What was the key to successfully learning to drive, ride a bike, or speak a foreign language? Confidence, and it’s every bit as important in computing, and in macOS.
alert
How to stop yourself mistakenly pressing the keyboard shortcut to quit an app (Command-Q) when all you want to do is close a window (Command-W).
The aspect ratio of my iPhone’s display is under half, and it’s pressed to display more than 5 words in each line of text. Yet Macs now use similar vertical alerts as those in iOS.
Originally alert boxes, these have brought us information, warnings and errors in different formats. Although they should be rare, macOS has used them increasingly, sometimes uninformatively.
We’re swimming upstream in a raging torrent of alerts and notifications. Rather than clicking through everything, macOS should lead by example and do what we did with traffic signs.
Are you getting over-notified? Who’s in charge – you the user, or macOS? Getting control of notifications, both local and remote.
Staple functions for scripts, it is vital that they are readily accessible from Swift if it is to be used for scripting.
The Eclectic Light Company 