Shannon J Hager writes

Jeff Key wants to end default buttons on Focus-Stealing Dialogs but I think the problem is bigger than that. I don't think ANYTHING should be able to steal my focus while typing. I have ranted about this before both in places where it could help (emails with MS employees) and in places where it can't (certain blogs). Not only is it annoying to suddenly find myself typing in a IM conversation with someone on AOL when less than half a word ago I was typing an invoice for a client, it is DANGEROUS for programs to be able to steal focus like this

I agree, I didn't realize how much applications that steal focus irritate me until I used a friend's iBook which runs Mac OS X where instead of having applications steal your focus has them try to get your attention by hopping around at the bottom of the screen. I thought it was cute and a lot less intrusive than finding myself typing in a differentwWindow because some application decided that it was so important that it was going to interrupt whatever I was doing.

An operating system that enforces application politness, sweet.