I have no experience with a MAC, but I can tell you why PC’s behave that way.
Microsoft does all kinds of junk when dealing with WebDAV connections.
If you have REALLY FAT internet speeds, *sometimes* streaming will work. Meaning that you can double-click the file, launch Windows Media Player, and it will start playing before the download has completed in the background.
But Microsoft all but requires any open file to be transferred to the internal “cache” before it will do anything with the file.
When you do a Right-Click on a file, for example, Microsoft immediately begins transfering the ENTIRE file into its local cache on your PC before it can even open the menu. The reason for that is that the Right-Click menu is context sensitive – the content of the menu will vary depending on the content of the file.
So, it has to *have* the file before it will open the context menu, thus the long wait and apparent seizure of Explorer when the transfer is taking place.
Once the file has been transferred to the local cache, things go much faster because it’s operating on a “local” copy of the file.
It’s not a WD thing, it’s a Microsoft thing.
Android and iOS obviously has no such requirement, even though it’s using the same WebDAV access method to connect to the MBLs as the PC is using.
And, no, Java has nothing to do with it. Java is ONLY used as a “helper” to get the WebDAV connection established and only used in the web browser page itself. Once the “share” connection is open and showing in Explorer, Java isn’t used at all.
So, “Thank you, Microsoft.”