Apparently not for those migrating files from older Macs/Systems. I got a mess when I tried, then looked for it and found many comments/questions at Apple’s support area about permission folders, authorizations needed to copy files or trash files, and on and on. Nobody seems to know for sure what’s up with this yet.

WOW: we can now copy files and folders present on the Apple Xsan volume from a 10.6.8 Xsan client and ACLs do not get duplicated.

Very helpful. bwk’s first tutorial on building Unix scripts doesn’t work on OS X. Brilliant.

> But have pity and empathy on the unwashed masses

It’s not about them. It’s about the pros who buy our stuff. We all know the difference. But Apple deliberately ignore programmer/admin needs. They’ll never get the enterprise without that. And currently they’re like a 16yo girl who tells you ‘I think I’m gonna dump Robbie Williams’.

> QuickLook, CoverFlow, Spotlight, and colored folders

Yes. That’s not important to us. We just want to go in and do surgery. Not the same thing.

> but woe to them if they double clicked an app bundle in Xfile

Either that or having to invoke a context menu and ‘Show Package Contents’. The app bundle *is* a directory and that definition can change at any time. And lo and behold: that directory has files in it!

> but I just don’t have your righteous zeal

It’s not about zeal. It’s about trying to get the job done. Again: we would never have written those tools if we didn’t need them. The cold shower when migrating to OS X ten years ago was that they had *nothing*.

Remember WINFILE? The ‘advanced’ PROGMAN for Windows? Default that was a kiddie toy. Play with it enough and you could turn it into a dynamo. But you had to tinker with it to get it that far. You can’t do that with Apple tools. Pros are left out in the cold. We’re pros and we needed better; our clients do too. They’re not your ‘unwashed masses’. Not at all.

> Of course, it’s the Resource fork thumbnail that is saved in there, that’ll get stripped when they upload it, but Finder isn’t letting them know that!

Actually it’s an *extended attribute* today. Big step forward for 10.4 in 2005. And not worrying about that extra baggage for ordinary users is fine – but they offer no alternative for the pros. For those who need to know.

If you can see it from the command line, you should be able to see it from the graphical interface. And that’s the irony: MSFT announced the end of the command line, something Apple never had, then Apple introduced it.

And there’s nothing wrong with the command line. For batch processing it’s the only way to go. What *is* wrong is that Apple so many times – Apple of all companies – offer the pros no alternative. Fumbling in the dark with a command line for a pro is a nightmare. You don’t have the overview. The one thing that really sells the GUI for a pro is the file management. You can see everything at once. Apple don’t have that. Other platforms target both end users and pros. Apple are alone in targeting only the end users and ignoring the pros. No wonder the enterprise walked away. NeXT systems were never like that.

> I can’t think of anything more impure than crap!

Now you’re being scatological.

So I know what you mean, I get where you’re coming from, and I respectfully see your points — but I just don’t have your righteous zeal, keep up the good fight