10 ms·
When developing on a mac the Finder is probably the single largest annoyance. I never thought i would ever miss Windows Explorer, but WOW is Finder bad! With t
by jug6ernaut 14y ago
When developing on a mac the Finder is probably the single largest annoyance. I never thought i would ever miss Windows Explorer, but WOW is Finder bad!
With that said PathFinder[1] is an awesome replacement for Finder. Expensive but worth every penny. Still not as clean as Windows Explorer, but it is night & day better then Finder.
[1]:http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/ http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/
- simonh 14y agoWhen I came to Mac back in 2007 I assumed my dislike of Finder was just a matter of what I was used to. Six years of using Mac at home and Windows at work and nope. I do like column view, and you'll get my new Mac Mini out of my cold dead hands, but if I had a choice I'd have Windows Explorer on my Mac in a second. No hesitation.
- revscat 14y agoWhy? What differences are there between the two? Also, Finder has Quick View, something Windows sorely lacks and is highly useful, as well as the integrated Spotlight search.
- stephenhuey 14y agoExactly. Ever since I got one of those lil' white Macbooks in 2006 I've been so happy to be able to simply search for files with Spotlight and find them instantly, something Windows had never given me the ability to do.
- kayoone 14y agowindows explorer has had that feature for years as well
- stephenhuey 14y agoYes, I believe I was performing searches from the Start menu in Windows back in the 90s, but it was always horribly slow and still missed results. Ever since I got a Macbook in 2006 I've enjoyed instant results from Spotlight--I mean within 1 or sometimes 2 seconds, not 5 minutes!
- meaty 14y agoStart, type, search results. Its had that since vista!
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoIt never worked well for me, but I kill my search indexer process a lot because it turns my fan on.
- meaty 14y agoNever had that problem!
- revscat 14y agoIt's not nearly as fast, by at least an order of magnitude. Also, because there is no centralized location for apps to be stored (e.g. /Applications) it has a harder time succeeding as an app launcher.
- meaty 14y agoI can't tell the difference in speed between a 2007 Lenovo T61 and a 2010 MBP. Works fine for apps. Windows 8 actually makes distinction between documents, apps and settings.
- vsync 14y agoAnd yet "locate" is banned by default.
- rsynnott 14y agoBecause it's redundant. man mdfind If you want, of course, you can turn on locate, but it seems strange to have two local indexing things.
- Evbn 14y ago10 yeas on, I have never finished waiting for Spotlight to index my drive and serve a query.
- b1daly 14y agoWindows explorer allows you to drag a file from any folder on your system to any other folder in single window. This turns out to be something I do a lot. So I wind up opening another finder window to do this. Inevitably I wind up with finder windows of different shapes and sizes all over the place. It boggles my mind that the Apple UI team can't see how inferior Finder is. I've worked with different utilities, and combined with spaces sort of have a file browsing system that works. Even Pathfinder can't do this magic easily using the GUI to drag files quickly between folders. Harrumph.
- revscat 14y ago> Windows explorer allows you to drag a file from any folder on your system to any other folder in single window. Uh, so does Finder. What are you talking about?
- b1daly 14y agoNot in one window. If the folders are nested in in different directories you need two windows. There is that feature where if you drag a file over a folder in the sidebar, and hover, it will open the folders you want in series, but it's very awkward. Unless I'm missing something, which is always a possibility!
- revscat 14y agoAs far as I can tell Windows and OS X are the same in this respect. I just moved a file from my Documents directory to my home directory on both systems, and the steps were pretty much identical.
- b1daly 14y agohmmm, you can do that if the folders are close to each other in a directory. How do you do if each is nested deep in different paths? On Windows explorer you can drop down the folders to open any folder in the left side window to drag a file from the current folder?
- ultimoo 14y agoWhy do you say that Finder is an annoyance? I find it pretty great for sorting, searching or connecting over afp or smb. And while developing, I just use the Terminal with pushd/popd and dired.
- larrik 14y agoAnd then you want to access a hidden folder, which on Windows or Linux you could just go to the address bar and type in the name. On OS X, I have yet to figure out how. That's assuming it saw my network computers in the first place, of course. If I try to get to them too soon after booting, they simply never appear.
- dunham 14y agoCmd-shift-G in finder. (In an open file dialog, typing '~' or '/' will also bring up the same 'go to folder' dialog.)
- 72deluxe 14y agoType cmd-shift-g in Finder or just type a forward slash in an open or save dialog to bring up a path entry window, much like the old GTK file dialog. To connect to a SMB system, use cmd-g and type smb://server/share Many months of Mac frustration taught me these things.
- aaronharder 14y agoCommand + Shift + G might be what you're looking for, as a kind of replacement for address bar.
- dsego 14y agowow, for linux people I have no nicer response than RTFM!
- ImprovedSilence 14y agoI've switched over to mac as well. However, Finder is my #2 annoyance. #1 being I so fricking love Winamp, and nothing has come close to that on a mac (or linux) for that matter. And sure, winamp did come out with a mac app, but it was useless I found...
- __--__ 14y agoIt's been a while since I've used Winamp, but from what I remember, VLC has a similar interface and functionality.
- calinet6 14y agoYou have brought up a great point—why on earth is there no true quality alternative to iTunes out there? Are we Mac users that complacent?
- ludwigvan 14y agoThere is. Try Enqueue.
- calinet6 14y agoIt looks the same. It's still Lists. Lists lists lists. I'm tired of playing music in lists. I want something that organizes and helps me discover music the way I think about it. Lists are not a good interface for this and I don't understand how they persist to this day.
- 14y ago