The Correct Way to Display Time

I’ve just upgraded the hard drive of my MacBook. To do this I used the excellent Drive Genius 2 which was included in the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle. Drive Genius 2 is a great piece of software. It’s really easy to use compared to GParted and all the other fiddle Linux tools. The interface to Drive Genius contains lots of (superfluous) animation but on the whole is very clear. However, when I was duplicating the drive I noticed something that got my goat:

Why is time state as a decimal? This is confusing. For example, does ‘4.33 hours’ mean 4 hour 33 minutes or 4 hour 20 minutes?

Time should be displayed in its natural units; hours minutes and seconds. The work involved in converting ‘1.5 hours’ into ‘1  hour 30 minutes’ is trivial and the result is a better user experience.

Bonus rant: I much prefer analogue clocks that have a second hand which moves at a constant rate rather than one that ticks. I prefer them for two reasons. Firstly time is continuous, the  discreet unit of a second is for our convenience, therefore continuous movement better represents this. Secondly, I hate the constant ‘tick. tick. tick.’ it drives me crazy!