The Macalope fired up VoodooPad this afternoon to jot down some ideas and was presented with the “New version available” dialog box, prompting him to visit VoodooPad’s web site to download it.
That in and of itself wouldn’t be that unusual, except the Macalope wasn’t connected to the Internet at the time. So how did VoodooPad know there was a new version?
That is some powerful voodoo.
UPDATE: VoodooPad developer Gus Mueller provides the answer in comments:
VP checked that there was an update via a background thread the previous time you launched, and then the next time you launched it remembered that and let you know.
The reason why VP doesn’t let you know right away is because the HIG says not to. Something about annoying the user unpredictably.
Awwwww. And here the Macalope was hoping Flying Meat had implemented a new class called NSatan or something*. What a letdown!
Also, Gus’ answer begs the question as to what the HIG says about annoying the user predictably. That, apparently, is OK. Which would explain Mail.
* Little Cocoa joke there.
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8 Responses:
October 10th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
VP checked that there was an update via a background thread the previous time you launched, and then the next time you launched it remembered that and let you know.
The reason why VP doesn’t let you know right away is because the HIG says not to. Something about annoying the user unpredictably.
October 10th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Looks like the Macalope got tricked up by the unpredictable nature of the “predictable” behaviour
October 10th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
90% of what computers do is to annoy the user predictably. We generally call them “dialog boxes”.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:02 am
Gus seems like the kind of guy who would take a video camera to a magic show…… just to try to spoil the fun for the rest of us. “See?! Can’t you see?! There’s actually two people in there! He didn’t really cut her in half!” Party pooper Gus.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:57 am
you, see, the Voodoo found the missing Maynor wifi hack and broke into another network to get the update….