Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!andrew.cmu.edu!jk3t+ From: jk3t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jonathan King) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Intuitive? Hah! (now just talking trash) Message-ID: Date: 21 Mar 88 21:16:00 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 53 In-Reply-To: <116@scolex> arthure@sco.COM(Arthur Evans) writes (about unintuitive Mac interface): >I agree completely -- I agonized over the concept of >removing a file on the mac for like half an hour ... >The way it works just doesn't make sense to me. Why is it >intuitive that moving an icon onto one icon (a disk or >folder icon) *copies* a file, but moving it onto a garbage >can icon *deletes* it? Intuition is in the mind of the >intuiter, I guess ... Actually the story is a little stranger than that. Moving an icon around on the naked desktop just moves the icon around--that's all. Moving an icon into a window (i.e. part of the directory hierarchy) simply copies the file represented by the icon into the window (directory) if it is not already there. This rule also applies to all non-application icons (which could be expanded into windows) *except for the trashcan*. When you drag an icon (file) into the trashcan, you aren't copying it, and you aren't deleting it either. You are basically *moving it*. You delete it by launching an application (implicitly deleting the file) or emptying the trash can (explicitly deleting the file). Moving an icon into the trash is thus a bit like moving it somewhere else on the desktop with the strange side effect that the icon (file) is now "deleteable". When I first got my Mac, it took me a while to realize what was going on with this, but I have a hunch this is more a problem for people who have used other operating systems before using a Mac. Indeed, most of the "naive" users I have seen using the Mac don't really seem to mind this at all, probably because they have an intuitive notion about what a trashcan does (you toss something in, it goes away). This notion is so strong that I can recall users who accidentally threw an icon (file) in the trash and thought it was gone until I simply "opened" the trash can and plucked it out again. The great exception to all this, of course, is putting a *disk* icon in the trash, which ejects the disk, (gets the icon off the desktop) but doesn't do anything with the files the disk contains. (Novice Mac users tend to shriek in horror when you eject their precious data disks in this manner--try it sometime! :-)) @begin(moral) Is this a consistent interface? Not really. Does intuitive necessarily mean consistent? Probably not. I have seen many computer neophytes do useful work on a Mac within five minutes of sitting down. I cannot say the same thing about most other PCs, and I certainly can't say the same thing about your average Unix box. This is the most amazing feature of the Mac. The fact that this same interface could possibly be something experts find *worth arguing about* is a tribute to people at Apple and Xerox PARC. (This is, of course, Alan Kay's real point, I think.) @end(moral) jking lowly grad student at CMU psych. dept.