Change Finder 0.3

Now that's the Mac way!

Once upon a time there was a little boy who used to scream and kick and whine a lot. His parents wished there was something they could do and so asked the doctor for more children. And the doctor obliged.

But instead of things getting better they got worse.

The boy refused to play with his siblings. Instead he'd sit all alone in his corner, holding his breath, screaming, kicking, whining, ripping off his diaper and flinging it to the wall, smearing his feces across the walls - and generally just 'carrying on'.

The boy's parents took him back to the doctor who now conducted tests which conclusively showed the poor wee thing was actually a bit - 'developmentally challenged'. The doctor suggested setting goals for the boy, initiating projects, so his mind would come to be used. His parents set up an account for him at SourceForge and bought him an Apple iCook™. After burning his hands a number of times on the scorching lid, he asked his parents for asbestos gloves and got to work. He decided he didn't like the so-called file manager (Finder) and wanted to be able to see all 'dot' files and then turn their display off.

His father showed him how easy this was.

'Now son, you must understand, we bought you this computer as a play toy, not as a serious professional tool. No one takes this heap of crap seriously in the professional world. You're not supposed to see dot files because they can hurt you. They can sting your skin and make you cry out in pain. But if you insist, I will show you how it's done.'

'You see? It's just a simple single command line! And you can do this yourself by editing com.apple.finder.plist in ~/Library/Preferences with an ordinary text editor!'

    <key>AppleShowAllFiles</key>
    <true/>

The little noisy boy was excited! 'Oh! Now I am a PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER!' he thought. 'I need to register at SourceForge and I need to tell that company Apple of my great discovery! Then I need to create different versions of my program! Then I will make lots of money too! Maybe I'll even start my own blog!'

The boy's father wasn't so encouraging. 'Son, look at things in perspective. Please! After all, IT'S ONLY A BLOODY COMMAND LINE! You can't make things easier than that. The command line causes no storage. You've heard the expression 'shooting flies with a cannon'? This is more like trying to drop a bomb on them.'

'Look: I'm only trying to protect you. I'm afraid people will see this and call you STUPID. And there's nothing we want to do more than protect you and see you grow into a fine and healthy human being. Starting a SourceForge project is not the way to accomplish that goal!'

But the boy stomped and screamed and whined and squirted his formula bottle into the iCook™ keyboard and his parents finally relented.

'I'm worried about our son', said the boy's mother to his father. 'I'm afraid he will never develop any social skills. I'm afraid - I'm afraid that - I can't say it.'

'You mean you're afraid he's GAY?' asked the father. 'I'm sure he is. There's nothing we can do about that. Look at the way he took to that iCook™.'

'I hate having to wash those thermal gloves every day', said the mother. 'They get so soggy.'

'We can try parental controls again', said the father.

So the boy published his source code at SourceForge and then he went for Apple. He decided to publish his program, which he'd cleverly named CHANGE FINDER, in the 'Unix & Open Source' category. He liked the tag line for that category best.

'I think that used to say 'rock-solid foundation of Unix', his father commented.

'What's Unix?' asked the boy.

And Apple accepted the submission. (They always do, and because the little boy promised to eventually produce a WIDGET, they were overly pleased. Steve Jobs - or someone faking Steve Jobs' signature - sent the boy a personal thank you letter.)

Now his father noticed something wrong. 'Your page at Apple says you're only compatible with OS X 10.4 Tiger', he showed the boy. 'But this is just a dumbfuck script that runs on any version!'

'But this is COMPILED APPLESCRIPT CODE', returned the little boy.

Then his father saw the 'Universal' graphic on the page. 'Universal?' he asked, turning red as a beet.

'Yes of course', said the boy confidently. 'My program runs on iCook™.'

'BUT IT'S A BLOODY COMMAND LINE!'

'Oh no - this is REAL COMPILED PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER CODE!'

And that, as it turns out, was the final straw. The little boy's parents took away the Apple iCook™, sold it for scrap, and sent the little boy to an orphanage where he was never cared for, never cuddled, never loved, and never fed properly ever again.

Now that's the Mac way!