Standard Menu Items and User Expectations
John Gruber (of Daring Fireball) posted a bit about What ToDo and complained:
"(Note to Mac developers: If the one and only item in your Help menu is a YourAppName Help command, and the only thing that command does is show an alert that says “Help isn’t available for YourAppName”, you should just get rid of the entire Help menu. Not having a Help menu at all at least makes it clear there isn’t any help; making it look like there is help but then telling me there isn’t only after I ask for it is irritating.)"
This has been the single biggest complaint from my users. A related issue is that the Preferences menu item is greyed out because there aren't currently any preferences. Many users have mistakenly interpreted this to mean that the prefs are disabled until they register. The take-home message: if you have a menu item, users will expect to be able to use it. If you don't support the feature, get rid of the menu item, even a standard boilerplate one whose removal makes the menu look wrong. Better yet, implement the feature.