“When you double-click a document in the Finder, how does the system decide what application should open it? The relationship between a document and its owning application is called a preferred application binding. Since the very first day of the very first version of Mac OS X, there has been an uneasy detente between the Unix way of binding documents to applications and the former Mac way, inherited from the early days of the Mac OS. Now, in Snow Leopard, users and developers are complaining that the Unix way is being allowed to run roughshod over the Mac way.”
It’s not really a Unix way of doing things, but a Windows way. We’ve had /etc/files, magic and mimetypes. It seems incredible to most people used to other desktops that you can have one text file open in one application and another text file open in another application in Mac OS, but you can….or you could. It’s quite useful really and it does get around that annoying Windows problem where you have applications continually stealing file extensions where you end up running things like the Winamp agent.
I suppose the old three letter extension is easier to understand, organise and code for and it will stop administrators staring at files created by Mac users on a file share wondering what the hell they all are. I don’t see how Apple couldn’t handle both though.
All we need now is default double-click support. *Ducks*
How about the famous “automatically opening” way? Especially for stuff like presentation.pdf.exe with a nice virus? 🙂
When I read the headline I got hopeful, as the behavior of documents opening in their creator applications is IMHO extremely annoying. But after reading the comments on the article’s website I realized that all they did was follow through on deprecating the old creator code API and replacing it with something called UTI. Apps can still use UTI to specify that documents should be opened with them.
In other words, the behavior will be back in action, as soon as developers get around to updating their apps. Oh well… At least I can enjoy the temporary prospect of the old behavior being broken….
It’s always struck me as funny that Unix desktops can discover a filetype by use of a library called “libmagic”. It makes me think of an imaginary scenario where I demonstrate how the system recognises a .tar.gz archive even though it doesn’t have a filename extension:
Him: How does the system know it’s a tarball?
Me: Magic.
Him: No really, how does it work?
Me: I just told you; it’s magic.
Him: If you don’t know, then just say you don’t know.
Me: I do know how it works! It involves magic!
etc
I’d like to emphasize that the use of magic is an excellent way of solving problems after a “crash and recovery” scenario, where you end up with files like #177763 which are intact, but lack their original name and extension. Using the “file” command, it’s quite easy to find out what files have been in a previous life. There are recovery programs that automatically employ magic to sort results by file type.
Nice. There’s something similar about “The Who”. 🙂
Just paving the way for ZFS in 10.7 (Lynx?).
Hmmm I’ve been wondering what the next release will be called. Apple are kind of running out of options, considering that essentially the most charismatic felidae (cats) have been chosen, so we can exclude among others the “Serval” (though its slim appearance could have fitted 10.6 for its weight loss).
Another leopard?
Just as the snow leopard is not from the same genus as the leopard, there still are some other leopards out there from other geni to choose from, such as the clouded leopard (which would be a real subtle wink at Google’s “cloud”) and the painted leopard (Ocelot). But like other people have suggested, Apple will probably use a strategy that continually goes back and forth between “new features” (10.5, 10.7…) and “more speed & stability” (10.6, 10.8…). As a result, I think the “new features 10.7” release will not continue the “x Leopard” line.
So “10.7 Lynx” it is. …but then what?
So it seems reasonable to believe that Lynx will, indeed, be the name for 10.7. But then what will be the name for 10.8? I don’t suppose Apple would like to compare their lively OS to an extinct species, as cool as they may appear. Also, they mostly only go by a rather complex Latin name, so, nope.
Another lynx?
There actually are some alternative lynxes with pretty cool names like “Alpine Lynx”, “Desert Lynx”, or “Highland Lynx”, which (surprise!) are just domestic cats. Picture Apple.com headlining this predator: http://www.catfacts.org/desert-lynx-cat-facts.jpg
Then there is the Persian/Egyptian/African Lynx (Caracal), Red Lynx (Bobcat) or, the most likely option from the bunch for 10.8: Iberian Lynx (Spanish Lynx). I just don’t see other felidae with a distinct name that could fill this spot.
Saving the best for last
Lastly, I think everybody will guess that Apple is saving the best for last. There is, after all, one more well-known member of the panthera genus (which includes the Jaguar, Tiger and Leopard). Of course I’m talking about Lion. Sure enough, the King will finish the 10.x line.
If 10.7 is the ZFS release, I’d go with OX X 10.7: “Woz”.
The Woz are big cats native to Apple Computer, and have technical smarts.
If they do that, I’m sure they’ll call 10.8 “Syrian Lynx” as an hommage to Steve Jobs’ heritage.
I wonder what the OS11 series are going to bring us, probably names of famous apple brands like “Braeburn” (11.0), “Golden Delicious” (11.8) and “Granny Smith” (11.9).
Oh my.
For a while now, OS X has had a lot of different ways to associate a document with its application, a confusing number of ways in fact. Creator codes, UTIs, Mime types, extensions. It makes sense that creator codes, which are a leftover from the older Mac OS, would be the ones to get dropped in favor of UTIs which are the new OS X way of doing this. If app developers didn’t update their apps to use the UTI standard in the eight or so years they’ve had, that’s too bad for them and lazy to boot.