I HATE APPLE

I'm not trying to be knee jerk here, nor am I invalidating your crappy iBook/iPod but there's a lot of "Macs don't do this one thing EXACTLY so it SUCKS!" talk in this thread that bothers me. Most likely, that iBook G3 you had was just crap and from looking at the results of this iBook and PowerBook survey quite a few people had problems with it...

"The iBook G3, which sold quite well, had the most failures of any Apple laptop we surveyed and the failures were critical (the motherboard). Some other Mac models have had quite a few failures as well, but they generally were due to specific component problems. The iBook G3 simply appears to have been a flawed design, but it took a long time for Apple engineers to get a handle on the problem and fix it."

Every manufacturer has a flawed design sooner or later (don't get me started on Dell laptops), but it doesn't necessarily extend to the entire product line. Gabbneb just wanted to know if he would be making a mistake if he bought a new laptop (I don't believe he would, but I think he should get AppleCare with it)

Of course I'm biased to some degree because much of my livelihood depends on having more Macs out there.

(I jumped to Mac in 2002, so I've never actually used the old Finder, but so far, the only thing that really bothers me sometimes is that it can sometimes be difficult to create a new directory when it's in list mode. I also seem to remember fuss about it being Carbon-based rather than written in Cocoa)

Going the Mac->Windows direction isn't much better either. I dread the Windows folder tree and still hate how it slows me down.

I used to find it a bit fiddly to get to non-dock applications, but then I realised I could put an alias to the Application folder in my dock.

Other than that I have no problems. Oh, integrated FTP and CD copying support would be nice.

This bothered me for a long time also, but upgrading to the latest DivX 6 driver seemed to have sped things up a lot (using OS X 10.4.4 with QuickTime 7.0.4 if it matters)

The windows folder tree is hardly perfect I'll admit! But it slow me down less because it behaves consistently, you can rely on it (except when it crashes obv.). That's the key.

OS X behaves in ways that are unexpected, unusual, random, illogical and stop you "just getting on with it". It's like a slippery electric eel, when it should be your pet dog & friend.

There's so much wrong with the fucking thing.

The first thing to understand is they're not windows anymore like they used to be...when you double click a folder you're not opening the folder, you're opening a little browser window that shows you what's in the folder. If you don't think to hard about it it may seem like I'm splitting hairs, but remembering that difference is one major way I'm able to understand how finder works now differently then before.

I honestly haven't experienced most of the things you mention! I do find Desktop icons are sometimes invisible in XP though... And XP's 'map network drive' view is appalling, where if the directory path is longer than about 12 characters it just truncates it and there's no way of scrolling or even copy-pasting it to see the full thing.

xpost: yeah, dan's precise summary of the New Way explains why column view is k-1,000,000 times better than the alternatives (although you STILL have to use list view to get date sorting, and you still have to use icon view if you want thumbnails without the irritating potential of accidentally firing up a QT preview)

I don't understand the difference :( In practical terms nothing is a "folder" anyway, its a portion of the hard drive with your data stored on it, that is marked for quick reference as a 'directrory'.

I just don't understand how what you call the window you view things with (folder, broswer window) affects the end experience? Maybe I'm being simple.

I'd LOVE to think I could still get "used" to it. Whatever it takes! Maybe a rusty nail in my brain might do it :X

Honestly, I thought I came close once to "stablizing" it. I was happy, but it didn't last. I've never had such a problem getting used to an application (including alomst everything else about OS X) in my life!! Perhaps because I wouldn't have had to persist with other ones....

And no, none of those points are big in isolation, but they REALLY add up when they recur again & again in daily use.

when you double click a folder you're not opening the folder, you're opening a little browser window that shows you what's in the folder

I don't understand the difference either.

Ok, now you are just being silly. What crashes on you? Honestly, my beloved firefox locks up the most of anything. And by that I mean, "I gotta use force quit"

In Finder preferences, I checked the 'Open New Windows in column view' and that works fine.

