> This type of "magic" bullshit really irritates me.
Microsoft seems to have tried to get rid of outmoded notions such as directories, without ever articulating what new model they favoured. So you get these privileged spaces (I have no better word) like "Documents". They've tried to make Explorer as invisible as possible.
But they never finished the job! So you end up with a mess of "AppData" (apparently a normal directory) and "Application Data" (not accessible). I presume the first is an alias for the second; but the second should be invisible if it's not accessible (there are other directories like this).
This started with Win7. Then they stopped abruptly, but never reverted these aborted changes. It's as if there's nobody in charge. My guess is that forcing Microsoft accounts, "instrumentation", and failed attempts to hegemonize mobile were prioritized over fixing what they'd broken.
NT4 was a reasonable OS, with a rotten commandline. Nothing they've shipped since has come close.
It’s like how Windows seems to have at least four different control panels now. There’s whatever comes up if you search for, say, “user accounts”. There’s the actual Control Panel. There’s MMC. And there’s the group policy editor. (Maybe that last one gets a pass.)
And all of these partially duplicate functionality. Want to change the password of a different user account? You can’t do it from the user account panel - you can only do it from the other user account panel.
And there’s the group policy editor. (Maybe that last one gets a pass.)
I've always joked that the gpedit.msc is where the real settings are. It's one of the pieces that has stayed the same (and even been added to) while all the other parts are gradually dumbed-down and becoming less useful.
Interestingly that's the one they decided to take away from the vast majority of their users. Just because Windows users paid for it doesn't mean it's not Microsoft's computer and MS doesn't want users messing with their stuff.
MMC and Group policy do way more than user accounts.
But yes it is a mess and only as an IT person I can somewhat make sense of when to use the modern Settings - Accounts, Control Panel users, MMC or sysdm.cpl
"Application Data" and "Program Files" were chosen for Windows 95 as a safety valve for programs that were upgraded to work with long files but might still be making assumptions such as filenames won't have a space. It would cause them to fail early so those bugs could be fixed.
But it also made the 250 character path limit much easier to reach. When the NT unification happened with 2000/XP the shorter AppData was used with "Application Data" remaining as a junction point to the roaming profile for compatibility.
Thing is, I don't want any hidden files, ever. I've been driving with "Show hidden and system files" set for 20 years. It's just about the first setting I change on a new Windows system.
Microsoft seems to have tried to get rid of outmoded notions such as directories, without ever articulating what new model they favoured. So you get these privileged spaces (I have no better word) like "Documents". They've tried to make Explorer as invisible as possible.
But they never finished the job! So you end up with a mess of "AppData" (apparently a normal directory) and "Application Data" (not accessible). I presume the first is an alias for the second; but the second should be invisible if it's not accessible (there are other directories like this).
This started with Win7. Then they stopped abruptly, but never reverted these aborted changes. It's as if there's nobody in charge. My guess is that forcing Microsoft accounts, "instrumentation", and failed attempts to hegemonize mobile were prioritized over fixing what they'd broken.
NT4 was a reasonable OS, with a rotten commandline. Nothing they've shipped since has come close.