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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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 The Dock should, by default,...Submitted by Brett (not verified) on August 21, 2007 - 11:57am.
The Dock should, by default, be placed on either the right- or lefthand side of the screen. All Macs now ship with widescreen displays. Vertical pixels are more scarce than horizontal ones. Especially since on-screen documents are often taller than they are wide, it makes no sense to monopolize those precious vertical pixels with the Dock. I mean, it's as if the widescreens were designed for the Dock to be . . . docked on a left or right edge. It's the first thing I change when I get a new Mac. » POSTED IN:
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