Don't Ask Me No Questions
More and more I'm getting the feeling that whoever is writing technical docs for Apple Computer either:
- Doesn't think anyone is watching.
- Is bored and amusing themselves in the outlet they have.
- Knows I'm reading them and is messing with me. Understandable, I've been there with Apple Legal.
Check out #6, from the current Aperture: Avoiding issues with your External Editor (FAQ). It's right up there with "As if it were a swarm of bees" line from earlier in the year, yet lacks its whimsical charm and probably approaches unhelpful condescension if someone's crashing problems just happens to not be related to unsupported color modes. #9 is back to whimsy though, and both made me laugh.
Posted by drunkenbatmanDecember 19, 2005, at 04:50 PM
Comments (19)
Posted by: Peter da Silva at December 19, 2005 05:18 PM
Stay away as if it were a swarm of beers?
Posted by: vegangeek at December 19, 2005 05:35 PM
#9 is even better:
..."I just saved in Photoshop, but I don't see the changes in Aperture.
Take a deep breath. If applicable, loosen your grip on the caffeinated photo editing beverage for a moment...
In the amount of time that took you, your image may have finished saving, and the changes will appear in Aperture. ... "
Posted by: Arden at December 19, 2005 07:25 PM
I'd like to see what happens when someone runs into an edge case (remember those?) where they have the problem listed, but the cutesy facetious answer doesn't apply because, well, it's just not ****ing updating from Photoshop! Or it's quitting a lot when editing a supported picture externally. Or the bees have surrounded your house and are sending you blurry pictures of your dog tied up in a dank room.
Posted by: Rory at December 19, 2005 07:49 PM
At least it doesn't say to try disabling any installed haxies ;)
Posted by: Dan at December 20, 2005 01:01 AM
Or the bees have surrounded your house and are sending you blurry pictures of your dog tied up in a dank room.
is that the dog with bees in its mouth and when it barks it shoots bees at you?
Posted by: cabbey at December 20, 2005 01:57 AM
At least it doesn't say to try disabling any installed haxies ;)Or "reboot and try your opperation again."
Posted by: cabbey at December 20, 2005 02:06 AM
d'oh, wrong button... continueing previous post....
Or my personal favorite Apple messages... produced by their MPW C compiler:
"This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer
AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message."
"Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer."
"Too many errors on one line (make fewer)."
(I can seriously see that second one coming from Aperature though.)
Posted by: v-twin at December 20, 2005 05:50 AM
Here are some funny error messages from LisaDraw and LisaWrite that I dug out myself inside the disk images:
"LisaWrite could not find the message that should appear here. If you are unable to proceed, contact a qualified service representative, and mention the number nnnn. The last command was cccc."
"Due to technical difficulties, LisaWrite cannot undo the last operation this time."
"Do you really want to revert to the version saved ? To leave the document as it is now, click Cancel. Once you click OK, you will not be able to change your mind, even by choosing Undo."
It seems that the Lisa team wasn't fan of graying-out unavailable menu items and icons, as the Lisa would spit out error dialog boxes each time you tried something that you shouldn't do, check out these examples:
"Before pasting, cut or copy something to the Clipboard. You cannot paste at the selected location because the Clipboard does not have drawings or text on it at this time."
"You cannot Change Shades now because the selection already has the indicated shade." (!)
"You cannot Revert to Previous Version now because there is no previous version of the document to revert to."
"You cannot move objects off the drawing."
"You cannot enter or paste text that would end up off the paper."
I'm sure many people were annoyed by these constant reprimanding error messages, and that surely did help to seal the faith of the Lisa.
I think I should make a web page out of these, there are tons of other weird redundant error messages to be found in the Lisa Office System.
Posted by: Ashley at December 20, 2005 06:49 AM
>It seems that the Lisa team wasn't fan of graying-out unavailable menu items and icons, as the Lisa would spit out error dialog boxes each time you tried something that you shouldn't do...
I'd be interested to see more of those. Sometimes I'd like to know *why* that menu item / icon is unavailable. I think the early Mac sometimes used to give me information on this if I turned on balloon help, but there isn't any equivalent feature now.
