Don't Visit Your Library

Steve already pegged it.

Get It Try It

Don't visit your library. ~/Library. Don't go there.

You don't want to see.

Honestly, if you're using Finder, as most of you are, you won't have an easy time of it anyway, even if you do succeed in getting there and making any sense of it.

Of course the Apple engineers have been helpful in getting Finder to hide ~/Library so you can pretend it doesn't exist. Just like they do with iPod_Control and Gatekeeper's extended attributes.

But here it is anyway.



No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. That's two gigabytes of storage in twenty-four thousand files.

In your own library.

You might be able to guess what Avie would say about that. You already know what Steve would say about it.

Steve would take one look and say:

'This. Is. Shit.'

He would say that. You know he would. And he'd be right of course.

What happened to Apple?

If there is elegance in simplicity - and there is - then what is that?

And that's only one location. There are many many others. They're all over the place.

Going through all of that - all of ~/Library - is pointless. The system's been overcome, overrun. There's just too much of it.

It's shit.

Chaos and waste everywhere. Right down to Cocoa application architecture. Contents/PkgInfo? It's not used. Yet it's generated for every application build. The Contents/MacOS directory? It was pruned out of iOS because it's not needed. Yet it's kept on 'macOS' because what? Because this tightly guarded operating system is going to run on another platform?

Try navigating through ~/Library. Just try. Yes, you have the world's worst tools for doing that. Finder is like sunglasses in the dark. But try.

And ask yourself why Apple would stuff and hide twenty-four thousand files in what's supposed to be your own home area.

Steve ran a tight ship. A very tight ship. Steve was a pirate and a rebel. Steve had cojones.

About Rixstep

Stockholm/London-based Rixstep are a constellation of programmers and support staff from Radsoft Laboratories who tired of Windows vulnerabilities, Linux driver issues, and cursing x86 hardware all day long. Rixstep have many years of experience behind their efforts, with teaching and consulting credentials from the likes of British Aerospace, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Lloyds TSB, SAAB Defence Systems, British Broadcasting Corporation, Barclays Bank, IBM, Microsoft, and Sony/Ericsson.

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