The rationale given in the article was that a drive starting up with no obvious cue by the user would lead to confusion or concern on the user's part. Back the

The rationale given in the article was that a drive starting up with no obvious cue by the user would lead to confusion or concern on the user's part. Back then, before the widespread availability of the 'Net, users would probably think a "boot block" virus was attacking their system or some other scary scenario was happening. Of course, I was a Mac-only user back then, so we had auto-detect (and auto-eject!) drives and learned to take them for granted. Part of me thinks the historical suckiness of DOS/Windows is less the fault of Microsoft and more the fault of the IT community of that era, who were tone deaf regarding end user satisfaction and empowerment. (Even now, using Windows machines at work make me feel constrained compared to the relative freedom to do what I wanted with my classic era Macs. Sadly, since OS X, Macs have started to feel less "free" but I'm starting to digress too far afield now...)