Edsel struggled with the program, but it just wouldn’t jell. The problem
really was in the software, which was unusually unintelligible. How could he
make it seem easy and user friendly, when its programmers had evidently labored
decades to make it difficult and hostile! This was of course how he earned his
living designing software to make other software seem nice. But in this case he
needed to tweak a default in the computer operating system, and access to the
key level was barred. That was the fundamental bone of contention.
“Damn you, Macrohard,” he swore softly. “Just once, couldn’t
you give a person a break? I’m not trying to steal Doors from you, just to put a
special function on the keypad ‘Enter’ key so Grundy Golem can work independent
of the mouse. There are folk who don’t like being chained to the mouse, you know
this isn’t Dizzy World. Would it hurt you so bad to let someone have it his own
way for a change! But of course he knew the answer yes it would truly pain the
company to let a user ever have it his own way. Macrohard never wanted anyone to
forget for half an instant exactly who was the master, and who was the least
important person in the universe. It couldn’t stop third party programmers like
Edsel from trying to alleviate things but it could and did make sure that they
were unable to make any significant improvements. So the bone became a whole
zone of contention.
