I get that inane passive sentence when I try to view a video I watched yesterday. Quicktime Player popped right up and played the video.
Now I don't even know where to start. What application? Can't be found where? Where was it likely to be, that it wasn't found?
Am I missing the fun in receiving obscure sentences?
Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), definitely NON tech-oriented
Where did the video come from?
What is the format? (right click on select Get Info)
Does QT now play videos of the same format?
" I hate that passive voice."
What would be the alternative?
"I, your computer, can't find the application."
Lanny:
An EXAMPLE of what would be helpful to me:
You are trying to play an XYZ
In order to do that you will need: 1. Aplayer 2. Bplayer 3. to reformat the video in 987
Under HELP, you can read: 'playing videos of unknown origin. ' Press here to go to that page.
When I was teaching college I found over and over my students wrote/spoke with referents based on no preceding interchange or information except (possibly) what was going in their own heads. The same is true in computer talk.
"I, your computer, can't find the application" amounts to the same useless, passive approach. It provides NO helpful information on which to base an increase of knowledge for either "party".
What is "the" application? Why am I left to guess? I do not know what "application" means in this context. Why the assumption that I do know? YOU may know; I do not.
Computer nerds, by and large, aren’t language nerds and if you want help with your problems you’ll learn to accept that most people don’t live up to your standards. From my point of view you aren’t living up to mine - figuring out this problem is child’s play. But you won’t find me beating posters about the head because they are computer illiterate.
To answer your question - you have tried to access a file. The computer attempted to find a program to use that file. It failed.
Yes, a better error message might have been: “Your computer has no application capable of using the file ‘My Favorite Cat’” but the error message you did receive certainly makes sense to most people. Notice I didn’t say “To people who have a degree outside of the Arts & Humanities."
OK, OK, OK,
Folks, thanks for your attempts to help a techno-phobe.
I clearly didn't make clear that my belief is that I have paid a lot for a computer and its operating system and I think IT -- NOT ANY OF YOU -- is not serving me well.
IT speaks to me in a human-like language/form that is pretty inferior in my perception. If you, whoever you are, understand IT, then well and good for you.
IT does not serve me to the level that I believe I paid for. And, although I am definitely not a computer-oriented person, the information communication aspect of the expensive computer and operating system could be improved significantly. I think the improvement could be put into effect with very little attention paid by the designers of the Apple operating system.
Frankly, I don't understand why this simple lever of communication has not been significantly improved #1. UNLESS there is some sort of end goal [somewhere, somehow] of making basic messages obscure, OR #2. as was suggested, computer folks aren't language folks -- to an extreme degree?
Once again, purely by my standards, this point is about language is not a very exalted standard. It is taught in about the eighth grade in an inner city school ranging down to the fifth grade in a highly rated school.
{[In the 1990s inside car lights went on and said: CHECK ENGINE. Oh great, that could mean practically anything. But I knew that I could pull into a dealer, present the problem and they would tell me (for a fee) and fix the thing (for a fee). Well, Apple tells me that I must ask around among the other Apple users and depend on the kindness of strangers.
Now that "CHECK ENGINE" message is considered primitive and no recent (10 years?) car has that system. ]}
Let me go all the way back to Illaass' kind attempt to help. I puzzled over the first question. Where does the video come from? Well, my neighbor gave it to me on an "information stick'...no, no, they don't call them that any more. Computer people get so upset if I don't use the right word. What is that **** thing? What the **** is the name...oh, I know, flash drive! Is that what he(she?) wants to know? Probably not. Hmmmm, where does it come from? The ethernet? No, I know, I'll say mp4. That seems like what he/she would mean. Does the dot come after or before the mp4? Maybe they will just think I made a typo wherever I put it.
I don't know where to find "Get Info". That is totally new to me, but I do know where a right click is. But when would I use it?
I can tell them I re-installed Quick Time Player. Then I took out the information stick and put it back in. Now two other videos play, also from my neighbor, but not the video I was concerned about. At least it sounds like I know what I am doing, that this is deliberate, not hit or miss desperate.
Fellow users, if I may, this is very much like when I am "speaking" Italian. I formulate what I think is a good question or reply. The better it is, the more likely someone else thinks I know what I am talking about. They respond in kind. Then, I am lost. Lucky for me, Italians are generally amused by my mangling their language, not contemptuous as others are when I mangle theirs. I wonder how I come across to the Chinese students who always rush me in the subways of Beijing and buses of Shanghai and Taipei, wanting to speak English? I know I get worn out sometimes. It is really a lot of effort to think differently.
Well, again, my thanks.
All files have two pieces; an example might be glassy.mov where glassy is the name and mov is the extender. The name tells us what the tile is and the extender identifies to the computer what kind of file it is. We often call that the ‘file type’. Every program ‘knows’ what file types it can use and every known file type has a default program that opens it. The computer produces an error message when the user double clicks a file whose file type isn’t recognized by the computer. If the file has no extender the computer also produces an error message. However flawed you think that error message might be, it is what it is.
Two of Illiasss questions make perfect sense. Where did the file come from? Did you download it from the internet? Did it come from a camera? Did a friend give it to you?
What is its format? Given that QuickTime popped up he assumed the file was a movie and movie files have different formats depending on the source of the movie. We can often discern the format from the extender of the filename. Select the file by clicking on its name once and use Get Info from the File menu or right click and select it. That simple. The third question is the only one that might be a poser for someone who doesn’t know much about computers.
I suggest you look for a book called The Missing Manual to learn more about the tool on your desk. Meanwhile you might go here and suggest the Apple team read my favorite style manual.
what does "application can't be found" mean??? I hate that passive voice.
