Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: using the control panel Message-ID: <7082@hoptoad.uucp> Date: 24 Apr 89 17:53:17 GMT References: <2734@carthage.cs.swarthmore.edu> <1528@petsd.UUCP> <2646@cps3xx.UUCP> <859@marvin.Solbourne.COM> Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco Lines: 40 In article <2646@cps3xx.UUCP> rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang) writes: >About daylight savings time...unless Apple is willing to release a new >version of the system software every year, you can't automate it. >When DST begins and ends depends on the whim of Congress. In article <859@marvin.Solbourne.COM> dce@Solbourne.com (David Elliott) writes: >I'll agree that you can't automate the software to the point that >you can slap the software on your machine and forget about it >and it will always be right, but I will not agree that you have to >release new software every year to solve this problem. > >Neither will my Mac, which shifted to DST right on time this >year, and will shift right back in October (or whenever). If >Congress decides to change this, I'll just pull down my Control >Panel and change the configuration of the Daylight cdev. What an enormous improvement in the user interface. Rather than setting the clock forward or back one hour twice a year, you get to reconfigure an automatic clock setter whenever Congress says so. The reconfiguration is obviously far more complex than resetting the clock (I was talking about this with a UNIX jock lately -- his attitude: "Let the idiots get a programmer to reconfigure it for them -- there's enough programmers to go around" or words to that effect). Most people follow the news carefully enough to notice the DST reminders they always give at the time, and there are plenty of other social cues; few people follow the news closely enough to know in advance when Congress has decided to change DST for the year. In short, you've got an enormous step backwards in user friendliness. Remember, the chief principle making the Mac easy to use is analogies with commonly understood real-life mechanisms, like folders. Making the clock work in a different way from every "real" clock flies in the face of this principle, with the predictable result of trashing user friendliness. -- Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and neccessaries of life provided for them." -- George Fitzhugh, CANNIBALS ALL! OR, SLAVES WITHOUT MASTERS, 1857