[cctalk] Old UNIX Systems

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk- bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Liam Proven Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 6:48 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: [cctalk] Old UNIX Systems On 5 June 2013 00:30, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote: hell to shut it down. I've fallen victim to the "trying to be too clever" PEBCAK error myself, a good few times. (E.g. I spent *ages* trying to work out the command to tell my first Apple Newton to shut down. Eventually I consulted the manual. Press the on/off button, it said. I think I actually blushed.) I tried to learn from it. I don't always win. For Simplicity Computers, I argued hard against there being a shutdown option in the GUI. I said, just tell 'em to press the power switch. I lost. We added one. It's completely redundant. It's like a "sleep" option on a notebook. You don't need one. Close the lid.

Sure, provide an option to turn this off, for instance if you want to be able to use the machine with its lid shut - but most people don't need it. once tried to figure out how to use twitter in windows *...it took us 30 minutes and we never figured it out. His mother figured it out in 5. That says something...but I'm not sure what. I think this is something really quite profound right here, actually. There is a new model of human-computer interaction evolving, right now, today, in the world of phones and tablets. It's more direct, less mediated. Instead of right-clicking and double-clicking and rooting through menus, it's direct: press here, then press here, then press here.