Computing

Joke Error Messages

Should one laugh or cry?

These are real, observed messages from software:

iTunes

New versions are always a treat.  The 11.01. version of Apple's iTunes asked me this when I wanted to delete a spurious audio file from its library:

iTunes delete

Anyone knows what this means?

Excel

Excel sometimes can't paste, but it can detect the problem and warn you:

Excel error message

What about fixing the bug instead? And who can have written such a strange bug...

Cinema 4D

David Pogue is right when he says:  I want to sense that an English major lost sleep over the wording of the dialogue boxes.  Cinema 4D, an excellent 3D modelling program, had this to say to me:

Cinema 4D message

Hmmm… which button do I press now?

X

One I have not yet caught in the act (because it only asks me when I install it) presents me with an awkward choice:

 

Are you in the US or in Canada?
[Yes]    [No]

What it presumably wants to ask is:

Choose in which region you are: [US and Canada] [rest of the world]

Adobe

Adobe's updater works behind the scenes, seldom letting you catch an update file.  It is also prone to this:

Adobe updater

Windows

On 27 October 2002 I saw this in the window of a major bank in central New York:

Windows summer time failure

All the nice advertising screens in all of the bank's windows had stopped.  Perhaps just as well.

Windows 95

Windows95 on Virtual PC, a long time ago, suggested:

copy-paste notice

Wow.  Actually I can even do it between Mac OS X and Virtual PC Windows applications.

Applescript

Very useful explanations are to be found in the Applescript dictionaries:

icon family : A family of icons
icon view options : the icon view options
column view options : the column view options
list view options : the list view options