Mac really sucks!!!!

I have this problem: I wrote some editing on my flash drive, and I have done some editing on my mac too.

I have the same name folders--let A denote it---- both on my flash drive and my mac.

Ok, now I want to copy all the contents in the folder A on my Mac and Mac said that there is folder which has the same name, do you want to replace all the name, I click replace.

Then all the editing in folder A on my flash drive is GONE!!!!!

 

Its unfortunate, but I wouldn't say its Mac OS X's fault...was such a strong thread title necessary?

 

shouldn't it all be on your mac then?

 

So let me get this right:

1. You had two files with the same name.
2. You replaced one with another when you copied it.
3. It's obviously the OS's fault.

WTF? The thread title should be "Mac User Makes Error, Oops"

 

The same thing and the same prompt would happen with Windows as well. Think of it as an expensive bit of knowledge that you will never need to relearn (we hope).

Sorry about the lost info man.

 

haha, that is exactly what would happen on any operating system, and is exactly what OS X would TELL YOU WOULD HAPPEN before you did it.

 

I think the point he might be making is that the existing folder with the same name shouldn't have been replaced with the copied folder, but rather the contents of the folder should have been copied over to the existing folder, while the files that were already there remained.

I'm not on my Mac right now, but this does seem odd. Usually it should do a file merge, essentially (copy new files over, and ask to replace any existing files within that folder that have the same name). I just tried this on Vista (what I'm using right now) and it does a Merge.

-Zadillo

 

It's actually not, from what I've seen.... Vista does a merge if you try to copy a folder with the same name to another location; it doesn't overwrite the entire folder and replace it with the copied folder.

This seems to be unique to the OS X finder (if you use the OS X Terminal, you can use normal mv or cp commands, etc.).

Apparently PathFinder (a popular Finder replacement) also will treat this as a Merge instead.

I might be wrong though, but I was pretty sure OS X would do a merge too. Can anyone on a Mac right now verify?

EDIT: Never mind about that, verified this behavior. I think it's just one of those things you have to get used to.

 

Verified here:

http://www.xvsxp.com/files/copying.php

I guess that's it, it's just OS X's behavior. To be fair, it does clearly say it is going to replace the folder, but I could see how someone coming from Windows might miss this.

Admittedly, it does seem like sort of odd behavior.

But clearly the solution is to open the folder and copy/move the contents within it.

 

Yeah. It's bloody annoying and a stupid oversight on Apples part.

It should be appending, not doing a full replace. I've never run into this behavior on any other OS. It's also not user friendly at all. It makes no sense to approach a move/copy folder action this way.

In Bash (the unix CLI), if you make folder A and have files 1 and 2 then copy that folder into folder X which also contains a folder named A that has filed 67 and 42, you should come out with 1 folder under X called A, which contains files 1,2, 67, and 42.

I do not understand why Apple does not follow this standard, which every one else does. Makes little to no sense.

 

I think one possible explanation might be the way that OS X thinks of folders as a sort of "bundled entity" in their own right.

For example, applications (any *.app file) are actually folders containing the various app resources/etc. inside of them. OS X also depends a fair amount on this for things like doing drag-and-drop app installs anyway (where you drag a whole folder with an app to another folder to install it).

I think the idea in these scenarios is that a "merge" would not be ideal, as you could conceivably end up with weird mixes of files inside these folders.

Fundamentally, I think that's why you see this general behavior in the OS X Finder, because of how Folders are seen as an entire entity.

But I would agree, at the very least some option for a Merge instead of a Replace would seem to make sense.

-Zadillo

 

Never quite understood why Apple made finder this way, it's just something that you (and I for that matter, having done something similar when I first switched) have to get used to.

 

It's not a huge problem getting used to something as long as you know beforehand that it exists, but unfortunately, I bet most people switching probably will find out the hard way the first time.

 

it says specifically what it is going to to do in the warning, but it sounds like the original poster was working on identical files with the same name in a folder with the same name.

you guys are definitely correct in saying it would be nice if it was possible to have the option to do a merge when dealing with folders with identical names. but how hard is it to just open the folder and move those files???

in all honesty I think OS X's behavior is more logical in a sense, atleast for my uses, but it would be nice if it simply gave you the option in the replace popup window, as it could be nice to have both options each time.

that might actually be something that would be worth sending in feedback to apple for.

 

I've never had that happen, but I've been using the Mac OS since it was an OS..

I do suppose though that it would be cool to have a few options when dragging a folder over;
Cancel Merge Replace

When I get home from work, I'll send some feedback to Apple.

 

Assuming that Apple won't make any changes any time soon, for people who this really bothers, you might want to look into the Finder replacement "PathFinder":

http://www.cocoatech.com/

There's a number of slick things in it, and it's been updated to support the new 10.5 stuff as well (QuickLook, etc.).

-Zadillo