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matd

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 14, 2004
45
0
Hello,

I have 3 interesting questions concerning MacOs X

#1

Why does MacOs X produces ._DS_STORE, ._Trashes , _.901, ._myfileName files on USB Storage Key devices ? What's totaly annoying, is the fact that these files are some time as huge as the original file (eg: ._myFileName.mp3 can have the same size as myFileName.mp3). Is it a bug, a feature ? For me it's not a problem, but when you give your USB Storage Key to a Windows user, they have dozens of this kinda temporary files on the key... Not very user friendly

#2
I'm asking myself how the "Plug'n Play" support is made in MacOsX. Does the "Plug'n Play" feature come from the OS or from the chip built in the USB device ? Does it mean that each device has to implement in the chip a kinda "Hello Os, I'm a USB Storage device with the name XYZ, please detect me"?
In this case is this the reason why a Pocket Pc isn't directly working with Mac Os X ?

#3
To this question I hope i won't have answers such as "it's illegal, you aren't allowed to " because I'm not asking a "How-to" but a "is it possible". Under Windows when installing a demo version say 30 Days trial, we know that althought we have clean up everything on the hard drive, it's impossible to reinstall the app because there are so many registry keys hidden in the registry.
My question is simple : does MacOs also have a registry (i far as i know, no) or a hidden file system, or does it mean that if I have cleaned up everything on my hard drive i could THEORETICALLY reinstall the trial version and reset the "counter" ?

Thanx a lot for your answers !
 
matd said:
Why does MacOs X produces ._DS_STORE, ._Trashes , _.901, ._myfileName files on USB Storage Key devices ? What's totaly annoying, is the fact that these files are some time as huge as the original file (eg: ._myFileName.mp3 can have the same size as myFileName.mp3). Is it a bug, a feature ? For me it's not a problem, but when you give your USB Storage Key to a Windows user, they have dozens of this kinda temporary files on the key... Not very user friendly
Windows also produces it's own hidden files that appear when you put a USB drive into a mac so it happens both ways. The dot before the name way of making files hidden predates either the mac or windows. It's from Unix.
#2
I'm asking myself how the "Plug'n Play" support is made in MacOsX. Does the "Plug'n Play" feature come from the OS or from the chip built in the USB device ?
Both.
My question is simple : does MacOs also have a registry (i far as i know, no) or a hidden file system, or does it mean that if I have cleaned up everything on my hard drive i could THEORETICALLY reinstall the trial version and reset the "counter" ?
Yes it is illegal. No Mac OS X doesn't have a registry. Each program implements it's trial period in it's own way. I know how my program does it but I'm not about to go telling you:p
 
Thanks a lot for your answers caveman_uk !

caveman_uk said:
Windows also produces it's own hidden files that appear when you put a USB drive into a mac so it happens both ways. The dot before the name way of making files hidden predates either the mac or windows. It's from Unix.

Perhaps a stupid question, but why do they need hidden files, and why aren't they deleted after the job (e.g. file transfer) is done ?

Yes it is illegal. No Mac OS X doesn't have a registry. Each program implements it's trial period in it's own way. I know how my program does it but I'm not about to go telling you:p
Thanks for this answer it was enough to know that it's possible :) ;)
 
Mac OS traditionally uses files that consists of a data fork and a resource fork [wikipedia.org]. On file systems that don't support forks, for example FAT32, the resource forks are saved seperately as a hidden file (dot-underscore prefix).

The other hidden files contain information about the file icons, the position of the icon in Finder and stuff like that.
 
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