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From: Michael G Schwern Date: 03:05 on 24 Oct 2003 Subject: OS X fighting itself over aliases Aliases or symlinks, the war continues. MacOS introduced the concept of aliases. Infinately better than Windows shortcuts. They posess most of the positive qualities of both hard and soft links. You can move the original file and the alias will still work. It will work across mounted drives. Brilliant! Nearly transparent aliasing! Except a Unix shells has no idea what to make of these things. To the shell its nothing but some crazy empty file. Fortunately the Finder understands symlinks. So if you want to be compatible with both halves of OS X's personality, you have to make a leap backwards and use symlinks. All part of the Unix half of OS X not groking resource forks. :(
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 00:35 on 24 Oct 2003 Subject: Symmetrical connectors Its not software but damnit if I can never figure out which way my USB cable is supposed to go in! If you're going to design a connector that has to go in a certain way, make sure its damn obvious which way it should go! USB, Serial, ADB, IDE, most SCSI, polarized US power cords (thank god those disappeared right quick) all require they go in a certain way yet they're symmetrical across one or more axis. ADB was the worst offender being nearly round with nothing but a notch to orient on. Many a time I played the little twisty game trying to get an ADB connector to slide into an unseen jack. OTOH, firewire, phone and ethernet jacks, three prong US power and to a limited extent, VGA and mini-VGA seem to have gotten it right.
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