Well .DS_Stores are just used by Finder - but do show the limitations of Unix Filesystems. Where should the data they hold be stored? The macOS API is really F

Well .DS_Stores are just used by Finder - but do show the limitations of Unix Filesystems. Where should the data they hold be stored? The macOS API is really Foundation - a layer above POSIX - if you use that then the filesystem is not that bad. It gives another solution to meta data like .DS_Store which is bundles. Bundles are an object in the Foundation API which you manipulate as one - on the filesystem they are a directory. Think of a bundle as a zipfile that you can look at using POSIX tools. The files being in odd places is for similar reasons to XDG"s attempt at cleaning up Unix. I think that the MacOS/NeXT structure predates XDG.