azurelunatic

Dear Mac user,

I write this letter to you because of the situation that you currently find yourself in. You are a Mac user through and through, and circumstances have been kind enough that you have had little to no experience using a Windows machine, at least, not really within the past decade, not for longer than it takes to check your webmail on someone else's running, logged-in machine.

Unfortunately, the two things you have in front of you now are terrifying: a Windows machine, and a set of instructions that make no earthly sense. I mean, it's telling you a procedure to carry out, and there are forms, widgets, and labels on the screen in front of you that are as described in the instructions, but the things that the instructions are telling you to do are so ever-loving stupid and counter-intuitive that your every computer-using instinct is telling you that this is Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! and there is no earthly way that the instructions could possibly be correct, because who the fuck would design such a system?!?!

My appeal to you is simply this:

The instructions, while almost certainly wrong in every particular of intuitiveness, usability, and/or earthly logic ... are probably correct in the absolutely piddling detail that this is how you have to do this thing to make that work on Windows.

I'm very sorry.

Please follow the instructions exactly as they are written if you don't have a Windows expert around to ask.

If you do have a Windows expert around to ask, follow their guidance and that of the instructions, even if feels wrong in every possible way.

I'm very, very sorry.

Regards,
the administrative assistant who had to play tech support for the usability contractors this morning