It doesn't though! My LAST CHOICE EVER would be "icon view" to use. In Windows I NEVER have to see this, never, and certainly not a fucked-up broken snap-to-grid-way-off-yonder-requiring-the-use-of-random-window-size-change-button which even in that case doesn't always maximise properly...

All sorts of windows open up in Icon view still. Like network drives, and... just no! Apple don't seem to understand the meaning of "system wide" preferences (particularly for file types). Maybe it's a Unix thing.

http://www.filerun.info/

I feel like I've bullshitted myself so hard trying to become convinced that mac's are worth the effort it takes to get along with them already.

the change in metaphor is very neatly summed up by the fact that Apple-N once created an Empty Folder; now it creates a New Finder Window

xpost: it is a unix thing; it's a permissions thing. there's a hack to change this globally, i think, but you have to be logged in as root

but the difference has to do with things like where you are/going back etc. The issue you have, which I share, is that you think you're going back up in the directory but you're going to the last thing you browsed, for instance. That's when I have to remember it's not OS9.

But I just find the quick and simple placement of key alias folders in the sidebar, in the toolbar, and in the dock make it easy for me to do anything I need to do/go anywhere I need to go.

and if you have the icon view, type command-2 everytime you open a window to get to list view.

I have 11 or 12 of my most-used Applications in the Dock at the bottom, with auto-hide on. I have an alias to my Apps folder also in the dock, so I right-click that to get at other Apps quickly.

That's my set-up, and it works well enough for me not to have to think about it much.

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It doesn't though! My LAST CHOICE EVER would be "icon view" to use. In Windows I NEVER have to see this, never, and certainly not a fucked-up broken snap-to-grid-way-off-yonder-requiring-the-use-of-random-window-size-change-button which even in that case doesn't always maximise properly...

All sorts of windows open up in Icon view still. Like network drives, and... just no!

I hate icon view too, but I don't get this problem. Can't say I use network drives on my mac though, so maybe you're right.

I tried this, but then came across another wondrous piece of Apple logic. You can't name them after the file path, it only keeps the final folder name.

I know WHY they think that's useful, but it's actually UNUSEFUL for me! *BANGS HEAD ON IBOOK*

The whole idea of a graphical display in the first place is to make the idea of file storage seem more tangible & realistic. Apple... I don't know what the fuck Apple are trying to achieve by working against this model frankly but it makes EVERYTHING HARDER.

-- Tracer Hand

I'm not sure if that's sarcasm, but I am thankful here! I'm not totally resistant to everything suggested. I think I wanted to post this morning saying "convince me (again) OS X isn't a dud". But I missed that bit out really.

There isn't much so far I haven't tried already but, maybe I will give it another go :|

apologies for misreading the tone.

GUI's have been around for twenty years now so is the "desktop" metaphor even necessary?

One thing that helped me a lot was to put my most used "drag/drop" apps (StuffIt Expander, MacPAR, Photoshop, VLC) into a Finder window toolbar so I don't need to drag a file down to the dock.

What do you do that requires such regular Finder-ing?

I don't get this, make a folder and call it whatever you want.

Here's the first thing I did. I made 2 folders, one called "applications ƒ" and one called "utilities ƒ". Note, these aren't the "official" osx applications folders. You can call these whatever...Programs and Tools or whatever. I gave them cute icons and placed them in the sidebar, the toolbar and at the end of the dock. I filled these folders with aliases of all the programs I ever use or want to use. On the dock, a simply control-click, or right click (I use a kensington trackball) gives me a pop-up menu of EVERYTHING I want. Or I just open a new window and click on the Icons and get the full list, good for adding to, or dragging on. My one MAJOR complaint is unlike with OS9 tab windows, you can't drag onto the folde in the dock to open a document in an application within.

Then on the dock itself, I keep it relatively minimal to the stuff I use all the time, and a few drag-n-drop programs like stuffit. I keep the dock on the left hand side and turned off minimizing and genie effect and all that.

