For crying out loud
Check out the ridiculous hubbub at Matt’s place after a throng of Mac fanatics descended upon him in response to John’s article, riling up the Windows fanatics in the audience. Now examine the dialogs in question:
Now consider some simple truths:
- Both could do to word themselves more specifically to the situation at hand: ‘moving’, ‘copying’, and ‘replacing’ are not interchangeable terms to human beings.
- The common computer user does not read dialog boxes… and if they do, reading doesn’t guarantee comprehension.
- It was foolhardy of Matt to assume that a button labeled ‘Replace’ meant ‘Merge’, even if Windows has conditioned him to believe this is the expected behavior.
- Neither default behavior (entire-folder replacement or file-by-file copy-and-replace) is better than the other. Arguing otherwise is a dead end, they are merely different.
- Old habits die hard.
- It is patently ridiculous that a destructive operation such as this cannot be undone on the Mac.
- Zealots on either side of the fence are, at the best of times, underinformed morons who need to check their facts before they hit the comment form.