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When Jeffrey Zeldman has software meltdowns, he describes them in detail. (He seems to have had bad luck historically with Mac OS X upgrades.) In this particular installment, he points out some Apple design decisions that can make things worse in emergency situations.
Of them, the one that baffles me the most is Apple's decision in recent OS X versions to absorb its system Web preferences, including the default browser preference, into the Safari Web browser. (Previously it was under a pane in System Preferences, where it should be.) This is not just irritatingly monopolistic; as Zeldman discovered the hard way, Web browsers are common points of failure, and this places a potential means of recovery from that failure dangerously within its sphere of influence. The controls to reject the mothership's favored applications should not be inside the applications themselves.
Of them, the one that baffles me the most is Apple's decision in recent OS X versions to absorb its system Web preferences, including the default browser preference, into the Safari Web browser. (Previously it was under a pane in System Preferences, where it should be.) This is not just irritatingly monopolistic; as Zeldman discovered the hard way, Web browsers are common points of failure, and this places a potential means of recovery from that failure dangerously within its sphere of influence. The controls to reject the mothership's favored applications should not be inside the applications themselves.