Apple, PLEASE fix this...

[strobe]

Originally posted by jove

System 7 was simply a C rewrite of an old out-of-date Pascal architecture. And they added more color, woohoo. Apple did not announce that 7 was a failed attempt at modernizing the kernel. Yes 8, and 9 were feature bloat of the already crippled 7.

System 7 revised a large chunk of the toolbox API not to mention adding a lot more functionality. I don't know where you've been getting your misinformation, you're dead wrong here.

Your comments about the 'kernel' is quite odd considering there wasn't even a nanokernel until System 8.6. Your comments concerning Pascal is also odd considering Pascal is in no way inferior to C, and in fact its typing scheme allows for more efficient optimization than C does. Your comments about 'color' trivialize the complextity of managing different color spaces in an efficient manner, something X11 or Windows doesn't even do.

You also managed to completely ignore the POINT! What Apple did was to change how the user interacts with the filesystem by introducing the alias manager and reforming the API by deprecating functions which used file paths! Why don't you THINK what consequences such a move would make today? Consider deprecating all Cocoa methods which use NSStrings as file arguments and replace them with FSRefs or something equivalent. What happens, for example, when I move a Cocoa app while its running, or move/rename a file or one of its host directories of non-root volumes? If the application keeps track of such locations by a file path then you're SCREWED!

There is no band-aid to apply. Apple made a do-or-die decision to adopt a 10 year old but pretty advanced system. The process to evolve it into an appliance-like OS is slow, especially with all them losers clinging on to known computer concepts. It has taken the losers of the world a long time to learn that files are something tangible with boundaries.

All I want is a system that keeps track of where apps are located. I don’t care if they use paths, file IDs, or black magic. That is all implementation details. Design dictates that the requirements drive the implementation, not the other way around.

So long.

You've obviously haven't given this any thought at all. If they are referenced by path then they cannot keep track of them! Not even with "black magic" can this be done. It is a limitation of the file path, not how they are used.

The "process" you talk about isn't happening. I have been pointing out this issue since Rhapsody to no avail. The fact of the matter is the programmers maintaining Cocoa don't see the problem and are simply not going to fix it. This process isn't "slow", there is no process!

You talk of "requirements", well you don't need OS X at all, you could use DOS. This fails to address the very concern which begat this thread! The issue is OS X is a fragile UNIX-like OS which is not human-friendly. You move something, it gets broken! What kind of insane system is this anyway?!

File paths HAVE GOT TO GO!