By the way, I had the beige iBook, and shortly after I installed OSX on it, it died.

It is indeed awful, but I think the idea is that you shouldn't have to use it very often. Particularly as XP has given up on the very annoying Win98 modal dialogs that pop up at logon for each unreachable network drive.

On XP, if you type the server's UNC path* into a Windows Explorer window and right-click on a share, "Map network drive..." is one of the menu choices. It brings up the same dialog, but with the path box filled out and uneditable. That's a slightly easier way of doing it.

* ie, the hostname preceded by '\\'

1) Open Regedit
2) Export the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network branch
3) Send the export file to the other computer
4) Right-click on the export file and select "Merge" to load it into the registry.

That should copy all the drive mappings from one computer to the other. If you just want to copy, say, the Z drive, export HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network\Z.

some ppl not getting this:
when you double click a folder you're not opening the folder, you're opening a little browser window that shows you what's in the folder

the key difference is that on os9 you would open a new window with the items in there showing. and the KEY thing was that the position of the window, the view into the window, and the items within that window were in EXACTLY the same place as when it was last opened, giving you a visual 1:1 identity between the folder and the view of it.

now in osx you have a ONE WINDOW approach like a web browser that shows you the stuff in any folder. when you open a folder the window shows the contents of a new location.

you can SORT OF "revert to os9" with the toolbar toggle (the long item in the top right) in that it will open new folders in a new window, but the finder broken-ness extends deep enough that you still don't get the persistence of the window loc and icon arrangement/view that you are still looking for.

LEOPARD BETTER FUCKING FIX THE FINDER

I tried this, but then came across another wondrous piece of Apple logic. You can't name them after the file path, it only keeps the final folder name.

I don't get this, make a folder and call it whatever you want.

I might try and reproduce this so I can better explain... just scanning the thread quickly right now, thanks for all the help so far.

xpost -- Britain's Obtusest Shepherd, There's already been an upgrade (Tiger), they had a chance already, what makes you think they consider it important enough?

stet - I don't know why it pisses me off so much. Because it seems impossible to ignore I guess. I still haven't watched those DVD's anyway so I may fire it up tonight and have another look.

brrrrrrrr. it makes me shudder - but that's 'cos i'm a) an old-skooler who cut his teeth on MS-DOS 3.1 and likes to have complete control, and b) an anally retentive pedant who gets upset if one MP3 is in the wrong place.

i don't like the fact that unix has a sprawling great mass of libraries and directories and hidden files and permissions and so on, because it does restrict my ability to organise my files as i might want, but, as i've said elsewhere, i'm happy enough to deal with it if it means the increased power and stability of OS X.

so if, like you say, this is the direction we're moving in - and, you know, you could be right - then i'd embrace it as long as there was a good reason to do so.

The Newton does this best of all, with all the info stored in "soups". All apps can access all soups; when you add a contact in the address book and give a birthday, the contact book automatically puts an entry in for that day, because they use the same "dates" soup. There is no file manager on the newton, and no saving. It's great.

OS X is moving slowly towards this, especially with iLife. The iApps all take care of their own files, so in theory you should never have to go into the folder where your MP3s are, or where your pictures are. For pics, If you want to email them/make a website/edit them in Photoshop/w.e., iPhoto has the skillz built in. They're integrated too, so when you want to add music to slideshows, or pics to movies, you use the media browser.

It's time that sort of thing was a system-wide framework. It's sort of like I was asking Fandango upthread -- what real use is there for the Finder? How much file-shoving do we really need that can't be better done as an integral part of apps?

For very document-based apps, like Word, you could just have open dialogs that were spotlight queries for all items of .doc, and rather than trying to remember where you put something, you remember what it contained. The anal types like GF can express themselves through meticulous tagging, to make their searches even faster.

It's time for files and their organisation to be done by the computer, not by me going click-drag-sigh.

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