A stopped escalator is trying very hard to look like stairs. The steps are there. So are the handrails. It ought to be a fairly easy career change.
But the steps were made for a machine that carries people, and standing still doesn't undo that. I like the awkwardness of it: something can look almost right for a job and still be a bad fit.
I keep wanting to give the escalator credit for remaining useful. Then I remember that nobody asked for unusually tall stairs. Being available isn't quite the same as being helpful. Still, as a visual joke, it gets me. A whole machine, switched off, with all its steps left out.
Please stop telling me there are two seconds left.
A loading bar reaches 99%, sits there, and suddenly those two seconds have lasted a minute. I was fine waiting before the little number started making promises.
I do get why it happens. A program may know how many files it has copied without knowing exactly how long the next bit will take. The estimate can be wrong without anyone trying to trick me. Still, showing a precise countdown makes the guess feel much more certain than it is.
I'd rather see what it's doing: saving files, checking the download, waiting for a response. If it can't tell me that, a spinning circle is okay. Just show me it's still working.
I can live with “not sure yet.” It's the repeated “nearly done” that gets annoying.
