Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!oster
From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Init Manager, please
Message-ID: <22163@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 14 Dec 87 20:47:11 GMT
References: <338@spectrix.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 57

In article <338@spectrix.UUCP> jmm@spectrix.UUCP (John Macdonald) writes:
>I would like to see an Init Manager.  It should be able to run a
>dialogue that I will call the Init Chooser.
> [ much deleted, read it, it is interesting.]

I certainly hope Apple does _not_ waste any time writing this. What a horrible
idea!

1.) You don't need it to mark an INIT as not to be run.

If you don't want an INIT to run the next time you boot, drag it out of the
system folder!

2.) You not only don't need it to sequence INITs, but that isn't the
right way to solve the problem. The right solution is: Get that buggy
software fixed, and you already have a workaround that works while you
are waiting.

If one INIT must be run before the other, one of the two is buggy. Write a 
nasty note to the tech support people at each company, and until they fix
it, rename one of them (INITs are run in alphabetical order.)

3.) The proposed design doesn't help when you are booting from a disk
with a collection of incompatible INITs.

You may have trouble booting your machine because of an INIT conflict.
An INIT Manager that runs after the system is up won't help here.
Most INITs have the feature that if you hold down some combination of
the chift, control and option keys while the machine is booting, the
INIT will just return without doing anything. These shift-sequences
are clearly documented in the manuals.

(If you do not have access to the manual, ask yourself "why?". Some
people get software from friends and forget that they didn't pay for
it. The lack of a manual on your bookshelf when you need it is a good
reminder. (Other people have site licenses and site administrators who
aren't doing the whole job.))

Now I have shown that an INIT manager is unnecessary because it does
nothing that you can't already do. But it is not just unnecessary, it
is a positively bad idea.

It is a bad idea because it increases the complexity of the user
interface. The more things like Font/DA Movers we have, the less that
a niave user can just do in the Finder, the more confusing and hard to
use the Macintosh becomes. If there already is a good simple way of
doing something, it just confuses people to give them another way. The
Macintosh achieved its current popularity in large part because of its
ease of use.  I want the Macintosh to continue to be a success. Let's
keep it easy. If the user can do something just be moving around a few
files, then let's let him. That way he is using techniques he
already knows well, and doesn't have to remember how to use a program he uses
rarely (and face it, an INIT Chooser would not get used very often.)

--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
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