In article , Tim Streater
wrote:


Your comment that they are required would only make sense if, in some
other OS you are familiar with, you can have filenames without
extensions that still open in the appropriate application by being
double-clicked on (or equivalent operation in that OS).

classic mac os did exactly that.

And that is still the case, AFAICT. I just removed .tiff from a file
and double-clicked it. Still opened in Preview.

mac os x tries to do that but it's not 100%.

classic mac os was designed *not* to use extensions.

The type of a file and which app you'd like it to open with are items
of file metadata and have no business being part of the filename.

yep.

unfortunately, that ship has sailed and we're stuck with extensions.