Mac Forum / Country Specific / Australian Mac Group / May 2007

And there are changes, like the keystrokes to make an Alias, the
multiple selection procedures, the New window commands. The longer you
used the original Standards, the worse it is to make later changes, to
rewrite those pathways, and that DOES defeat the original object. Where
new areas like the internet are concerned, it's perhaps understandable
and inevitable, but when FileMaker decided to change everything to make
it more like Windows, a great idea was turned into nonsense.

Trying to remember which system and keyboard you're on is a nightmare!
Like a lot of people, I find myself obliged to use them all. But we
Aussies should know about all that: remember the rail system, the guage
discrepancies, when you needed to change the bogies to cross the state
lines? It's the same stupidity. All in the name of competition.

As a species we'd have never developed hunting or agriculture if we'd
used that benchmark. Hell, we'd never have got the concept of a
benchmark at all!

Emma

This doesn't agree with your original statement, as the majority of
novice computer users are actually children. Puttting any novice in
front of a computer and saying "Here's the mouse, here's the keyboard,
I'll leave you to it" is just as pointless as doing the equivalent for a
car.

Equally, if while learning to drive a car you only had one lesson a
month with an experienced driver to teach you and were on your own for
the rest of the time, you would probably never become a safe driver.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that the problem only lasts while
they learn the difference. If they never learn the difference the
problem never goes away.

Of course, removing this problem for the relative handful of users who
haven't worked it out, by making *everything* a double-click or
*everything* a single-click, would remove a great deal of functionality
that is regularly used by those who have worked it out. After all, the
double-click is just a shortcut for the default action.

If the whole double-click vs single-click thing has these people
confused, you would serve them well to not teach them to double-click,
but instead single-click and then select open from the File menu, or
what ever function is appropriate. This is the way that the program that
came with early Macs taught people how to use the interface. The long
way is always there, so you don't always have to take the shortcut.

As for the Dock, there is no point in clicking something and having
nothing happen until you double-click.

Regards,
Anthony