Mac OS X: It's the "little things"

It’s details like the following that sometimes make me stop and realize how fined tuned a software Mac OS X really is.

Tonight, I did the following, sequentially:

  1. Moved a folder to the trash, not realizing that a subfolder contained a file being written to.
  2. Tried to empty the trash. The Finder told me those files were still in use.
  3. Took the directory out and dropped it on my Desktop (not the original location)
  4. Inspected the files and dropped them back into their original location

Where things get interesting is that the process which was writing to the said file never crashed or in any way gave an error. It happily followed the files as they moved around, keeping on keepin’ on. Everything was handled cleanly by the Finder and abstracted from the process. Classy.

It’s also worth noting that the said process was not an Apple app, so no unfair advantages.

 

Comments

3 responses to “Mac OS X: It's the "little things"”

  1. Alex (Viper007Bond) Avatar

    Hmm, I have to say I prefer how Windows does it. It would have deleted everything but the files that were in use and all parent folders of those files. It then would have popped up a dialog box saying unable to delete file XYZ because it is in use by ABC.

    Why do you prefer being able to move files that are in use into the trash? That seems like it could very easily cause lots of problems, say if the program tried to open up files in a relative location to the file.

    1. Stephane Daury Avatar

      Same behavior on deleting all the files but the ones and parent folders. Didn’t tell me what was using the files though.

      I wouldn’t say I prefer having it that way, I just find that it handled my doing it well. 🙂

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