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want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? I think Apple was good at keeping things consistent across apps, but the chosen metaphors were sometimes jus

by rtpg 10y ago

want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? I think Apple was good at keeping things consistent across apps, but the chosen metaphors were sometimes just as confusing (if worse) than the blessed windows one. Not that it matters, everything is learned behaviour anyways. Consistency is already a great achievement.

Dain42 10y ago
> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? That was just something that was there forever, basically since 1984. It was part of the Macintosh vernacular. You could also right-click to eject.
- ISL 10y ago
  if there was a two-button mouse....
- wvenable 10y ago
  Right-click? On a mouse with one button?
  - kagamine 10y ago
    You had t press a modifier key to right click, but 2 button mouses have been sold with macs since 10.2 at least, and 10.2 was available in 2001/2.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > You had t press a modifier key to right click Control, which still works incidentally.
      - rangibaby 10y ago
        You still need to enable right click from a menu for Apple-brand mice and trackpads. Otherwise ctrl+click is still the only way
        masklinn 10y ago
        IIRC for trackpads at least it's been enabled by default for some time (though I believe the default gesture is a double-tap rather than a tap in the bottom-right corner).
      - rangibaby 10y ago
        You still need to enable right click from a menu for Apple-brand mice and trackpads. Otherwise ctrl+click is still the only way
  - Animats 10y ago
    "The Macintosh has a multi-button mouse, but the buttons are on the keyboard".
- niccaluim 10y ago
  Contextual menus weren't added until Mac OS 8 or thereabouts. In all prior versions you either dragged to the Trash or used an item in the menubar.
- rtpg 10y ago
  That's kind of my point. It's all learned vernacular, so having inately understandable behaviour isn't as important as being consistent. Though someone's saying that dragging the ion turns it into the eject symbol, which I hadn't noticed until now but is more reasonable.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  But it's been considered a terrible design choice since 1984. It's not one of those things that we decided against long after it was put in place, Unix philosophy types were complaining about the inconsistency of that choice the day it came out.
fixmycode 10y ago
the trash can turns into the eject symbol if you start to drag an ejectable volume
- majewsky 10y ago
  1. Not very discoverable if your dock is set to auto-hide. 2. On a large screen, this action (the trash can transformation) can happen very far away from the place you're looking at, which means that you will miss it. This is a general gripe of mine with Mac OS: It will regularly place popup dialogs on seemingly random screens. I have three active screens, and when I'm looking at the left screen, the right screen is so far outside my FOV that I will literally not notice dialogs popping up there.
  - the_other 10y ago
    If you can set your dock to auto-hide, and run three parallel screens, you probably don't need any of the other assistance you're looking for.
    - creshal 10y ago
      Why? Are people only allowed to have multiple screens after passing some OSX geek initiation rite?
      - the_other 10y ago
        Sure, people can have as many screens as they can manage. I still think it's reasonable to assume that if you know how to configure a system to spread your desktop over three screens and to hide the widget that gives you the feedback/discoverability then you can use the skills that got you there to get you out of your predicament. If your argument is that the dock is the wrong place for that feedback because it can be hidden, or that the disc/drive icons should always be closer to the dock, then we have a table laid for a good discussion.
        10y ago
rsfinn 10y ago
> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? This is the appendix of the Mac UI. Gather round, kids, and listen to Grandpa tell you a story of the days when Macs had only one floppy disk drive. When you wanted to copy a file from one disk to another, you had to (physically) eject the first disk to insert the second one, but the first disk volume was still logically mounted so you could use it as a source or destination. So the volume's icon remained on the desktop, only dimmed so you knew the disk wasn't physically present. So you physically eject a disk by selecting it and pressing Command-E (remember, only one mouse button), but how do you get rid of the ghost icon afterwards? Same way you get rid of anything -- you drag it to the trash. From there it's an obvious shortcut to combining the two operations by dragging a "live" icon to the trash to both eject it and remove its icon in one step. (Well, obvious in 1985, anyway.) Now that we can right-click the icon to eject the volume and have forgotten the origins of the drag-to-trash gesture, it may seem nonsensical, but those of us who were there at the beginning were grateful for the shortcut. (Also, get off my lawn.)

by rtpg 10y ago

Dain42 10y ago

> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? That was just something that was there forever, basically since 1984. It was part of the Macintosh vernacular. You could also right-click to eject.

