<story><title>Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?</title><url>https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/06/whatever-happened-to-ui-affordances/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>logbiscuitswave</author><text>Not sure if you’re being serious or not, but these stories seem awfully apocryphal to me.&lt;p&gt;I can’t imagine anybody - not even a total novice - running away from their computer upon seeing a cartoony image of a bomb. It reminds me of the made-up but often used story of terrified audiences running for the exits upon watching a film of a train for the first time.</text></item><item><author>DonHopkins</author><text>The original Mac would pop up a dialog with a threatening icon of a bomb with a lit fuse, whenever it crashed!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bomb_(icon)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bomb_(icon)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;The Bomb icon is a symbol designed by Susan Kare that was displayed inside the System Error alert box when the &amp;quot;classic&amp;quot; Macintosh operating system (pre-Mac OS X) had a crash which the system decided was unrecoverable. It was similar to a dialog box in Windows 9x that said &amp;quot;This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.&amp;quot; Since the classic Mac OS offered little memory protection, an application crash would often take down the entire system.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the Mac&amp;#x27;s bomb dialog could cause naive users to jump up out of their seat and run away from the computer in terror, because they though it was going to explode!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw&amp;amp;ab_channel=CaitlynMacCabe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw&amp;amp;ab_channel=Caitl...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;And Window&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down&amp;quot; error message was just as bad: it could cause naive users to fear they might get arrested for accidentally doing something illegal!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amatecha</author><text>Yeah, nah, it&amp;#x27;s not an exaggeration.  Even as a kid the first time I saw &amp;quot;illegal opeation&amp;quot; on a Windows machine I thought it meant something actually unlawful had occurred.&lt;p&gt;In the early 90&amp;#x27;s there was a prank Extension for Mac OS called &amp;quot;Radiation&amp;quot; and a partner application called &amp;quot;Trigger&amp;quot;.  Trigger would allow you to pop up a system alert dialog box over the Appletalk network on whichever machine had the Radiation extension installed, allowing some nice pranking opportunities.  The default message was &amp;quot;The radiation shield on your Macintosh has failed.  Please step back five feet.&amp;quot; …  It worked, and some people would literally jump away from their desk when they saw this message!  Ahh, the good old days hahaha :)&lt;p&gt;(If you&amp;#x27;re still skeptical, I can probably dig up a copy of this software since I surely have it on an old disk somewhere, but of course I can&amp;#x27;t prove people moved away from the computer -- there&amp;#x27;s only my anecdote to go by here haha)</text></comment>
<story><title>Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?</title><url>https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/06/whatever-happened-to-ui-affordances/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>logbiscuitswave</author><text>Not sure if you’re being serious or not, but these stories seem awfully apocryphal to me.&lt;p&gt;I can’t imagine anybody - not even a total novice - running away from their computer upon seeing a cartoony image of a bomb. It reminds me of the made-up but often used story of terrified audiences running for the exits upon watching a film of a train for the first time.</text></item><item><author>DonHopkins</author><text>The original Mac would pop up a dialog with a threatening icon of a bomb with a lit fuse, whenever it crashed!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bomb_(icon)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bomb_(icon)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;The Bomb icon is a symbol designed by Susan Kare that was displayed inside the System Error alert box when the &amp;quot;classic&amp;quot; Macintosh operating system (pre-Mac OS X) had a crash which the system decided was unrecoverable. It was similar to a dialog box in Windows 9x that said &amp;quot;This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.&amp;quot; Since the classic Mac OS offered little memory protection, an application crash would often take down the entire system.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the Mac&amp;#x27;s bomb dialog could cause naive users to jump up out of their seat and run away from the computer in terror, because they though it was going to explode!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw&amp;amp;ab_channel=CaitlynMacCabe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw&amp;amp;ab_channel=Caitl...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;And Window&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down&amp;quot; error message was just as bad: it could cause naive users to fear they might get arrested for accidentally doing something illegal!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>npilk</author><text>I remember seeing this dialog as a kid (probably ~5 years old) and being scared the computer would blow up. Actually, for years, I assumed I must have dreamt it.</text></comment>