Looking Out To Sea

Today I fixed my parents’ computer (Mac Mini) after receiving many obscure and unhelpful complaints that it wasn’t working properly. I was really dubious that there was going to be something wrong with the monitor, because the problem only manifested with my father’s login.

It turns out he’d managed to — somehow — turn the screen contrast up from Normal to Maximum. (Those playing along at home can look in System Preferences then Universal Access for the relevant setting.) This renders much of the text invisible, and what’s left wispy and hard to read. I really don’t know what this option was supposed to accomplish, given that it’s presumably meant as a accessibility feature.

I also don’t know how it was accidentally enabled. The effect is very obvious, so I don’t know how it could be turned on without it being very obvious what happened. The hotkey (why the hell does this thing need a hotkey?!) is Ctrl-Alt-Cmd-. to increase contrast and Ctrl-Alt-Cmd-, to decrease it. It’s conceivable that the hotkey could be leaned on, but I tried it on Helen’s machine and it doesn’t seem possible to enable it without going in to the System Preferences first.

The conclusion was happy — I disabled the stupid option so reading email and watching iPlayer is now unimpeded. But how it happened in the first place is completely beyond me.