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There is such a lack of charisma and personality in your average knowledge base article. Granted, some information is very serious and calls for a staid and solemn description, but even in the absence of humor, there is always room for the comforting human touch of a skilled writer. Corporations have, for at least a decade, moved steadily away from the colloquial and into the crystal clear, yet icy and inhospitable waters of antiseptic technical writing.

Except, apparently, for Apple. Reproduced in full, for convenience:

As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder in Mac OS X 10.4. Removing or modifying anything in it—or in subfolders within it—may cause unexpected issues. This folder is located in your Application Support folder, in your Library folder, in your Home folder.

Deleting or modifying things in the SyncServices folder may cause unexpected results such as:

• Duplicate contacts in Address Book or appointments in iCal.
• Data loss in Address Book or iCal.

Important: Any lost or duplicate data could propagate to other devices and computers via iSync and .Mac sync. This means data could be lost on other computers.

What would likely be considered by most businesses to be far too colloquial an expression for a technical article lends a familiarity to this information that, for me, makes it seem all the more reliable. I, like many consumers of knowledge base articles, appreciate the notion that there are human beings working behind the curtain and that they aren’t being hypnotized by corporate mind-control rays.

I appreciate Apple’s willingness to talk to its customers the way they would like to be spoken to and to achieve an effective balance between information and personality. Such practices are increasingly rare.