🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <QWFMUEy00Uo1MC008j@andrew.cmu.edu> jk3t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jonathan King) writes:
>When you drag an icon (file) into the trashcan, you aren't copying it, and you
>aren't deleting it either.  You are basically *moving it*.  You delete it by
>launching an application (implicitly deleting the file) or emptying the trash
>can (explicitly deleting the file).  Moving an icon into the trash is thus a
>bit like moving it somewhere else on the desktop with the strange side effect
>that the icon (file) is now "deleteable".  When I first got my Mac, it took me
>a while to realize what was going on with this [ ... ]
>
>The great exception to all this, of course, is putting a *disk* icon in the
>trash, which ejects the disk, (gets the icon off the desktop) but doesn't do
>anything with the files the disk contains. [ ... ]

The original Mac never let you throw disks in the trash until you had
explicitly ejected them.  The trash served as a way of removing the
disk's icon from the desktop (which, on the 128k Mac, served 2
important purposes:  it reduced clutter on the small screen, and it
freed up the memory needed to remember that disk's icons, directory,
etc.).  This use of the trash seemed perfectly natural -- since the
disk was already ejected, no one thought that throwing its icon into
the trash would erase any data.  The current use of the trash was
introduced later, as a shortcut for eject-and-remove-from-desktop.

Speaking of the old days, anyone remember the original Mac's disk copy
program?  The one that used screen memory to do the copy?  There was
this little line at the bottom of the screen that said something like
"Don't worry, your screen is going to look funny for a while..."
Those were the days...

-- 
   Steve Baumgarten             | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
   Davis Polk & Wardwell        |  remember, we were way ahead of you."
   ...!cmcl2!esquire!sbb        |                           - David Letterman