Mac apps unusable after burning to CD using PC

[deadpoet]

OK I thought that Mac applications would remain working and executable after I copied them over to my Wintel PC to burn them onto CD-R. I mean, heck they remained working after I copied them over Samba networking to my PC's hard drive!

So why the heck do they stop executing after I burn them to CD? By this I mean the Mac apps that have no file extension when viewed under MS Windows -- .dmg and .sit files execute and open just fine after I burn them to CD. But Mac applications refuse to run, and OS X just pops up that "There is no default application specified to open the file blah blah dialog.

There are some hidden . files in each directory which I burned to CD along with the apps. So I can't understand what information is missing that is causing the apps to fail to execute. is it because the UNIX executable flag (chmod 755 etc) is not set? If that is the case, why did my apps continue to execute even after I copied them over to my Wintel PC using Samba networking? Bizarre stuff

[edit]

I've tried copying the apps from the CD-R to my iBook, and then executing it there. Still no luck. Also tried adding a .app extension to the filename, and also chmod-ing the file to make it executable. Still doesn't run! I'm lost here

Oh the application icons and all that have also disappeared after I burned them to CD. All file icons appear as just blank documents. Baffling!

 

[coolsoldier]

Possibly Obvious Question:
Are these application bundles or carbon apps? Carbon and Classic applications still have resource forks. Check the "get info" window on OS X (before transferring to PC) to see if they have a .app extension. If they don't, you can't store them on a windows disk. The classic macOS, I think, had a workaround where it created a folder called something like "resource.frk" if you copied it to a windows disk. I don't know if OS X does something like this, but check the windows folder where these files are. If such a folder or file exists, you'll need to copy it also.

 

[deadpoet]

thanks for the info coolsoldier, yep these are carbon apps... as you can probably tell, I've only been using Macs for about 6 months so I still got a lot to learn!

I couldn't find any hidden folders or resource.frk stuff or anything like that on my Wintel PC's drive...

so in the end what I did was I used Disk Copy to create .dmg disk images of the folders with Carbon apps... this way I can burn the .dmg files to CD using Nero and the files will stay intact and can be opened in OS X

I love disk images, they are a really cool concept -- confusing to me at first since there's no Windows equivalent, but now I can't live without them!

 

[mrjamin]

Originally posted by deadpoet
I love disk images, they are a really cool concept -- confusing to me at first since there's no Windows equivalent, but now I can't live without them!

you can 'create' disk images using some cd burning software, where you use a virtual recorder to create an .iso file. Nero kinda does it. Its nowhere near as slick as OSX though!

I too am a big fan of disk imgs!

 

[5300cs]

Doesn't this have anything to do with the data fork issue? I was under the impression that you can't copy Mac executable files over to the pc because the pc'll destroy the data fork...

 

[coolsoldier]

Originally posted by 5300cs
Doesn't this have anything to do with the data fork issue? I was under the impression that you can't copy Mac executable files over to the pc because the pc'll destroy the data fork...

That's backwards. It's the resource fork that windows doesn't have, so that when you copy your mac files to PC, you lose the resources -- Icons, Graphics, Sounds, Text Formatting, etc. Also, this only applies to "Classic" Mac OS Applications and Files. Programs and files for OS X don't have any problems when copied to windows disks because OS X doesn't use resource forks anymore except for classic and carbon apps.

 

[5300cs]

That's good to hear. I backed up my iBook once (back in the days of OS 9) onto my pc and it killed all my data