Slap your Mac.
Jul. 24th, 2005 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharplittleteethHad my first moment of wanting to slap my new Mac last night.
I'm working on a few projects, right? And I transfer them between computers on a USB flash drive.
Imagine then: on my flash drive, I have a folder called PROJECT that contains some files: FILE01, FILE02, FILE03. And on my hard drive I also have a folder called PROJECT, but it contains files FILE01, FILE02 and FILE04.
In Windows, if I drag the PROJECT folder off my flash drive onto the harddrive, it will ask me if I want to overwrite FILE01 and FILE02, copy FILE03 across, and leave FILE04 the hell alone.
This strikes me as the sensible thing to do.
So, of course, Macs don't do that.
Instead, it asks me if I want to replace the PROJECT folder on my hard drive. And if I say yes, it throws away the hard drive folder and copies the flash drive one in it's place. Which means, in the above scenario, FILE04 cast into the howling void, never to return.
This is what happened to me last night. I lost a couple of webpages and a some writing.
Sure, I could copy individual files across by hand. But in real life, my project folders are a maze of folders and subfolders. There's no way I can keep track of which files need to be copied and which ones don't. This is what computers are meant to be for.
I assume there is some UNIX command-line command that will let me copy files properly. I'm just ticked off that the Mac doesn't do it from the GUI.
Some might argue here that my sense of "properly" is tainted by my years of Windows useage. Screw that. Any OS that deletes files just because you copied a folder is badly designed on first principles - a computer should do what you tell it to do. I told it to copy some files, not delete the ones that were already there.
I'm working on a few projects, right? And I transfer them between computers on a USB flash drive.
Imagine then: on my flash drive, I have a folder called PROJECT that contains some files: FILE01, FILE02, FILE03. And on my hard drive I also have a folder called PROJECT, but it contains files FILE01, FILE02 and FILE04.
In Windows, if I drag the PROJECT folder off my flash drive onto the harddrive, it will ask me if I want to overwrite FILE01 and FILE02, copy FILE03 across, and leave FILE04 the hell alone.
This strikes me as the sensible thing to do.
So, of course, Macs don't do that.
Instead, it asks me if I want to replace the PROJECT folder on my hard drive. And if I say yes, it throws away the hard drive folder and copies the flash drive one in it's place. Which means, in the above scenario, FILE04 cast into the howling void, never to return.
This is what happened to me last night. I lost a couple of webpages and a some writing.
Sure, I could copy individual files across by hand. But in real life, my project folders are a maze of folders and subfolders. There's no way I can keep track of which files need to be copied and which ones don't. This is what computers are meant to be for.
I assume there is some UNIX command-line command that will let me copy files properly. I'm just ticked off that the Mac doesn't do it from the GUI.
Some might argue here that my sense of "properly" is tainted by my years of Windows useage. Screw that. Any OS that deletes files just because you copied a folder is badly designed on first principles - a computer should do what you tell it to do. I told it to copy some files, not delete the ones that were already there.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-24 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-25 01:25 am (UTC)