On Binary Bonsai, I ran across an interesting tale entitled: OS X Ate My Files!
… What do you think will happen?
I’ll tell what’ll happen, and what just happened. In OS X, the new wp-content folder will replace the old wp-content folder completely, throwing out everything inside of it, replacing it with the content of the new folder, keeping nothing from the old folder. And while you can undo the action, moving the new folder back where it came from, that won’t undo the deletion of the old folder!
…
This has got to be the most fucked up braindead ‘look at me, I’m a moron’ way of doing things I have ever come across. User data is sacred you fat fuck of an OS! …
#1 by Jin597 on November 25th, 2004 - 4:22 pm
Yeah… that would be highly annoying, but this is not a fault of the OS, rather a fault of the installer and/or the user. If the user drags and drops, this does not “copy” but rather “moves” which will replace the folder that is currently there, rather than updating it.
#2 by Jin597 on November 25th, 2004 - 4:25 pm
I rather like this comment
“Michael said,
4 days, 10 hours ago
matthew, I think you’re right from a purely über-pragmatic point of view. If you have a shed with tools in it, and you remove the shed, obviously the tools will be gone as well, unless you take them out of there before you remove it.
But people as such aren’t ‘über-pragmatic’. When throw a new shed into my imaginary garden, I damn well expect to keep my old tools in addition to any tools that come with the new shed.
Enough with the shed’s. I think it’s fine if there’s a pseudo-mode that can be used to change the operation manners, however read through Jonathan’s link, I’m baffled that anyone could come up with the basic operational procedures. Drag and dropping a file should be the same regardless of whether it’s on the same drive or not…
Of course, knowing Apple on this particular area, they’ll probably keep it this way. Just like how they have enter be ‘rename’ and option-arrowndown be open… OS X is a nightmare in terms of its pseudo-modes and odd operational manners sometimes.
And just to recap, both drag-dropping and option-drag-dropping will replace the folder. ”
#3 by Robsta on December 19th, 2007 - 8:33 am
I totally agree with this being away from normal behavior of a copying procedure. I mean what happens when we have a bunch of nested subfolders?? How do we copy this structure?
I do understand that removal is how all Mac users ‘expect’ the copying of folders, however, Windows/Linux users do not, and thus I have thrown out a thread on the apple forums to allow us to also merge the files within the folder when copying ‘over the top’.
If enough interest is given to the issue, I believe that apple may wish to incorporate both methods to keep the masses happy. If we called all show our interest there, it would help make for a better organised shed/subshed structure!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1291091&tstart=0
Cheers,
Robsta