> 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 day

> 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.)