Sorry for the lame title - We've had a harrying day, so I'll use y'all for some therapy, and just maybe sharing the story will avert some disasters.
- - -
My wife's preparing to hand over her job to her substitute in a few weeks, and started in preparation to clean out her work computer (MBA with Lion).
What she needed to accomplish:
- sort all the work-related files into different folders, based on who takes over what tasks
- remove (copy & delete) personal items
- remove (copy & delete) confidential files related to her post as steward
She started doing this, sorting all the files into different folders under "documents" in the finder sidebar. After properly organizing all her files (some thousands), she started looking for stray files in other places.
"Oh my god", she thought, here's a lot of them when clicking the "all my files" -button in the sidebar.
To cut a long story short: after convincing herself, that all relevant files were present in her folders under "documents", she promptly deleted all files in "all my files" ... And you can guess the rest.
Thanks in no small part to her organization's IT supergirl, the situation was remedied, but it was a close call (another long story).
Right now you're probably thinking "Man, what a dumb broad." or something like that...
I disagree. I've worked in IT, and have even been desktop support for some years, and I've encountered a lot of dumb users - and in my opinion my wife does not fit the description. I'm also somewhat savvy with UI design and am of the opinion, that what happened to my wife could happen to many...
What we have here is a sad combination of some criminally bad UI design by Apple, exacerbated by a translation hickup.
First look at the placement of "all my files" (I'm borrowing a screenshot)
So when you do not have airdrop there in the sidebar, you have a list of N quick links to REAL folders on the HD, preceded by a button launching a search view. Let me spell this out: There's no way you could see the same file on your desktop and in, say, "movies", unless you have the file two times. So if you'd see the same file in two folders, you could delete one and still have a copy. OK, those of you with Lion handy (I don't), click the all my files -button, look at the resulting view in list view and tell me an above average user would not mistake it for "just another folder".
Second, I admit that "all my files" is pretty obvious, especially using hindsight, but my wife (as well as many others) is not using OS X in english. She's using it in the national language (finnish) and is not even allowed to change the language. Guess what "all my files" is translated to in finnish? Well, as you probably don't read finnish, the button's finnish title translates roughly to "own files". And I am pretty sure there are some even less unequivocal translations out there.
When I asked her what she had though "own files" meant, was "all those files, which are not automatically synced to the employer's system".
Hadn't she noticed that you can't save files there? No. And again, I understand that. In fact, I used Lion for 18 months, day in and day out, and had not even noticed the whole darn feature.
In fact, even today, I still do not understand what on earth anyone would want to use that feature for, at least without defining some more precise and useful search parameters - emulating a "all my files" search on this machine results "more than 10 000 items" - in fact a whopping 840 000 items.
I repeat, we had a brush with a major disaster (something someone'd need to take up with her IT-department), but we only lost one day, some nerves and gained a bunch of grey hair.
I welcome your comments, but please understand I will not take kindly to personal insults toward my wife (insult me if you must insult someone).
RGDS,
- - -
My wife's preparing to hand over her job to her substitute in a few weeks, and started in preparation to clean out her work computer (MBA with Lion).
What she needed to accomplish:
- sort all the work-related files into different folders, based on who takes over what tasks
- remove (copy & delete) personal items
- remove (copy & delete) confidential files related to her post as steward
She started doing this, sorting all the files into different folders under "documents" in the finder sidebar. After properly organizing all her files (some thousands), she started looking for stray files in other places.
"Oh my god", she thought, here's a lot of them when clicking the "all my files" -button in the sidebar.
To cut a long story short: after convincing herself, that all relevant files were present in her folders under "documents", she promptly deleted all files in "all my files" ... And you can guess the rest.
Thanks in no small part to her organization's IT supergirl, the situation was remedied, but it was a close call (another long story).
Right now you're probably thinking "Man, what a dumb broad." or something like that...
I disagree. I've worked in IT, and have even been desktop support for some years, and I've encountered a lot of dumb users - and in my opinion my wife does not fit the description. I'm also somewhat savvy with UI design and am of the opinion, that what happened to my wife could happen to many...
What we have here is a sad combination of some criminally bad UI design by Apple, exacerbated by a translation hickup.
First look at the placement of "all my files" (I'm borrowing a screenshot)
So when you do not have airdrop there in the sidebar, you have a list of N quick links to REAL folders on the HD, preceded by a button launching a search view. Let me spell this out: There's no way you could see the same file on your desktop and in, say, "movies", unless you have the file two times. So if you'd see the same file in two folders, you could delete one and still have a copy. OK, those of you with Lion handy (I don't), click the all my files -button, look at the resulting view in list view and tell me an above average user would not mistake it for "just another folder".
Second, I admit that "all my files" is pretty obvious, especially using hindsight, but my wife (as well as many others) is not using OS X in english. She's using it in the national language (finnish) and is not even allowed to change the language. Guess what "all my files" is translated to in finnish? Well, as you probably don't read finnish, the button's finnish title translates roughly to "own files". And I am pretty sure there are some even less unequivocal translations out there.
When I asked her what she had though "own files" meant, was "all those files, which are not automatically synced to the employer's system".
Hadn't she noticed that you can't save files there? No. And again, I understand that. In fact, I used Lion for 18 months, day in and day out, and had not even noticed the whole darn feature.
In fact, even today, I still do not understand what on earth anyone would want to use that feature for, at least without defining some more precise and useful search parameters - emulating a "all my files" search on this machine results "more than 10 000 items" - in fact a whopping 840 000 items.
I repeat, we had a brush with a major disaster (something someone'd need to take up with her IT-department), but we only lost one day, some nerves and gained a bunch of grey hair.
I welcome your comments, but please understand I will not take kindly to personal insults toward my wife (insult me if you must insult someone).
RGDS,