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Vox Pop: What default settings would you change?
Merlin Mann | Aug 21 2007
As I am wont to do, I was thinking out loud on Twitter this morning.
I'm convinced that, for better or worse, a lot of computer-related habits come straight out of using the default settings. For example a stock Mail.app install checks your email every 5 minutes (I reset mine to 'Manual') and, without interdiction, Apple's mail program will also create all your new messages as "Rich Text" (Nuh uh. Mine? 'Plain Text'). And then, in some cases, even if you want to do things differently, you have to swim upstream to do so. In the case above, I can't set iCal or gCal's default to anything but 1 hour (any more than I can autoset multiple alarms1). God only knows what poor John Gruber would give to have Mail.app more easily let people quit top-posting. The Question to You:What default settings would you love to change in popular applications? Taken a step further, what excellent habits could be taught to users by looking at defaults as something beyond familiarity and day one ease-of-use? Could the aggressive use of smart or personalized defaults create a generation of short-meeting-makers and intersperse-responders? 68 Comments
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 @Britt: Amen to that! ...Submitted by Tom (not verified) on August 21, 2007 - 7:30am.
@Britt: Amen to that! The only addition I would make would be to have the default menu selection be "Play Movie", which I could get my either hitting the select button or by clicking on the Play button on my remote. Insert Disk -- slight wait -- Play. This isn't a default setting, but I wish more people left phone messages like this: "My name is X, my phone number is Y, and I'm calling about (short description here). Blah blah blah." rather than the all-too-typical: "Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah. This is (unintelligble name), and my number is (way too fast number)" » POSTED IN:
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