Ever since I wrote a post about the molly guard, I have been on the lookout for those, and I think I collected enough to do a little follow-up.

First, some classic industrial molly guards from a museum in Germany:

This IBM electronic typewriter had a gorgeous perspex molly guard around the power button:

Other machines opted for “softer” quasi molly guards that still aimed to prevent you from pressing a button or switch by accident, but without having to get something out of the way first:

Even softer? This below is not a traditional molly guard, but the placement of “I’m writing to the SD card” red light was not accidental. Ejecting the card while the camera is writing to it might cause some damage, so the light was positioned right next to the card door and the card itself, making you more likely to spot it and wait:

This one is even more clever. You know how some old floppy drives have a handle that lowers the reading/​writing head so that the diskette can be used? That same handle also prevented you from pulling the disk once the head was lowered. It felt so natural, you might not have even realized it’s a molly guard doing its job:

On the other side, these following guards are more of a “you really shouldn’t do this” variety – much closer to a disabled state in graphical user interfaces:

Let’s jump into software.

This is a nice situational molly guard in Finder when you press ⌘O and have a lot of files selected:

iPhone’s “slide to unlock” no longer graces the home screen, with one exception – stopping the alarm:

There’s something about this treatment that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not sure what it is: The text not feeling centered? The control being circular? The icon on the slider making it seem like it’s a stop button you can press?

Speaking of stuff I don’t love, you might recognize this molly guard from Chrome:

This one never felt pleasant to me. You might say “isn’t the point of the molly guard that it doesn’t feel pleasant”? But I think one needs to separate the intent and the mechanics. I don’t mind the intent here, but the styling is ugly, the message kind of confusing – you don’t really have to hold ⌘Q, just press it again – and you also don’t get any feedback during holding.

Contrast with this extremely skeuomorphic CD burning molly guard in early iTunes, suggested by one of the readers:

And lastly, something I didn’t expect to ever see. Per this issue (page 14) of an alumni magazine of University of Illinois, here’s the actual Molly with her father: