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. Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu