What's with the Network icon?

R

robterrell

Registered
Okay, it's been a couple of years since I first saw it, but I'm finally wondering -- what the hell is the "network" icon, to the root level of a Finder browser window, for?

I've never used it for anything. It never has ANYTHING of use under it. My friend, a first time Mac user, looked at it an assumed it would kick of the web browser, or show a network file server browser, or something. But in fact, it does nothing. Or so it would seem to a first-tie user.

I assume it's for NFS shares or something like that -- but if so, since the Sharing control panel doesn't offer NFS sharing, it's pretty useless.

Can someone point me to some info that would let me use this thing?

Thanks,

Rob
 
I used NFS Manager to mount a Linux partition to my OS X, and the NFS share appears under the Network icon you were talking about.
 
Thanks for the tip, I'll grab NFS Manager. But why the hell can't we share our own volumes via NFS, and thus make the icon useful? Or why can't Samba shares and AFP shares show up under the Network icon, too?
Seems like a massive oversight to me. 99% of all Mac users will never have a use for that icon, which is plastered at the top level of the Finder interface.

Maybe there's a clever hack to make Samba shares look like NFS shares? That would be useful to me.
 
It is pretty useless for most users. If you're in a formal OS X networked setting, then you'd see Applications, Library, and a few other things there, just as your home folder has, say, a Library folder, there's a Library folder in the root directory, and there's a Library folder in the System folder.

But for most of us the Network icon is useless. I wish it would browse the network like Windows' Network Neighborhood.

-Rob
 
Honestly, from a GUI perspective, I would like all mounted volumes to appear on my Desktop, just like the iDisk does.
 
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