Normally OSX is quite good when it comes to useability and not breaking the principle of least astonishment (roughly computers should avoid doing things to ‘surprise’ the user), but I re-encountered one poor area again tonight.
I was burning a CD image to a CD-R – something which is admittedly an action most commonly done by the geekier users. I normally use my Ubuntu workstation for things like that, but I suspect my CD drive is going south.
Anyway, I did the obvious thing – selected the ISO file in Finder and selected “Burn to Ubuntu.iso to Disc”. Yes you chortling OSX experts out there in the back, I did indeed end up with a CD containing a single file named “Ubuntu.ISO” on it. Or in other words I had a CD containing a file with an image of a bootable CD in it – which won’t of course boot.
So what did OSX do that was wrong ? Well there’s two things :-
- The message saying what it was doing should have been clearer; something along the lines of “I am about to burn a CD containing one file called Ubuntu.ISO” would have indicated that I was doing something wrong and given me the chance to hit Cancel and avoid yet another drink coaster.
- Finder should be capable of realising that something that looks like an ISO image needs to be burnt “as is” rather than making a file system containing that file.
And yes I did eventually realise that I needed to use “Disk Utility” to burn the CD.