Apple design process

Arno has an article about the Shutdown feature and how it was implemented at Apple.

He has some excellent insights about using the physical power button instead of a menu item. Interestingly, I remember one of the initial incredibly cool things about the mac was its software-instantiated shutdown, as contrasted with Windows' "It is now safe to turn off your computer". Which wasn't Windows' fault at all, of course, but an artifact of not having the tight control of the hardware that Apple does.