A file or folder with the same name

From stupid gaffe to pseudo-standard.

Get It Try It

It just sort of like slips in there you know!

New to the platform? Noticed anything different - anything strange - with your file management?

It's one thing for Mark Pilgrim to lament the potential loss of files when migrating to a new platform or for others to lament their loss performing massive operations over an enterprise network. But it's quite another to risk losing your files when you're not bloody going anywhere.

Need to learn more? Go here. Or Google it.

What you're looking at is a system standard file save overwrite sheet. You notice the system isn't sure if it's a file or folder you're saving as. The document you're saving is a file - that much the system knows. But the system hasn't bothered to check if the target is a file or folder. It could have but it didn't. It didn't because it doesn't care.

Apple engineers don't care. The entire industry says they're wrong wrong wrong and that this is dangerous dangerous dangerous but they don't care.

For the record: this is standard behaviour only on Apple's platform. Nowhere else. Anywhere else it would be considered a catastrophe and cause for termination of employment.

What is Apple's response? 'Behaves correctly'. Why? Because you're given a prompt - you're given the opportunity to say 'no' to hosing your file system.

Feel better now?

Buy a HDD. Use Time Machine. Start planning now for your next computer purchase.