tiger - finder

cfleck said:
hmm, sounds like you want an apple version of windows explorer. me thinks this could be trouble.
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No, I want them to be separate apps. I want the finder to access the same installed KHTML that Safari, OmniWeb, and Shiira do. I also want the finder to intelligently handle file types (it does this already).

I would like tabs in the finder. I am on a 12" PB, so screen realestate is at a premium.

Grab a Knoppix CD and boot a Wintel box into KDE. You will see that Konqueror is not an Explorer Clone. Granted, Windows users have an easy time "understanding" KDE because it does not look alien to them. But, the features of Konqui are one of the few reasons I consider grabbing a Yellow Dog ISO and running it on my Powerbook.

(The other reason is kMail — but Mail.app is quickly getting all of the features I miss from that app.)
 
Pathfinder is $34.

Adding up the costs of all the third party utilities I have purchased just to make OS X functional, the total is greater than what I payed for Panther.
 
Adding up the costs of all the third party utilities I have purchased just to make OS X functional, the total is greater than what I payed for Panther.
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Um. I think you'll find Panther is VERY functional. You just like EXTRA functionality. Which is fine. So do I. but don't make it seem like you couldn't possibly use your computer without those extra programs.
 
A few technical points I'd like to argue:

First, a haxie is defined as a utility developed by Unsanity LLC. They came up with the term, they define what it means. Going to haxies.com will redirect you to their website, for example. So be careful what you call a haxie. :)

Second, why does everyone want the Finder to be Cocoa? Sure, there are a few benefits, like respecting the Dock position, but porting the Finder to Cocoa would be quite an undertaking for little benefit. Just because something is programmed in Carbon doesn't mean it's not native; Cocoa may be relatively easy to program, but a number of Cocoa classes are merely wrappers for Carbon classes, and Carbon programs tend to launch and run faster because they do not have as much overhead as a standard Cocoa program. (Which may explain Path Finder's sluggishness...)

Now that that's out of the way, I too am a fan of Path Finder (and I can use it for free because the registration dialog is stuck at 21 days for some strange reason...). The Drop Stack alone is almost worth the price. Plus, I enjoy its customizability and the loads of features included with it. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but it's an awesome product, and I'm eagerly waiting to see what features will be added for Tiger.

Of course, I also like OS 9's Finder. The 1:1 spatial orientation is wonderful. That's probably one of the things I like about Path Finder: it doesn't pretend to be 1:1; it acts like a browser. The OS X Finder tries to be both, which doesn't work as well.
 
Once you accept that the Finder is not 1:1, as you put it, spatial and you just use it in browser mode (Brushed metal, column view), the Finder in Panther and Tiger's actually really good. I've kicked that 1:1 thing out of my Finder-use ever since Mac OS X DP4 and the Public Beta - and it let me work as fast as in OS 9. The only thing I _really_ miss from OS 9 are the tabbed windows. I know there's some shareware for that, but it doesn't work the way I want it (jut like OS 9), so I skip that and wait for Apple to come up with such an 'innovation'.
 
Well, I was going to explain, but John Siracusa beat me to it quite some time ago...

Fryke: That's another pro of Path Finder... no forced brushed metal!! :D
 
sagefire said:
I have been hearing that the Finder is a lot faster in 10.4 on some hardware. Could that mean that more of the code has been optimized? Or maybe the finder is being redone as a Cocoa App (instead of Carbon)?
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Carbon vs Cocoa doesn't really mean much. Cocoa is actually noticably slower in particular areas, unless you like writing internals to replace the blockages Cocoa has for game-oriented development. Carbon and Cocoa these days aren't much different except Cocoa abstracts you from the hardware further than Carbon does. In fact, Cocoa and Carbon share some of the same internals (NSString, and CFString are in fact the exact same thing). And Cocoa still lacks from functionality that is pretty important when dealing with file systems.

What Cocoa would give the Finder is a couple features 'for free', but those features have already been properly integrated into the Finder already.
 
sagefire said:
I have been hearing that the Finder is a lot faster in 10.4 on some hardware.
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I just want to know if the Finder still chokes when previewing an AVI file in column view. Or if it still uses 70+% CPU while playing a MP2 or MP3 file in column view. If it still does, then Apple hasn't improved the Finder in Tiger at all.
 
Dalbot said:
I just want to know if the Finder still chokes when previewing an AVI file in column view. Or if it still uses 70+% CPU while playing a MP2 or MP3 file in column view. If it still does, then Apple hasn't improved the Finder in Tiger at all.
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... In one, fairly unrelated area. That sounds more like a problem with Quicktime playback... what kind of rig do you have?
 
Arden said:
... In one, fairly unrelated area. That sounds more like a problem with Quicktime playback... what kind of rig do you have?
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I didn't think it was unrelated since we were talking about the Finder under Tiger and whether Apple has really made any improvements to it. The Finder has always been slow and CPU-hungry about viewing PDFs, MP3s, and movie files in preview mode. There are complaints about it all the time in various Mac forums. One of the most frequent complaints about Panther is how slow and crappy the Finder really is. Just do a search at the Mac forum at Ars Technica or at MacNN forums. Many Mac users want a multi-thread Finder. Maybe once they have it, the jokes about removing the "debug" code from OS X will stop.

