Feel like I’ve placed that box badly in this design, I never notice it any more and it’s causing me to fall behind in selecting excerpts. I used to click it a lot.

My gut somehow suggests you’re a Stephenson antifan, Tom, but on this occasion I choose to go with hope over hunch. Rereading the bit on Google Toolbar prompts me to post In the Beginning Was the Command Line in case it’s somehow gone unseen by you or a reader who would like it. It’s Stephenson; there is no single subject, just thoughts that move. In quantity.

In terms of the stability debate, in my experience Windows, Linux and OS X are all very stable unless you try to play games on them, at which point they go tits up repeatedly.

Returning to the point in hand, Realplayer on the Mac is a charming, well behaved application with no Adware or soul erosion. On the other hand, Windows Media Player streaming doesn’t work at all, even with the now discontinued official client. This may explain the Beeb’s reluctance to abandon Real as a platform, although the iPlayer was going to be Windows only until a public petition caused them to change their minds.

Now Vista brings us the Black Screen of Death: every security alert is so world-endingly intrusive that you’re forced to disable them entirely just to get anything done, which means you miss the important ones. It’s mind-boggling that the concept of not interrupting the user in the middle of what they’re doing remains beyond these people’s grasp.

There was an interesting blog post from one of the Firefox guys about ways they could notify the user without being needlessly intrusive, involving speech-bubble type notifications that balloon out from the piece of interface furniture that they relate to. I’ll link it if I can find it again. It almost seemed like they weren’t idiots.

No RMB is crap. However, my Macintosh came with a ‘Mighty Mouse’. A five button mouse with scroll wheel. It is shit. It’s buttons are not distinct and are all very sensitive so things fly everywhere. Infact it was so annoying that as an emergency measure I had to restrict it to purley left click! I have since brought a Logitech.

That said, I still would never go back to PC. My Macintosh still crashes form time to time and I still curse its name as the box of hate but there is something in the interface that gives you a sense that they’ve attempted to make this for a human being to use.

But if you are discussing user interfaces the fact I have a thumb on the left side over a button, two fingers hovering over buttons on top, and then a nice scroll wheel readily accessible (shame the MMB is shit on the MS intellimouse) apparently counts for nothing for Apple.

SCROLL! Third mouse button for open in new tab or close tab!

My personal bug bear at this time is those Windows XP automatic updates. They download and you get a pop up asking if you want to install it now or later. I tend to think I’m too busy right now so I’ll do it later and crack on with my work. Five minutes later it pops up and asks if I want to install the updates again – and so begins a vicious circle of five minute bouts of furious working being constantly interrupted throughout the day every five minutes by this little fuck which induces a further five minutes of furious swearing and violent clicking on the ‘Later’ button.

You wouldn’t drop in on a friend, only to find he’s busy because his wife is threatening divorce, and say “Sorry, you must be busy. I’ll see you later.” Then ring the bell again five minutes later.

I’ve just left PC for MAC. Which I know has the potential to cause great conflicts. But seriously, my quality of life has improved drastically. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant

Matthew – I had exactly the same thought. Nevermind that it’s next to A, it’s also next to Shift, which is far enough from the resting position of your hands that your muscle memory of its position is vague. On an old keyboard I physically prised the key out. On Microsoft multimedia keyboards, though, you can disable the key in the software, which I did for a long time. These days, though, my job entails a lot of typing in serial numbers, the letters of which are all in capitals and the numbers of which require you not to be holding down shift.

I don’t use the NumLock key either, but maybe for the opposite reason you don’t – I always want those keys to work as numbers. In fact, I had to look at the keyboard just then to find out what their other function is. The real mystery is why we have to hold shift to get access to those useful punctuation marks above the letter keys.

Russell – the BBC site usually offers a Media Player option, but if you click it on anything I tried, it says Media Player format is unavailable for this programme. In the FAQ somewhere it says they’re “still working on” not requiring RealPlayer, the worst program in the world.

Not a good start and I’ve lost interest already, rubbish.

*Winces, braces for impact*