5 ms·

Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks

16 points by twampss 18y ago

DLWormwood 18y ago
> A new Put Back option in the Finder's Action menu automatically returns a trashed item to the folder where it came from. Meh. OS 9 and earlier had "Put Away" which did this and more. It also ejected drives, dismounted network volumes, and allowed the user the temporarily store files pulled out of folders on the desktop. You know, in line with the original metaphor of user at a desk the user manipulated documents and folders on. (Yes, I'm still grumpy from how Apple screwed up the "spatial" nature of the original Finder.)
- jwilliams 18y ago
  Finder has to be the weakest part of the OS X experience at the moment.
  - tmilewski 18y ago
    Very much agreed.
    - unalone 18y ago
      Finder's being ported to Cocoa might be a sign that Apple's looking to fix things? I hope so. I haven't noticed recently because now I use Quicksilver to browse everything, and it's incredibly more efficient. I wish Apple would just make Quicksilver a built-in feature of their OS.
amichail 18y ago
Is it just coincidence that both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are focusing on performance improvements?
- bep 18y ago
  Vista didn't fit in netbooks. They had to make the improvements or support XP for more time.
  - amichail 18y ago
    So why is Apple also working on this? Do they want to build netbooks?
    - xenophanes 18y ago
      to help the iphone?
    - unalone 18y ago
      Think of it from Apple's point of view. Right now, you're leagues ahead of the competition feature-wise. You have all the publicity. Your competitor launched an OS that got mocked for ripping off of you, then got criticized for breaking in a lot of really simple, stupid ways. Meanwhile, your last release added an enormous heap of features, unified all of your various features under a single, ultrasimplistic interface. The smart move isn't expansion. Apple covers more space than any other company and any other out-of-the-box operating system. Now they're ahead, and they can spend time working on the little details, emphasizing perfectionism. They can slim down and make things faster and more enjoyable. They could add more features, but right now why bother? When you look at the things Snow Leopard is adding you get a good idea of Apple's plan. They're rumored to be making Quicktime Pro free, which means suddenly it becomes as powerful as Preview (which is an incredible, overlooked application). They're possibly adding support for other video codecs out-of-the-box, which means they're doing the one thing Quicktime ought to have done from the beginning. Meanwhile, this new Stacks view gives them spatial navigation from the Dock with an Apple twist, which is excellent. I used a stack that used the list view for navigation and gave up on it because it was too ugly and didn't let me drag. Now, you can browse your computer with a single click on your Dock if you want to. That's excellent. It begins to provide an alternative to the Finder, and while it's not solving the real problems, it solves the main one of "let me get to my stuff quickly and attractively". At the same time, they're refining their applications. iMovie gets the features that 08 lost. iPhoto increases its consumer focus. GarageBand's big new thing isn't the lessons but the refined interface, which has made it one of my favorite OS X applications. Pages gets fullscreen mode, Keynote gets themes, Numbers gets extensibility. They've got a huge featureset. Now they can focus on making it all elegant and streamlined, even more so than it is now. I'm very excited for this release for that reason. I suspect it'll be a delight to use.
tmilewski 18y ago
"While it's rumored that Apple is keeping some more significant interface changes close to its chest at this time..." I sure hope so because I see no reason to get it with, basically, only those changes.
- herval 18y ago
  the reason is probably "let's not release all the revolutionary UI stuff we had thought at the same time, so we can send a dozen other felines with minor enhancements, one every year".
herval 18y ago
Two features I miss from Win/Gnome/KDE world: cut+paste and merging of folders (when you move something to a folder which has another with the same name, you actually override it in OSX). It's probably just me. Meh...

16 points by twampss 18y ago

> A new Put Back option in the Finder's Action menu automatically returns a trashed item to the folder where it came from. Meh. OS 9 and earlier had "Put Away" which did this and more. It also ejected drives, dismounted network volumes, and allowed the user the temporarily store files pulled out of folders on the desktop. You know, in line with the original metaphor of user at a desk the user manipulated documents and folders on. (Yes, I'm still grumpy from how Apple screwed up the "spatial" nature of the original Finder.)

jwilliams 18y ago
Finder has to be the weakest part of the OS X experience at the moment.
- tmilewski 18y ago
  Very much agreed.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Finder's being ported to Cocoa might be a sign that Apple's looking to fix things? I hope so. I haven't noticed recently because now I use Quicksilver to browse everything, and it's incredibly more efficient. I wish Apple would just make Quicksilver a built-in feature of their OS.

amichail 18y ago

Is it just coincidence that both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are focusing on performance improvements?

bep 18y ago
Vista didn't fit in netbooks. They had to make the improvements or support XP for more time.
- amichail 18y ago
  So why is Apple also working on this? Do they want to build netbooks?
  - xenophanes 18y ago
    to help the iphone?
  - unalone 18y ago
    Think of it from Apple's point of view. Right now, you're leagues ahead of the competition feature-wise. You have all the publicity. Your competitor launched an OS that got mocked for ripping off of you, then got criticized for breaking in a lot of really simple, stupid ways. Meanwhile, your last release added an enormous heap of features, unified all of your various features under a single, ultrasimplistic interface. The smart move isn't expansion. Apple covers more space than any other company and any other out-of-the-box operating system. Now they're ahead, and they can spend time working on the little details, emphasizing perfectionism. They can slim down and make things faster and more enjoyable. They could add more features, but right now why bother? When you look at the things Snow Leopard is adding you get a good idea of Apple's plan. They're rumored to be making Quicktime Pro free, which means suddenly it becomes as powerful as Preview (which is an incredible, overlooked application). They're possibly adding support for other video codecs out-of-the-box, which means they're doing the one thing Quicktime ought to have done from the beginning. Meanwhile, this new Stacks view gives them spatial navigation from the Dock with an Apple twist, which is excellent. I used a stack that used the list view for navigation and gave up on it because it was too ugly and didn't let me drag. Now, you can browse your computer with a single click on your Dock if you want to. That's excellent. It begins to provide an alternative to the Finder, and while it's not solving the real problems, it solves the main one of "let me get to my stuff quickly and attractively". At the same time, they're refining their applications. iMovie gets the features that 08 lost. iPhoto increases its consumer focus. GarageBand's big new thing isn't the lessons but the refined interface, which has made it one of my favorite OS X applications. Pages gets fullscreen mode, Keynote gets themes, Numbers gets extensibility. They've got a huge featureset. Now they can focus on making it all elegant and streamlined, even more so than it is now. I'm very excited for this release for that reason. I suspect it'll be a delight to use.

tmilewski 18y ago

"While it's rumored that Apple is keeping some more significant interface changes close to its chest at this time..." I sure hope so because I see no reason to get it with, basically, only those changes.

herval 18y ago
the reason is probably "let's not release all the revolutionary UI stuff we had thought at the same time, so we can send a dozen other felines with minor enhancements, one every year".

herval 18y ago

Two features I miss from Win/Gnome/KDE world: cut+paste and merging of folders (when you move something to a folder which has another with the same name, you actually override it in OSX). It's probably just me. Meh...