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by wtallis 5410 days ago
More important than how you copy the path of an item in the Finder, why?
2 comments

Sending the path to a shared network drive file on chat... (I don't want to send the file)

Also, how do you drag and drop to a terminal that's fullscreen?

Cmd-C, Cmd-V.

Works like a charm.

What a ridiculous question. There are lots of reasons I might want to do that. Storing file paths in a text file for later bookkeeping and copying file paths to a Google search box while trying to debug something are two I can immediately think of.
But how often do you really need to do that? For me, it's once every few months. It's okay for rarely-needed features to be less accessible or a bit harder to use. I understand that getting at the textual path of an object is generally a bit easier in Windows Explorer than in the Finder, but I don't know of any common workflow in OS X that requires it, so I don't understand why it's getting decried as a notable problem with the Finder.
I find it strange that this didactic "You don't need that feature" seems to be considered a valid argument in the OSX camp.
The feature does exist, it just isn't as accessible as some people would prefer. There's an opportunity cost to almost any UI change, so it is perfectly valid to ask whether a feature is useful, important, and popular enough to justify making it easier to use at the expense of making something else harder to use.