There's a story about the Microsoft Word team. I'm not sure it's true, but here goes:

The team had heard that most customers only use 5% of Word's copious feature set, and as part of some rewrite the team set about finding out what the 5% were.

And it was most of the feature set. Customer A used these 5%, B these others...

It's easy to say just one option without describing exactly what that should do. L10n raises some questions, for example. Or just two options, or three. Much harder if you want to be specific.

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hnlmorg 7 hours ago | parent [-]

We aren’t talking about completely disparate types of functionality. We are talking about enabling or disabling very narrow categories of words from literally one feature.

The story you mentioned wasn’t about exclusions from each and every dictionary. It was about tools that do entirely unique things.

I know HN has a long history of struggling with nuance, but surely people must understand that it’s entirely possible to have a toggle to enable/disable the autocomplete adult filter without needing to then have options for every…single…minor…variation of that filter.

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Arnt 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think you're saying that it's possible that Apple can add the option you want and go on stonewalling other people's requests for other options. Right?

	▲	hnlmorg 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm saying the opposition against having an option because "what if people want more options?" is silly and unproductive. Do you make the same argument for everything? "You shouldn't treat yourself to a takeaway because what if you want more takeaways?" "You shouldn't buy a car because what if you want more cars?" etc.