ISL 10y ago
if there was a two-button mouse....
wvenable 10y ago
Right-click? On a mouse with one button?
- kagamine 10y ago
  You had t press a modifier key to right click, but 2 button mouses have been sold with macs since 10.2 at least, and 10.2 was available in 2001/2.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > You had t press a modifier key to right click Control, which still works incidentally.
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      You still need to enable right click from a menu for Apple-brand mice and trackpads. Otherwise ctrl+click is still the only way
      - masklinn 10y ago
        IIRC for trackpads at least it's been enabled by default for some time (though I believe the default gesture is a double-tap rather than a tap in the bottom-right corner).
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      You still need to enable right click from a menu for Apple-brand mice and trackpads. Otherwise ctrl+click is still the only way
- Animats 10y ago
  "The Macintosh has a multi-button mouse, but the buttons are on the keyboard".
niccaluim 10y ago
Contextual menus weren't added until Mac OS 8 or thereabouts. In all prior versions you either dragged to the Trash or used an item in the menubar.
rtpg 10y ago
That's kind of my point. It's all learned vernacular, so having inately understandable behaviour isn't as important as being consistent. Though someone's saying that dragging the ion turns it into the eject symbol, which I hadn't noticed until now but is more reasonable.
Bartweiss 10y ago
But it's been considered a terrible design choice since 1984. It's not one of those things that we decided against long after it was put in place, Unix philosophy types were complaining about the inconsistency of that choice the day it came out.

fixmycode 10y ago

the trash can turns into the eject symbol if you start to drag an ejectable volume

majewsky 10y ago
1. Not very discoverable if your dock is set to auto-hide. 2. On a large screen, this action (the trash can transformation) can happen very far away from the place you're looking at, which means that you will miss it. This is a general gripe of mine with Mac OS: It will regularly place popup dialogs on seemingly random screens. I have three active screens, and when I'm looking at the left screen, the right screen is so far outside my FOV that I will literally not notice dialogs popping up there.
- the_other 10y ago
  If you can set your dock to auto-hide, and run three parallel screens, you probably don't need any of the other assistance you're looking for.
  - creshal 10y ago
    Why? Are people only allowed to have multiple screens after passing some OSX geek initiation rite?
    - the_other 10y ago
      Sure, people can have as many screens as they can manage. I still think it's reasonable to assume that if you know how to configure a system to spread your desktop over three screens and to hide the widget that gives you the feedback/discoverability then you can use the skills that got you there to get you out of your predicament. If your argument is that the dock is the wrong place for that feedback because it can be hidden, or that the disc/drive icons should always be closer to the dock, then we have a table laid for a good discussion.
      - 10y ago

rsfinn 10y ago

> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? This is the appendix of the Mac UI. Gather round, kids, and listen to Grandpa tell you a story of the days when Macs had only one floppy disk drive. When you wanted to copy a file from one disk to another, you had to (physically) eject the first disk to insert the second one, but the first disk volume was still logically mounted so you could use it as a source or destination. So the volume's icon remained on the desktop, only dimmed so you knew the disk wasn't physically present. So you physically eject a disk by selecting it and pressing Command-E (remember, only one mouse button), but how do you get rid of the ghost icon afterwards? Same way you get rid of anything -- you drag it to the trash. From there it's an obvious shortcut to combining the two operations by dragging a "live" icon to the trash to both eject it and remove its icon in one step. (Well, obvious in 1985, anyway.) Now that we can right-click the icon to eject the volume and have forgotten the origins of the drag-to-trash gesture, it may seem nonsensical, but those of us who were there at the beginning were grateful for the shortcut. (Also, get off my lawn.)