They should have made that an election issue.

Today I encountered my new favourite. Instead of formatting something you...delete it?!
So if you want to change the filesytem of a USB drive you select "delete"...makes sense. If they'd at least pick stuff that makes sense like...new filesystem.

That's my main concern. I want to explicitly select another OS that has a UI that is as removed from Windows as OS X. Fluxbox and the like are too much at the other end of the spectrum.

I could also run the experiment with people that have never or rarely used a computer and are thus not used to the Windows way at all. It's a lot harder to get a meaningful sample of subjects for this design though.

Ubuntu/Unity or Gnome Shell would both be a decent choice instead of KDE imo.

Who would have thought a sport revolving around sliding rocks on ice would be composed of Luddites?

FYI I have used every conference application out there and I find join.me to be the best one.

They all suck tho, join.me just sucks less.

there a market for one of these types of apps that doesn't require you to make an account with them?

I got a hearty speaking-to from an old dude a couple of weeks ago for standing in an officially unallowed position while he was throwing.

Even though everyone does it because it speeds the game up - this dude was not ok with it.

At this point it's like trying to figure out which human languages are most "intuitive" by teaching languages to adults who don't know speak any language. Maybe Esperanto is like totally more intuitive than English but it doesn't really matter.

If I had to guess, OS X has a more intuitive UI but Windows has more talented teams working on UI/UX. This seems contradictory until you consider that Windows has to solve harder problems (backwards compatibility with a much larger ecosystem of applications, a much larger user base, more distinct use cases, a much larger variety of hardware and form factors, enterprise user base with significant clout, etc).

Someone who doesn't know the metaphors being used is not going to find anything at all intuitive about any interface, be it a computer's or a car's. There is noting intuitive about ctrl-v being universal for paste.

In other words, there's no such thing as context-free intuitiveness. Joel Spolsky wrote about this a while back:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook...000000057.html

When would you ever start using ctrl+v by itself? I'd argue everyone learns ctrl+c to copy first, and immediately try to paste afterwards. Which makes ctrl+v quite intuitive (mainly because convenience) since you want paired-actions to be close to each other.

Only a programmer would write this.

Yeah man, the volume up and volume down keys on my radio are on the front and back of the device, respectively

My point might have been too subtle.

Edit: "Ctrl-V" not being intuitive for pasting should be a pretty safe claim to make. There are good reasons for it (proximity and Ctrl-P is printing) - but that doesn't make it intuitive. But a typical programmer trait is to dispute relatively safe claims.

I wouldn't say that's a subtle point, more a bizarre one to make given the post you quoted about how grouping similar functions makes sense intuitively

Until you know ctrl-C pasting makes no sense, and why do we need a separate key for a binary operation? Why is it any more intuitive for ctrl-C to overwrite what's already on the clipboard (clipboard, wft?) than it is for ctrl-C to paste what's on the clipboard?

It is tough to get a useful group for such a test. I feel you. People who never have or rarely do use computers won't see the point in doing task X, either.

If you could scare up a few people who use Android smart phones (ie. neither win nor iOS), but hardly ever touch a computer, now that would make it interesting.

Not a big fan of that, either.

Assuming we are talking about the disk utility, it does make sense, though. Calling the entry point "Erase" is kinda weird until you meet someone who tried to format and then are pissed off that all data is lost because it does not say so explicitly. (No one reads prompts, so I won't let that count.)
That and the fact that you can erase the drive without reformatting, too.

With regards to the prompt comment from above: I find it fairly amusing that most people refuse to read prompts/popups. They just sigh in frustration then aim for the highlighted button and hit it.

I have a theory for why that is a standard reaction - no hard evidence, though. I believe there are just too many modal dialogs which is quite ironic considering iOS and OS X are designed to avoid that at any cost. The exact same reasoning behind why it is such a pain to get any window to stay on top on a Mac.

because then what ctrl-C does is completely arbitrary.

it's nonsense to try to remember, "Yes, I have something copied to my clipboard, so now I need to figure out a new combo for copying stuff to my clipboard, which may do something entirely different when the clipboard is empty, so it's tough to say what my results will be any given time I press these key combos"

Quite an understatement there. Just googled "vi editor is intuitive" and found:

https://danielmiessler.com/blog/diff...-vi-vim-emacs/

<3 that, cb. Thanks for the giggle.

So true. It's not just "disputing safe claims," though -- it's a specific type of contrarianness which involves pointing out the hidden logic of things, secret systems behind the seemingly arbitary. I wonder if it just boils down to bragging that you see what others don't. The arguments also often have a "you're not wrong, walter, you're just an a**hole" quality -- technically correct but completely missing the point.

The phenomenon also seems connected to mathematicians' and programmers' love of puns and wordplay, specifically the variety based on literal interpretation of language not intended to be taken literally. My highschool math teacher, when asked if he'd gotten a haircut, invariably replied, "No, I got them all cut"

That's a pretty standard unfunny dad-joke. I doubt it has much to do with him being a math teacher.