Last night I wanted to copy some files off of several CDs and burn them onto a single CD. I popped them into my Mac, highlighted the folders I wanted, and dragged them onto a folder in my desktop. Mac OS decided to make shortcuts of those files in the folder. Now, I know that there is some key combination I can use to tell it to move or copy the files instead of create shortcuts, but I can’t remember what it is.
Anyway you slice it though, that seems like the behavior is incorrect. In general, why would I want to make a shortcut to some file on removable media? I know that people sometimes run applications off of a network share but I think that in most cases people are going to want to copy a file in that instance instead of create a shortcut.
Of course, I come from a Windows world where dragging a file like that would result in it being moved, or just copied if it were on removable media. But at the same time, a shortcut to removable media is only useful if that media is attached/inserted.