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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!hplabs!sdcrdcf!dennisg
From: dennisg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Dennis E. Griesser)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: A Finder Suggestion
Message-ID: <2197@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Jul-85 22:21:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2197
Posted: Thu Jul 25 22:21:36 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 02:23:50 EDT
References: <251@sask.UUCP>
Reply-To: dennisg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Dennis E. Griesser)
Distribution: net
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 32
Summary: 

In article <251@sask.UUCP> custead@sask.UUCP (Der cuss) writes:
>I suggest that dragging the system disk to the trash
>should cause a shutdown and reset.
>This is an obvious extension to what happens when other
>disks are dragged to the trash, and is the only reasonable
>interpretation for dragging the system disk to the trash.
>It also gives a meaning to a currently undefined operation, and
>avoids a menu selection operation.
>
>The only objection to this is that it would cause other
>disks to be ejected even though they were not explicitly
>selected.  I can live with this.

I can't!  Apple, please don't do this...

A shutdown does a lot of drastic things and does them in an irreversible
way.  Suppose that I have a couple of newly created files in a RAM-disk.
Shutting down the system will attempt to eject the RAM-disk (which should not
work if the RAM-disk software was written properly).  Then the Mac resets
itself and the RAM-disk contents are lost anyway!

This would be especially galling if the user had forgotten which disk was
the startup (or Mac haad changed its mind about which is the startup) and 
figured that this one was "safe".  Then again, the Finder
likes to put the startup in the upper right corner, so if you never move
disks around... naah.

Granted, a system shutdown is a reasonable thing to infer from throwing away
the startup.  BUT drastic measures should never be selected by inference.

Now, if Apple wants to put a "shutdown&reset" button on the dialog box for
"can't toss startup", that would be OK by me.