Re: The official thread for any and all discussion related to Apple Macs.
You are correct, of course. And since you understood such a simple concept without even having ever seen or used the OS, you can see what a bunch of dunderheads those people must be who fail to grasp it even after having used it for a few months. (I am not insinuating anything though.)
Mac OS X is a very intuitive operating system. Instead of messy text alerts that most people don't bother to read, Mac OS X gives you visual cues for various events. For example, if you enter the wrong password during login, you do not get any error message. Instead, the whole login dialog jars violently as soon as you hit return and the password field gets emptied. It is clear that you've entered the wrong password and should try again.
Similarly, Mac OS X gives you three visual cues when you perform the action that iMav did:
1. When you drag the icon out of the sidebar, the mouse cursor changes to a pointer with a little cloud of smoke beneath it. This represents that if you leave the file now, it will go 'poof'.
2. When you drag that icon to the Dock, the other icons will not move aside to make space for the new entry like they usually do. This should be enough to make you think that you're doing something wrong.
3. When you leave the file, it very dramatically disappears in a cloud of smoke. Anyone who has used Mac OS X knows that this does not happen when you delete files so you should realise that whatever it was they you were dragging has not been deleted.
Mac OS X has two kinds of representations for files - aliases and virtual aliases. Virtual aliases are found in the Dock and the Finder sidebar. These are basically aliases that do not have any file associated with them. An alias is a small 4KB file that represents other files. A virtual alias also represents other files but there is no 4KB file here. So when you drag virtual aliases out of their places, it goes 'poof' because there is nothing else associated with it. Drag the original file back to that place (the Dock or Finder sidebar) and a new virtual alias is created.
It is very simple. The fact that this tiny thing had iMav up in arms clearly shows his disinclination towards Mac OS X and his obvious bias against it (and therefore nullifies whatever he has said about it till date). Had he stuck to this much, I would still have found some way to convince myself that it is indeed possible for people more than the age of five to make such a mistake and that it is just a one time occurring.
However, he went above and beyond. When he dragged the 'Applications' icon out of the Finder sidebar onto the Dock and it went 'poof' (as it would have had he left it anywhere apart from the sidebar itself), he thought all his applications had been deleted completely (because the folder wasn't in the Trash either). Now, the Applications folder is right there on the main hard drive itself. It is not even hidden under folders and sub-folders; it is
right there under your nose. He could have even used Spotlight to find it instantly. But no, he thought Mac OS X had deleted his entire list of Applications in one fell swoop. A little application of common sense (which might be completely non-existent in this case) would have led him to the obvious conclusion that it wasn't possible because he still was using many of those applications even at that moment.
I guess he's used Windows a tad too long and that might have done some lasting damage!
