Well, “significant number” is nevertheless a tiny minority.

Making computers accessible and non threatening to everyone is important. Filling the screen with acronym soup advances neither of these goals. Instead of people thinking “I can do this”, they think computers are hard.

Also, minimising what I’m saying by using diminutive language - “messages makes my computer unpretty” - is lazy. Good design is important, even if you don’t see it.

The obvious solution is to make these messages visible to those who want it, but disabled by default.

I thought that’s how Macs used to work, but maybe I’m thinking of a MacOS boot mode.

> Well, “significant number” is nevertheless a tiny minority.

May tiny, but tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands is still "significant" in any sense of the word.

> Also, minimising what I’m saying by using diminutive language - “messages makes my computer unpretty” - is lazy.

Like how you're minimising the importance of technical users?

Lets not forget that it is primarily technical users who buy macbooks; developers, designers, etc.

I’m not minimising the importance of technical users. I’m just saying that ugly POST messages aren’t helpful to most people. Hell, I’m technical and I don’t miss them.

I’m not sure about your point that mostly technical users buy MacBooks, since they don’t show POST messages. Doesn’t that suggest I’m right?

Hiding information and making it harder to fix things yourself is what makes computing inaccessible. A black box computing appliance that you can’t fix or work on is less accessible, not more.