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From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Notification Manager (was Poor Mac Design Philosophy)
Message-ID: <21247@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Mon, 12-Oct-87 06:19:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.21247
Posted: Mon Oct 12 06:19:23 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Oct-87 04:42:48 EDT
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Keywords: Mac design blinking apple

Apple knows that the blinking apple from the alarm clock is pretty lousy.
There was supposed to be a new manager built into the system toolbox for
prgrams to use. It didn't get finished in time for System 4.1, but it is
coming soon to a System file near you:

The Notification Manager.

This geezer is a uniform way for asynchronous tasks (like mail and reminder
service programs) to tell the operating system that it should try to get
the user's attention.  The operating system puts up a dialog, or plays a tune,
or emits a wolf whistle to get the user's attention to a "click here" button.
When the user clicks, he gets more information.

I'm glad the folks at apple are figuring out a standard user interface for
this kind of thing. I'm glad it is getting done, and I'm glad I don't have
to do it.

It was probably delayed to make real sure that it looked good in the
multi-finder environment.