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Why "Sorry" as a button? It sounds pretty awkward to me. I wouldn't be sure what clicking it would do. And, the button text is usually the option that I choose, but why would I say "sorry"?

> Why "Sorry" as a button?

I believe the idea was that making the user click "OK" was adding insult to injury, and "Cancel" wouldn't have made sense either.

That said, the word "sorry" doesn't appear in a HIG from 1992 (the earliest I could find in PDF form).

It always seemed weird to me, like I was apologizing to the computer for causing an error or something.

I remember this from ~1995. The Mac would crash (often), then before rebooting say something equivalent to "we have lost all of your data. Click OK". I didn't want to click an OK button - I wanted an apology for losing my data.

On re-boot, it would say "you did not shut down your computer properly".

Why should I say sorry if the OS lost my file?

Yeah, the button is the user answer, not what you want the computer to say to you. This guideline is backwards.

Pesky user.