Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!apple!well!xanthian
From: xanthian@well.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: another 1.4 wish
Message-ID: <13304@well.UUCP>
Date: 24 Aug 89 03:13:55 GMT
References: <13227@well.UUCP> <525@tardis.Tymnet.COM> <1364@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US>
Reply-To: xanthian@well.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 38

Well, I read three responses to my request to change "RAM DISK:" to either
"RAM_DISK:" or back to "RAM:"; I liked best the one that started "I agree
with Kent completely" of course. ;-)

I can state with certainty that with my short term only memory, and return
to read this group only when I'm unemployed but flush, I can be used as a
pretty good approximation of a naive user in cases like this.

I _tried_ RELABELing RAM DISK:, and got back and error message.  Never in my
wildest imaginings did it occur to me that I would have to do it before
the workbench got loaded.  Now I will.

Never the less, Andy and other CATS types, this is a bug, not a feature,
since it is guaranteed to cause grief to old software, and to new users,
and most of all (I'm shouting here, listen up ;-) IT WASN'T NECESSARY!

I hope Carolyn got the copy of my letter to mwm I cc'ed to her; the gist was,
if you don't start making things lots, lots easier for the incredibly naive,
barely-ept user (me for example), your market penetration with the Amiga is
going to stay low, or decrease.  Word of mouth from the brand new owner to
friends and relations is your biggest sales tool, or greatest sales liability,
depending on what impression you make right at the start.  Take a long,
introspective look at what put the Mac in offices all over the country where
it was forbidden by official policy, and made it the success it is today.

The answer?  It did what people wanted, it did it right out of the box,
and it made the user feel in charge of the machine.  Excusing "features"
that cause the user grief on the basis that "the other guy's software is
broken" is the surest way to take Commodore right back to chapter 11.

Don't tell me it isn't your fault.  Don't tell me some arcane way to get
around it.  Don't tell me it is no big deal.  Fix it.

well!xanthian
Kent, the man from xanth, now just another echo from The Well.

(And by the way, if relabel works for RAM:, it should always work, as
should diskchange.)