There is a Terminal command work around even on the Mac, but it’s not something that an average user would ever know about or feel comfortable invoking, nor something that Apple provided deliberately. 
But, that is small potatoes compared to Microsoft’s shenanigans forcing users to use IE in the past during the browser wars.
IE. I don’t even use that thing to download Chrome.
You’re right, of course. That’s true. I click through that so regularly that I have become oblivious to it. The software I was thinking of is the camera makers’ shitty stuff.
Yeah, it’s a pretty neat trick. I think it’s a more advanced take on the concept behind those line-in to cassette deck adapters(that take an audio source and produce a magnetic field where the cassette deck’s read heads expect the tape to be); that powers the card and serves up its contents where a floppy drive’s read head expects them to be. I’m not sure exactly what witchcraft was required on the driver side; but the software did have to be aware of what was going on for it to work, though the hardware did not.
I’m not really sure what killed ‘SmartMedia’; whether lack of onboard flash abstraction was ultimately abortive(quite possible, since the other format to go that route, ‘xD Picture Card’ is equally dead); but those things were pretty neat for the time. And a very satisfying size. Too thin to feel bulky; but big enough to have some presence, unlike microSD; I’ve never encountered(outside of New Vegas, obviously) a storage device that more closely approaches the satisfying feel of a poker chip.
What? My MBP never opens Photos. I haven’t use that program in years and I plug an SD card almost daily…
A quick googling brings up easy steps to prevent it from opening automatically: http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/31/stop-photos-opening-automatically-mac-os-x/
always? Are you sure?
I was until now! That is a very helpful note, and since I own a limited number of SD cards, pretty convenient. Last I researched this, though, the only way to universally turn off the behavior is a terminal command, and not something accessible through the a GUI.
(And to think some people say minds can’t be changed by forum posts 
)
That is annoying, but I think the idea was to get people using tags and “smart folders” more, since that change came around the same time as the ability to add custom tags beyond the color-coded ones. They’ve been trying to lead users towards non-hierarchical file organization for a while now, and TBH it has a lot of advantages but it can be hard to mentally get beyond the cabinet-folder-page metaphor.
Yeah, and they’ve largely succeeded, so much so that that helping one of my mac using friends with their computer is an exercise in frustration because they don’t have the faintest idea where they are saving their files, or why their computer is full, or how to back it up. Divorcing people from the concept of logical device storage is stupid so long as we are storing the data on logical devices.
That’s hardly a new problem brought about by tag-based organization. Users have been largely clueless about those things since around 1984. Look at the mess on a typical desktop, and I don’t mean just all the stupid application shortcuts installers spray all over there by default.
There’s been many, many projects trying to solve this problem. I remember how sad I was when WinFS was canceled.
We’ve been doing that with limited success since the 8.3 naming convention had people naming their processioning files with suffixes like .LTR for “Letter” to make finding files easier.
I remember reading about a CS professor who claimed he could test for programming aptitude by giving students a test for tolerance of arbitrariness. I’ve got a pretty low tollerance, so programing is not a good fit for me, and neither is not knowing where my damn files are stored. 
The trouble is that, unless you are amazing at it(or the alternative is just so hopeless that you win by default, as with web search results); ‘non hierarchical file organization’ always ends up being a hierarchical file system with a peevish, cryptic, obscurantist interface lurking on top. It is one of those things where the automagic has to work 100% of the time or you find yourself in a world of pain; and it just doesn’t work that often.
The results have been especially painful on the mobile side(and, to their discredit, Google has eagerly embraced the same trend); were files pretend not to be anywhere at all; just mysteriously present if you are using the app that ‘owns’ them; and passing files between applications being a wildly finicky process.
One can understand why people keep trying to kill the hierarchical filesystem off; it’s just that it is one of those things that is a lot harder than it looks to kill; but easy to mutilate unpleasantly.
I think most difficulties with it can be chalked up to PEBKAC, or more charitably, inadequate training. Users don’t realize the power of being able to tag a file as Financial and Personal and Taxes and Travel so it will show up in searches and smart folders looking for any of those tags, instead of having to remember exactly where they put that airfare receipt for the business conference that they then extended into vacation PTO.
Just tag everything as “miscellaneous”. Then you’ll always be able to find it.
In the converse, if a simple product only “works right” with extensive user training and effort, then the problem may be with the product design, not the users. Or, in other words, make the product work for people rather than make people work for the product.
not true - only @potato outright said his desktop is cluttered in the background image thread (or we’re a very untypical bunch here)
About twice a year, my friend b0rks her iphone, because it’s out of storage space and I have to finagle all the damn photos off it for her… 
And on the topic of apple, no less.
Obligatory…
It’s not so much technical training as organizational skills. Plenty of people have lousy or arbitrary filing systems, but that doesn’t mean that filing cabinets are badly designed.
One of several life skills they don’t teach in school. Does Home Ec still exist even as an elective?
