OS X Ate My Files! at Binary Bonsai

One of my close friends recently had the above happen to him as well. The irony is that he was making a backup CD at the time! There was too much data to fit, so he had to remove some folders. When he dragged them back to the desktop he was warned about overwriting, but since the files were the same he didn’t feel that there was any danger. The problem is that in Apple’s attempts to make everything work in a consistent manner, what really happens is that your real files are destroyed. Technically, the original folder (and all the files it contained) is replaced with an alias to the original folder. (which can’t be opened because the target, destroyed in the act creating the alias, no longer exists) It’s not something that most people would think of, but it’s been standard in operating systems for as long as I can remember. The difference here is that the warning OS X gives the user isn’t enough to make them think, hey.. maybe I shouldn’t do this. (and thanks to the efficiency of the filesystem, those files are truly unrecoverable.) Way to go Apple!