Airplane cockpit vs Desktop PC

[lazybloke]

Not if they do it 110 degrees down when they're already low.

If Hollywood movies are to be believed, plane cockpits are full of noises and even verbal warnings when pilots make errors.
"Ding ding..... Pull up! Pull up!"

 

[JohnHughes307]

My first ever proper project was writing a stock-control system for National Bus Company in 1980. The designer of the system insisted on a "Are you sure Y/N" response on every input screen. We shared office space with the data-entry team, so were able to watch it in action after the system went live.
For the first few hours, every time the question was asked, the data-entry clerk would carefully review all the entered data on the screen before typing Y and pressing the Xmit button.
After that the enter sequence was Xmit-Y-Xmit without once looking at the screen or interrupting their chat with their neighbour

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The Virgin Galactic plane crashed during a test flight. It was discovered the main computer rebooted no long before they were due to pass the speed of sound. Not so different as you think.

 

[JoeyB]

Pilots tend to be quite well trained and it is assumed they have a reasonable idea what they are doing.

The same can't be said for computer users.

OP might be IT competent but the UI has to cope with everyone else as well.

^ This

An OS is a one-size-fits-all affair. Whereas flying a plane its pretty specialist isnt it?

At least MS allows you to disable User Account Control to save some level of sanity. (Press Windows key, type UAC, hit return and turn that slider ALL the way down)

 

[mustang1]

Pilots also have the backup that if they are trying to do something really stupid the system won’t let them. In addition if they do something slightly stupid that could cause a problem then they will get a variety of annoying beeps and alerts. Finally, but most crucially, they have a copilot that is double checking everything they do.

The annoying beeps and alerts in a cockpit are similar to the "are you sure?" on a PC. The difference is the pilot (as you and others noted) are specifically trained to be aware of that beep (and may be surprised if they did not hear the beep). Computer users on the other hand, including me, will just read "Are you sure that you want.. blah blah" and immediately think "oh blxxdy heck let me press OK and get on with my life oh crap did I just delete what I didn't want to?!"

 

[mustang1]

The Virgin Galactic plane crashed during a test flight. It was discovered the main computer rebooted no long before they were due to pass the speed of sound. Not so different as you think.

Ugh. Windows has determined you have not used your computer for 20 minutes. Windows will now update and restart.