I just want to know if the Finder in Tiger is finally "snappy."

My rig is a iMac 600 (G3) with 512 MB of RAM, but I've used dual 1.25 G4s with over a gig of RAM that still exhibit sluggishness in the Finder.
 
At the risk of being boo'd off the thread, I don't have any problem with Finder's file browsing. I use list mode almost exclusively (sometimes icon mode). I never got used to column mode even though I've been using Mac OS's since OS 9.

10.3 Finder is much more comfortable than 10.0's because of the sidebar, the improved file dialogs, the improved performance, and the (limited) multitasking.

Network connections still stink but not as bad. Have you forgotten the frequent 30-second spinning beachball of death of 10.1, or the forever spinning beachball of death for that matter?

Doug
 
I actually really like the Panther Finder.

I always have. I liked the spatial Finder too, don't get me wrong; but things are just so much quicker in a file-browsing set-up like the current Finder. While in the confines of a single window, you can (supposing you have your Sidebar set up similarly to mine) open the freshly mounted disk image that your Application download just arrived in, drag the application file to the appropriate place in your Applications folder (for instance, I have a Games subdirectory for my puzzle games etc.), eject the disk image, and delete the downloaded .dmg file. That's versatility.

I think people need to concede (finally) that whereas it's very useful from an ergonomics point of view for a User Interface to be as much like real life as possible, the true power of a computer is the advantage of not NEEDING to conform to what is possible in reality; to do things a BETTER way. It's still ridiculous for instance how many audio mixing applications are modelled after a mixing table; right down to the woodgrain. Is the grain going to make the application more usable? I highly doubt it'll do anything but increase the memory footprint.

I found it a real problem in Classic Mac OS; application programmers would make their windows all over the place as far as colour, images, typography, controls; it was almost like Windows software sometimes.

OS X really encourages consistency; most application developers (with the notable exception of Microsoft with their abominable Windows Media Player and MSN Messenger ports) develop software that all fits together and looks like it belongs on my PowerBook.



I hope they don't change much in Tiger's Finder. Not much at all.
 
I agree almost completely with you. I _love_ the file-browser mode with column view. However: The spatial mode (non-brushed metal) should work as expected, too. Windows should _never_ lose their view. Actually, I think, you shouldn't even be able to set a window to open in browser mode - the windows should _always_ save their spatial-mode instead. However: Apple never clearly indicated that there even _was_ a browser and a spatial mode, hence the current 'misbehaviour' from a spatial user's viewpoint.

I hope they'll manage to clear things up in a future version of the Finder, but I think Tiger won't be it, either...
 
I don't think that's going to be Tiger; I smell a Photoshopping. It also has a Finder window with song information (with ID3 tag reading). It's kinda reeking of XP, actually, with balloon help (I know, I know, it's originally a Mac thing).


On the other topic though,
I think it would be nice to be able to set on a checkbox in Finder preferences to be ALWAYS or NEVER spatial finder. I hate when disk images are saved as spatial and open as spatial on my computer.

I know it's a very Windows way of doing things, but it's also a sensible solution to the two schools of thought.
 
Well, the _right_ way to do it in my opinion, would still be to have a completely SPATIAL Finder plus either a completely separate filebrowser (please no!) or a clearly devoted file browser function, possibly integrated with Spotlight (because both browsing mode and Spotlight mode in the Finder don't belong to 'spatial' mode).

If I think about how we would integrate a browsing mode and a Spotlight mode in OS 9's Finder (which was completely spatial, wonderful to use...): You'd probably have to have a separate application for each in order _not_ to destroy the spatial Finder. And I don't really like the idea of an "Explorer" on the Mac. :/
 
for the love of god what is wrong with brushed steel? it brings everything together - it makes it so much more easy on the eye. it looks like a window. defines the line.

sometimes (only sometimes, don't get me wrong) windows explorer does a lot of things well. for example:
>you open up my computer
>in front of you are all the drives your computer has. open one (C:)
>here are all the folders at the top, and all the other files at the bottom, with info at the right. (windows list view has always been slightly more robust than finders), and a list of very useful folder-sensitive actions to the left. at the top is a set of very well thought out buttons ("up" is very good. more useful than "back" and even better when used with "back". folder trees are still respected, and shown.

and all folders are like this, and have a distinct home on the drive, relative to the rest of the disk, none of this drives mounted on the desktop. (i'm going to cause arguments possibly, don't get me wrong macOS is a billion times better overall than windows)

finder, at the end of the day, looks like 20 years of evolution. it's evolved with its features added *on* not *into*.

would it be so henous to use some ideas of windows, and do it better than both? in the end they stole off apple, so it would only be payment. finder, i feel, is the only amatuerish-looking/feeling thing about macOS. it needs some solid, well thought-out revision.
 
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