Posted by: zoara at December 20, 2005 08:10 AM
Ages ago I read a suggestion about greying out menu items (I don't remember where, though). You could get the best of both worlds by allowing greyed out items to be selected, resulting in an error dialog.
That way, you can instantly see that the operation is not available at this time, but if you want to know why, you can easily find out.
-z-
Posted by: zoara at December 20, 2005 08:12 AM
Ugh, my previous post really needed a re-read before posting. Apologies for the awful English.
Posted by: v-twin at December 21, 2005 01:53 AM
Ashley said:>I'd be interested to see more of those. Sometimes I'd like to know *why* that menu item / icon is unavailable. I think the early Mac sometimes used to give me information on this if I turned on balloon help, but there isn't any equivalent feature now.
Posted by: at December 21, 2005 01:55 AM
oops the rest of my post was truncated... Here is my reply:
While this can be useful information, I think it would result in an overall negative experience to the user.
People are more interested to know what they can do with a program, instead of being told "You cannot do this or that" repeatedly while they are learning to use the software.
zoara, you may have a good solution, maybe a special dialog box that doesn't look like an error dialog could give you info about why a menu item is grayed-out.
But it would be as much useful to provide info/help for enabled menu items. Maybe Apple could resurrect balloon help in OS X only for menus? The problem with balloon help in OS 7-9 is that only a few developers took the time to add help for every buttons, interface items and menus. Maybe having only menus to do would be an easier task, thus its use would be more prevalent. A new name an interface would be required, maybe something like "menu help" would fit?
Ashley, you wanted to see more of these Lisa errors:
"You cannot Change Text Case now because there is no text selected. Select text to continue."
"You can paste only text over text."
"LisaWrite is having technical difficulties because the display has become too complicated for it to manage. You might try using fewer panes or having fewer LisaWrite documents on the Desktop simultaneously."
"LisaWrite cannot undo. LisaWrite cannot undo operations that were done before the window was last activated."
Ok I took enough space on this page now with those silly Lisa error messages :) I'll try to put them all on a webpage and will send the address to drunkenbatman, if he's interested but it doesn't look like he is ;)
Posted by: at December 21, 2005 02:26 AM
#8 didn't bold the question
Posted by: Peter da Silva at December 21, 2005 12:34 PM
I used to be tempted to put stuff like "Holy shit, how did you get this error message?" in for "Can't Happen" errors, but ran into a story about how that turned into a career-limiting move for the programmer. Now I can't remember the damn story, I just remember it involved calling the customer names...
Posted by: Chris at December 23, 2005 05:42 AM
Its good to see a little humor in help manuals....
Posted by: Carl H. Blomqvist at December 27, 2005 07:42 AM
With Mac OS X Jaguar came Rendezvous (now called Bonjour and also zeroconf). At that time the zeroconf.org website had a FAQ with the following Q&A.
"Should I turn off Rendezvous to improve security?
Turning off Rendezvous to improve security is like having a company policy that every employee will be hit in the face with a baseball bat every day when they come to work in the morning, to discourage thieves. All this achieves is to make life unpleasant for the legitimate employees, while the thieves continue to come in through the back door and steal stuff anyway. Initiatives like this may give management the illusion that decisive steps are being taken to combat theft, but it's really just making legitimate employees' lives unpleasant without doing anything to solve the real problem. The correct answer is to lock the doors and windows, not to beat on the innocent employees coming in through the front entrance."
- zeroconf.org
I thougth that was kind of funny.
Cheers,
Carl H. Blomqvist
memsculpt.com
Posted by: Chris at May 13, 2006 04:53 AM
found a good one re pairing the Apple Remote Control:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302545
"Pairing your remote with your iMac
1. Invade your iMac's personal space by getting up close to it (about 3 or 4 inches away)."
The guy who does the online textbook quizzes for my biology class likes to regale the users with his list of favorite beers, so this creative freedom isn't just limited to Apple... :-p