Craig Burton

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Sometimes the Mac OS Sucks

October 1st, 2009 · Comments

I have been using a Macintosh as my main computer for the last 6 months.

Overall it is much more stable than the PC and is a lot more fun to work on.

But, there is one major gripe I have about the Mac, in particular the Finder. I hate the way the Finder handles copying files. You cannot merge duplicate file folders with the Finder. If you try to copy a file folder with the same name from one location to the file folder with the same name in another location, the Finder doesn’t merge the two structures, it deletes the old one and replaces it with the new one.

Now I know this is not a Unix issue. This is purely a Macintosh phenomena.

There are two ways I have figured out how to get around this utterly stupid architecture.

  1. Use FTP
  2. Use Stuffit Expander or Stuffit Deluxe

With the FTP approach, you login to your on local host with your favorite FTP client and copy the files from one folder to the other. I use FireFTP for Firefox. Great product. FTP handles the merging and collisions as on would expect. Ugly I know, but it works.

The Stuffit approach requires that your files be zipped or stuffed. When you expand the compressed archive, Stuffit will manage the merge and collisions normally.

So, if I need to merge two folders, I stuff one first, then expand it into the other folder.

If anybody can tell me why this arcane mechanism still exists on the Mac, I would love to hear it.

Meanwhile, Apple, this is beyond outdated. Fix it.

Tags: Daily Thesis

  • It sure does suck at times..and sometimes its disheartening..
  • Wow, I really think that is an annoying (and potentially catastrophic) functionality. I move/copy files by drag-and-drop fairly often in Windows, so this would be very difficult for me to get used to if I moved to a Mac. Wish I knew some Unix commands. I'd be much more comfortable with Macs if I did.
  • The Stuffit approach requires that your files be zipped or stuffed. When you expand the compressed archive, Stuffit will manage the merge and collisions normally.
  • It sucks very often. These are only few things that is really annoying. But there is so much more with have been hidden under shiny logo :)
  • SD
    On Windows 2000 Server, if the directories a' and a'' each have files within, named b' and b'' respectively, and you drag a' into the directory containing a'', b'' will be replaced by b'. File c' from a' and d'' from a'' will both be in the merged folder, but b'' is gone. Oops. To be fair, it warns you you're about to make a mess.
  • Excellent idea. Now I just need to figure out how to traverse and address the Mac filesystem in bash. So far, anything with a space in it is ignored.
  • jmmikkelsen
    Zsh and tab completion works for me and deals with the escaping just fine. As also noted, you can use the normal shell escaping rules manually; that should work with any shell, even bash!

    I'm coming up to six months since my move to Mac; the first thing I did was set terminal up to start on login. There are many interesting commands on the Mac you don't find elsewhere. The most relevant is "open". Type "open /path/to/file" and you get the equivalent effect of double clicking the file in Finder.
  • ndw
    You need to either quote the filename: "this works", or escape the space: this\ works\ too.

    As far as the semantics though, I don't think I agree with you. If I drag file "a" from somewhere onto file "a" somewhere else, the new replaces the old. Sounds like Finder does the same thing with folders, which strikes me as consistent. Not that I've ever used drag-and-drop to move a file in my life on any platform.
  • On any platform except the Macintosh, If you drag a folder "a" from one location to a folder named "a" in another location the system will combine the contents of a' with a''. On the Macintosh, a' will delete a'' and all of its contents.

    The syntax you indicated does indeed work.
  • jmmikkelsen
    Open terminal and use Unix. for example, cp works.
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