Mac CD Eject Key

[Eric Dunbar]

On 6/28/05, Peter Lieverdink <ubuntu at cafuego.net> wrote:
> > NJ> Would it be possible to have a desktop icon for the media that when
> > NJ> dragged and dropped onto the recycle bin unmounts and ejects the cd?
> >
> > I think that's terribly counter-intuitive. Just because Mac's have
> > used that method of ejecting floppies and CD's since 1984 doesn't mean
> > that it makes sense.  Windows has 'press start to shutdown', Mac has
> > 'throw your beloved picture CD in the trash to eject'.

They've changed it to show an eject button instead of the trash icon
when you select an ejectable mount! Scary problem fixed.

> Maybe a dumb question, but if a user wants it, why not? Your broken
> desktop metaphor is someone else's way of working...

Because you don't want bad things to happen merely at the press of a
button. No other operation on your computer can result in the
destruction of something with the simple press of a button! Power down
and restart are usually destructive actions (power not necessarily on
many computers since pressing power now often does a "nice" power down
or puts a computer to sleep).

It would be nice to be able to press the eject button and have the
disk eject when it's safe to do so (i.e. an app is no longer accessing
it or the burn has finished). And, I don't see why not. Apple can
completely disable the eject button on CD-RW or DVD-RWs in their
machines (unless it's a mobo hardware solution... I've got a 3rd party
DVD+-RW in my Mac tower and Mac OS disables the eject button when
there's a disk in the drive) so there has to be a nice inbetween where
you don't do the really destructive bring down apps/OSes/etc. in
Windows or the frustrating "I must eject it through software" in
Apple.

Eric.