A Day at the BRC

'Goodness! That must be a real bug!'

It's Allison's first day at her new job. At the BRC - the Apple Bug Reporting Centre. She'll start by reviewing incoming bug reports.

The first item on her desk: 'Safari Trips Up on Refreshes'. She reads the report.

Allison tries it. She goes to www.apple.com and waits for the page to load. Then she types 'Allison' in the location bar. She ends up here.

'Goodness! That must be a real bug!' whispers Allison to herself. She turns to her colleague in the next cubicle.

'I think I found a live one already!' she tells him.

'Not likely!' he answers sardonically without even looking up.

Puzzled, she insists on showing the bug to her colleague who then tries it for himself. With the same results.

'So?' asks her colleague.

'So? So I wanted to refresh www.apple.com! Look what I got instead!'

'Yeah but you already typed in your name!'

'Yeah but I didn't go there yet! I didn't hit Enter! You can't refresh a page you haven't already loaded! Can you?'

'It's expected behaviour', her colleague replies dismissively.

Making sure no one is watching, Allison goes off surfing again. She goes here.

She downloads. She tries the bug again. She ends up here. Where she should be.

'I'm telling you it's expected behaviour!' her colleague calls over her shoulder. Allison turns.

'How can that be expected behaviour?'

'Look: if you load Safari and do what you did - what's going to happen?'

'I end up at the wrong page!'

'Exactly! It's expected behaviour!'

With a sigh Allison types in her reply to the bug reporter.