, it is necessary to perpetually carry out something called Registry First Aid. Would you like to update First Aid now? Yes / No." The window went away but soon returned with, "You are probably not familiar with this being a Mac user, but cleaning the registry is absolutely essential. Frankly, your data is probably already corrupt. Are you sure you wish to cancel this important activity? Yes / No." Yes, I'm sure! Then a few seconds later there was a third window, "Okay, then in the face of your intransigence we will proceed to clean the registry using normal, non-updated Registry First Aid. Do you agree? Yes / No."
You see what happened there? Because of the use of phrases like "are you sure you wish to cancel", the proper button to express the natural response of "get your damn Registry First Aid away from me and my family" changed from left to right! Twice over the course of about ten seconds!
posted by Richard Mason @ Tuesday, July 12, 2005
1 Comments:
Windows users know that you can get out of traps like that by hitting the Escape key.
I've been meaning to uninstall that pesky Registry First Aid for a while, but it didn't annoy me nearly as much as it seems to have annoyed you.
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