The Origins of DS_store (2006) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#71

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:17 AM UTC

DidYaWipe wrote: post #12

Not to mention that it's an obnoxious and incompetent design. Look at the fact that Mac OS litters every other computer it visits with turds, for its own (and in fact only one user's) benefit. It's doubly stupid because the next browsing Mac that comes along trounces the previous one's turd. If Apple wanted to store view settings for remote volumes (or even local volumes), the competent design would have been to stor…

> Not to mention that it's an obnoxious and incompetent design. Look at the fact that Mac OS litters every other computer it visits with turds, for its own (and in fact only one user's) benefit. It's doubly stupid because the next browsing Mac that comes along trounces the previous one's turd.

It also kind of reveals an underlying attitude of the OS developers: That it's OK to use the user's filesystem (particularly directories owned by the user as opposed to the OS) as their dumping ground for all this metadata. As if it's their hard drive rather than mine.

I'm OK with Apple putting whatever it wants in /System and /Library, but I'd expect the rest of my filesystem to contain only files I put there.

Same goes for you, Microsoft: You can have C:/WINDOWS and I should get the rest of the filesystem.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#72

Post by DEADMINCE » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:19 AM UTC

dada78641 wrote: post #58

> Back in 1999 I was the technical lead for the Mac OS X Finder at Apple. At that time the Finder code base was some 8 years old and had reached the end of its useful life. Making any changes to it require huge engineering effort, and any changes usually broke two or three seemingly unrelated features. For Mac OS X we decided to rewrite the Finder from scratch. Not that I don't appreciate your work from back then, bu…

>The Finder has so many bizarre quirks and it's so slow to proliferate updates that it's just embarrassing

Say what you will about Windows, but the Explore file manager has always been pretty rock solid.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#73

Post by js2 » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:19 AM UTC

slmjkdbtl wrote: post #50

I remember there used to ways to turn off the creation of .DS_Store but they removed it, I can't figure out for life why they would make such a change. I had to write a program [0] to watch the entire file system and delete .DS_Store as soon as they're created. [0] https://github.com/slmjkdbtl/dskill

You can turn it off for network volumes:

  defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool TRUE

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102064

I don't recall there ever being a way to turn it off for local volumes.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#74

Post by DEADMINCE » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:19 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #69

slmjkdbtl wrote: post #50

I remember there used to ways to turn off the creation of .DS_Store but they removed it, I can't figure out for life why they would make such a change. I had to write a program [0] to watch the entire file system and delete .DS_Store as soon as they're created. [0] https://github.com/slmjkdbtl/dskill

Why? I just ignore them.

Some people can't.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#75

Post by DEADMINCE » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:22 AM UTC

sherburt3 wrote: post #66

I am MacOS's biggest fanboy and Tim Cook's strongest soldier but I will also say the Finder is one of the dumbest file explorers I've ever experienced in my life

> I am MacOS's biggest fanboy and Tim Cook's strongest soldier

wow.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#76

Post by 0l » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:24 AM UTC

eek2121 wrote: post #40

yellow_postit wrote: post #39

Finder remains one of those apps I still can’t make effective use of. Windows File Explorer for all its warts and changes still “just makes sense” to my brain vs how finder lays things out and expects you to browse. I’ve long since moved to command line or dual pane explorers but it’s something that makes me pause every time I do find myself in Finder for some reason.

Oh boy, Windows does the same thing (regarding hidden files to sort out FS stuff), but they hide it (just like Apple). We WSL2 users found out the hard way and Microsoft refuses to offer a solution. Relevant issue: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/7456 Apologies for my post getting snipped, The latest iOS beta keeps randomly eating my text. Apple is aware.

Unless im misunderstanding something, these files don't actually exist but reside in the NTFS's alternative data stream, and only display separately in WSL due to ext4 not supporting ADS right?

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#77

Post by DEADMINCE » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:25 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #15

DS Store seems so unfortunate. Yes it serves a purpose. Yes you can work around it in various ways. But the reality is that it’s basically proliferated file litter to 99% of people who come across it. It’s uncharacteristically un-Apple in terms of UX polish. Growing up with both System 7.5 / OSX, and windows machines, the Macs never seemed inclined to make me see extraneous files, filetypes, and other “how the comput…

> It’s uncharacteristically un-Apple in terms of UX polish.

Apple's polish has always been more about the surface then the internals.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#78

Post by seabass » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:25 AM UTC

Never understood why it had to be in the same folder. Can’t the os have its own little db somewhere that has a reference to each path?

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#79

Post by stereo » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:35 AM UTC

dada78641 wrote: post #58

> Back in 1999 I was the technical lead for the Mac OS X Finder at Apple. At that time the Finder code base was some 8 years old and had reached the end of its useful life. Making any changes to it require huge engineering effort, and any changes usually broke two or three seemingly unrelated features. For Mac OS X we decided to rewrite the Finder from scratch. Not that I don't appreciate your work from back then, bu…

When they rewrite it, I’m afraid we’ll get an iPad-esque nerfed and incomplete monstrosity, like we have with the Home or Settings apps.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#80

Post by al_borland » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 2:36 AM UTC

DEADMINCE wrote: post #72

dada78641 wrote: post #58

> Back in 1999 I was the technical lead for the Mac OS X Finder at Apple. At that time the Finder code base was some 8 years old and had reached the end of its useful life. Making any changes to it require huge engineering effort, and any changes usually broke two or three seemingly unrelated features. For Mac OS X we decided to rewrite the Finder from scratch. Not that I don't appreciate your work from back then, bu…

>The Finder has so many bizarre quirks and it's so slow to proliferate updates that it's just embarrassing Say what you will about Windows, but the Explore file manager has always been pretty rock solid.

I will say, network drives feel local on Windows. On macOS they feel like network drives. I think I’d say the same about external drives. I stopped using them, because I got sick of waiting for them to spin up anytime Finder had to do some work.