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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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Asklemmy
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Further confusing is that Mac keyboards have the backspace key labeled as "delete". Which makes sense really, but when the universal way to refer to that key is backspace, it's just them being stubborn morons who don't want to change it. They could've labelled the escape key "exit" or something else on that same logic but didn't. I like a lot about MacOs (nothing else about apple though) but some of the hard lines they've taken are just idiotic to me. In finder you cannot cut files... I've read the long winded justification and it can fuck off. Every other platform lets you do that. It's convenient and not confusing at all but apple people will insist cutting a file doesn't make sense.
I thought you could when I last used it, back when it was called Mac OS X, so I just searched and TIL they removed cmd-X for files in 2015, but, you actually can still cut files; it's just another hidden keyboard shortcut now: after you copy a file with cmd-C you can retroactively make it a cut when pasting by typing cmd-option-V instead of cmd-V. Intuitive, no?
As a non-Apple person: they are correct, but sometimes a metaphor fails and there is no better alternative.
I think I agree. The metaphor doesn't actually need to be perfect if everyone understood that UI mechanic like 40 years ago. I would've been confused about cutting files if I hadn't learned how it worked with text, but I had, so it was extremely easy to get what it meant for files for me.
Exactly.
It is interesting as the metaphor becomes reality though. Modern folks (and I mean anything post-gen-X) mostly don’t understand folders and especially filing cabinets, and that metaphor breaks badly with deep nesting, and symlinks/shortcuts and multiple different vies of the same content (e.g. google drive web vs desktop)…
It also leads to odd anachronisms like the floppy disk as save icon.
The thing is the metaphor was never perfect and it takes a long time to get enough people used to it, plus you have to be pretty consistent or people don’t realize the metaphor exists at all.