guido@mcvax.uucp (Guido van Rossum) (11/19/86)
In article <4317@ut-ngp.UUCP> werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) writes: >well, I have no complaints about the program 'working', however, I must say >that it is very cryptic about what it is doing. When I ran it against my >DataFrame that could not be backed up successfully by a LoDown tape-drive, >Disk First Aid reported that "something is wrong - do you want me to fix it?" I can say something in defense of Apple here. I'm sure they made the message vague on purpose (I would hardly call this cryptic), with the average level of expertise of most users of the program in mind. For someone without much hardware experience (even me, sometimes), error messages like (I'm making this up): BLOCKS REFERENCED IN NO FILE (5067) -- ADD TO FREE LIST? are actually more cryptic and less understandable than "something is wrong - do you want me to fix it?" I agree that the program should have an "expert mode" where it reports what is wrong in language understandable to a technician; but the default behaviour should address laymen. Furthermore (here you may laugh at my gullibility) I expect that Apple knows very well that it should only try to fix things when it is absolutely sure they can be fixed. As with the mythical encounter with a lion, where actually the lion is as afraid of you as you are of the lion, I expect that Apple tests such a program like mad, our of fear that something is wrong with it, it thrashes someone's perfectly good data, and Apple gets a lawsuit. Even without a lawsuit, publicity about this could only be negative for the company. Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@mcvax.uucp>