OSNews

There was evidence, but it is just hearsay. Apple spent a buttload of manpower and money in usability testing back when they started growing in a massive way. Some of the tests involved the ok cancel thing.

The apple way is that input dialogs shouldn't be using generic words like OK and Cancel. They should be using verbs describing the action about to be performed (Save / Don't Save). This works against people developing patterns of clicking OK as soon as they see it, and fits in well with the public domain usability knowledge we have so far. The reason that Save is always in the right hand corner is for consistancies sake, if you use a system designed the mac way you know that the default choice will always be in the same place, no matter what the words say or how many options you have.

By contrast, there has been zero research done anywhere on OK / Cancel. The reason that it was chosen was because that is how one would say it in english. The reason that most dialogs are Ok or Cancel is because those are the default choices.

Even though the apple research was proprietary, the reasoning behind it makes alot of sense.