Protecting your computer from yourself
Posted on April 26, 2004
Filed Under Macintosh
“Buzz”:http://www.scifihifi.com/weblog/mac/ZeldmanPanther.html says:
bq. However, I would argue that becoming the kind of person who “mods” his OS is a lot like becoming the kind of person who “mods” his car: it demands more of an awareness about what you’re doing to the machine, a more active involvement in its maintenance, a certain tolerance for potential downtime, and an understanding that Honda (or Apple, as it were) is not necessarily to be blamed if something goes wrong.
He is absolutely right. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize where things are going and the potential for trouble down the line when they install “haxies” and the like. So, as Buzz alludes later in his entry Apple should have some responsibility in making sure that the upgrade experience is as painless as possible for those users who like to customize but may not understand the implications.
How about the way Dreamweaver handles its upgrades? When you upgrade your version of Dreamweaver, you get a warning dialog that explains that extensions you’ve installed will not be retained in the upgrade and it gives you the opportunity to make a backup of you configuration files first. Wouldn’t it be great if OS X, in the process of installing its incremental bug-fix upgrades, popped up a box that said something to the effect of “You have made modifications to your system preferences that may cause problems in this upgrade. Would you like to back up your modifications first and perform this upgrade without 3rd party system preferences installed?” There could then be the option to make a backup of your modified system preferences and delete all 3rd party installations before upgrading.
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Your preference files rarely cause problems.
I know that. I was talking about Haxies and add-on System Preferences (such as Synergy, mouse drivers, VersionCue, etc.) I probably have my terminology wrong so I apologize for any confusion.
Actually, preference files can (and do) cause problems. When people enable the various undocumented and unsupported options for things like Exposé and the Dock, they’re configuring their systems in ways that might not work correctly after an update.