How is this possible?

[BigMac55]

When I'm watching a video (.m4v) file with Quicktime... I can actually move the file to a new directory without interrupting playback.

I don't think that can be done on windows.

[DeltaMac]

I never would have thought that would be unusual, or even worth mentioning...
Can't do it in Windows, huh?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Probably because moving the file to a new directory (on the same hard drive) doesn't actually move any data on the disk at all -- you didn't move the movie data, you simply moved a pointer to that movie data.

Try it again, except move the file (not copy -- but move) to a different hard drive and see if you get the same results.

[Mikuro]

Generally speaking, once a file is open, its path is no longer relevant. In some poorly-written programs (like TextEdit, last I checked!), if you open a file, move it, and then save changes, it will create a NEW file in the location the original was opened from. But most apps will even save it in the new location the way you would (or should) expect.

The Mac OS has always been pretty smart about this. Actually, the classic Mac OS was smarter than OS X, since OS X has some Unix baggage that's not so smart.

The technical reason is that once a file is open, it's accessed from a pointer which never changes. For saving it's a little more complicated, because the program needs to know the path to save it to. The Classic Mac OS, and more savvy OS X apps, use a many-layered process to identify files. It only uses absolute paths as a last resort. This is also why you can make an alias to a file, move the original and have the alias still work. On Unix you can't do this. (I don't know about Windows off the top of my head.)

[MisterMe]

... On Unix you can't do this. (I don't know about Windows off the top of my head.)

It is my understanding that Windows behaves almost exactly opposite of the Mac. A Windows move copies the file to the destination directory and deletes the original file. Pointer? What's that?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

A "pointer" is a record in the file system table of the hard drive that simply points to the location on the platter where the data is stored. A file icon on your desktop is simply a pointer to this pointer -- so when you move an icon to a different location on your hard drive (not to a different drive, which would actually cause data to be moved about on the hard drive[s]), you're simply updating the icon pointer and moving it to a different location -- the file system "pointer" on the hard drive hasn't changed, nor has the data on the hard drive platter.

[MisterMe]

A "pointer" is a record in the file system table of the hard drive that simply points to the location on the platter where the data is stored. ...

OK, Caca. When someone makes a statement like: Speed Limit? What's that? it does not indicate ignorance of the concept of legally maximum speed on the public road. It is a joke. In the speed limit example, it may be a person who willfully drives faster than the law allows, but feigns ignorance when a friend questions him about his driving, or a person who parodies a speeder by asserting that the speeder doesn't know what a speed limit is. In this case, I was making light of the fact that Microsoft makes limited use of pointers.

Condescension? What's that?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Hey, it's Tuesday, which is actually Monday (since yesterday was a holiday) and the brain is on auto-pilot. No condescension was meant, otherwise there would be tiny jabs at one's intelligence peppered throughout the post.

Sorry you took it the wrong way and that the joke flew over my head. It's too early in the week for me to be condescending (but apparently not for everyone) -- check back Thursday.