Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!sunybcs!boulder!fozzard
From: fozzard@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Richard Fozzard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Gatekeeper Problems!!! (binhex/Stuffit/Packit)
Summary: Remember why the Mac was created...
Keywords: error bug dunno help
Message-ID: <7492@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 17 Mar 89 04:32:32 GMT
References: <4774@hubcap.UUCP> <27274@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: fozzard@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Richard Fozzard)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 23

>A practical lesson in why you should never run software you don't
>understand. This isn'g a problem with the System software OR GateKeeper.
>It's pilot error. Read the documentation!

Let's not insult people on this net. Remember the Mac is the first popular
computer to recognize that users do not always want or have time to read
manuals.  Thus the phrase "pilot error" should be changed to "non-intuitive
interface".  

Documentation SHOULD be read when there is a problem, but on
a complicated system with much interacting software (as with INITs, etc.),
it may be difficult to determine what program is causing trouble.  More
to the point, GateKeeper should have put up a message saying something like
"Operation XXX being attempted - not allowed" (as does Vaccine), and StuffIt
should error-check crucial operations and respond with "Operation XXX
failed".  

This putting the user first is what excited most of us about the Mac in the
first place.  The old ways of writing a program just to perform a function, 
and let the user beware should be falling by the wayside.  With the number of
different software programs used by individual users rising exponentially, it
seems, we programmers are need to think more about what the user may need
than expect him/her to figure us out.