Watch out for aliases in Time Machine

[dwalker]

I believe I have verified the following:

If you go back in time and click on an ALIAS to a directory
you can (will always?) get a link to the MOST RECENT
content of the folder. I found this very confusing and potentially
disastrous.

Looks to me like this is a bug (sorry, feature). It would
make a lot of sense if they would simply disable the link, if nothing
else.

I did a quick Google but did not seem to find this problem discussed.

I am running 10.5.6 up to date.

[Rory Bowman]

Are you doing your restore from within Time Machine or going directly
to the alias on the Time Machine backup volume?

It is moderately important to NEVER interact with the contents of
folders such as your iPhoto Library or Time Machine backup except
through their respective programs (iPhoto or Time Machine, for
example). It confuses the programs and can result in remarkably
counter-intuitive and decidedly sub-optimal results.

[Steven W Riggins]

This is working as designed. Aliases point to folders, not the
contents of the folder. Restoring an alias would do nothing.

The "bug" is that people are easily confused by the concept and user
interface for aliases. Apple could do better.

Another example of htis is burn folders. People copy files into burn
folders, then throw away the originals, not realizing that the "copy"
into the burn folder made aliases magically for the user. Ooops.