5 ms·

TLDR: Mac filesystems have resource forks. I guess the author has not used Macs too much, as they have been around since the 1980's.

• vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  The utility of such a feature relative to its security, integrity and astonishment costs can be debated, however. ADS in NTFS has long been a subject of pain, for instance, though I'm unaware of its present status.
  • gnu8 11y ago
    I think it is chiefly used by malware developers at this time.
    • ADSstreamsthrow 11y ago
      It's used widely by popular applications (Adobe / Microsoft software products).
      • mst 11y ago
        Which are, in my experience, more ransomware than malware.
    • makomk 11y ago
      To be fair, it's also used by DRM schemes and those aren't technically malware as such.
  • kennu 11y ago
    I agree that they could probably be deprecated and removed nowadays. There used to be a transition time when people ran old Mac OS applications on OS X.
• idbentley 11y ago
  TLDR: all standard applications for working with files are unaware of resource forks. This is confusing, and hurts new computer users. #consideredharmful
  • coldtea 11y ago
    In 15 years of working with Macs (as a programmer and as a semi-pro DAW/NLE user), I've never been confused once by them. So it sure might be confusing (and I see how) but it's absolutely not very common.
    • KirinDave 11y ago
      > In 15 years of working with Macs (as a programmer and as a semi-pro DAW/NLE user), I've never been confused once by them. Gosh, are you saying that the common use of ADS was a common mac pattern and people very familiar with the history of macs would understand this well? Do you really think that refutes the point that they're confusing to everyone else? While many OSs have implementations of ADS, almost no one uses them.
      • coldtea 11y ago
        >Gosh, are you saying that the common use of ADS was a common mac pattern and people very familiar with the history of macs would understand this well? It was quite common, yes, and even more extended in the past, but I'm saying something else: that noticing it and having issues with it wasn't that common. It's a leaky abstraction, but you don't often meet that leak. Case in point TFA's issue. He has a zero-sized font file where all the data are in the resource leak. All fonts I've dealt with in OS X have been proper files, you can copy over to other FS normally. >Do you really think that refutes the point that they're confusing to everyone else? No, as I wrote: "It sure can be confusing (and I see how)". But it's not that often that it has a chance to be confusing (at least in my experience -- but I've also not seen much discussion in support forums, questions from friends/colleagues with Macs etc about such as issues, whereas I've seen for many other issues). >While many OSs have implementations of ADS, almost no one uses them. Wouldn't that make them even MORE confusing in those OSs, the times they're finally used? As opposed to an OS that regularly uses them?
• joezydeco 11y ago
  Maybe a lot of us (as I did, to be honest) thought that Mac resources went away with the advent of NextStep/OSX.
  • msbarnett 11y ago
    That would have completely destroyed backwards compatibility for a large number of Mac OS users' files. Remember that you could run Mac OS Classic apps on the first few iterations of OS X, and even after you couldn't any more, Carbonized/Cocoized OS X Apps still could open old files you created, many of which heavily used resource forks.
    • duskwuff 11y ago
      AND many Carbon apps, even ones which wouldn't run on Classic Mac OS, would still load resources from a resource fork.