Stopping

When you cancel a Time Machine backup, it takes some time to stop:

Stopping Time Machine

Actions of programs have no inertia, they can be stopped immediately. If stopping something would leave a system in an inconsistent state, and you need to clean things up first, that’s what the user interface should say. But “Stopping” makes no sense. Just stop.

This problem is not uncommon, and I was thinking about writing a post about it for some time. But here is what happened recently. Mail in Yosemite Beta had already been “Disabling” my account by “Closing” something for several minutes, so I decided to cancel it — and got this:

Stopping Closing Disabling

I had to force quit it after a couple of minutes.

Added in August, 2016: And here, Dropbox is “Pausing”:

Dropbox Pausing
Next
UI Shadows in Photoshop
The use of Photoshop’s standard Drop Shadow effect is immediately visible. It usually produces unrealistic and dull shadows
 549   2012
One spinner is enough
 268   2022
Reversibility of an interface element
 1    241   3 mo
Linking to where I already am
 406   2012
Typing your password over a button
 259   1 y
Selecting country to enter your phone number
 324   2022
Ctrl ←Aeolian Islands and Surgut
Ctrl →Ångström: convert time and time zones