On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 12:24 PM, steve harley <p...@paper-ape.com> wrote: > On 2010-07-22 20:11 , Adam Maas wrote: >> >> While I can >> understand Godfrey's choice not to use a replacement as he needs to be >> familiar offhand with the basic Finder UI for professional reasons, I >> thoroughly understand why any user who doesn't need to walk others >> through basic file mangement steps would quickly move up to a Finder >> replacement. > > one can be familiar with Finder (to help others) _and_ use other tools
Indeed you can, but it's a lot easier to do it with the UI you use natively. > >> Unfortunately OS X seems to be stuck in the paradigm that pervasive >> search is an adequate replacement for a decent file manager. > > i don't see any sense of replacement, just two complementary paradigms, and > i don't feel Finder is indecent -- QuickLook, for one, is a fantastic > feature; i disliked Spotlight for a long time, but being able to quickly > find one email out of hundreds of thousands won me over; i still haven't > mastered Spotlight's query language, but given how much i use Google it's > only natural to expect the same kind of ability from an OS Oh, I can see the value of pervasive search, I simply dislike it as a replacement for file management, which is the way Apple was going for a while. Note that since I don't store things like email on my drive, it's much less useful for me (Search facilities in email are a must, no matter how good your file organization, due to volume. It's less useful when you're dealing with smaller filesets). Note Windows has the same functionality as of Vista, although unlike on the Mac you can turn it off and just use traditional search tools (slower, but they don't eat CPU cycles in the background either. of course Windows Indexing is a much bigger resource pig than Spotlight). > >> Coincidentally it's also the only major OS which has a steady market >> for replacements file management apps. > > first of all, the market for Mac OS X file manager replacements seems rather > weak to me; Path Finder (which i have used for years) is really the only > major contender, but is a niche player; there are many tools to enhance > _navigation_ on Mac OS X, but not so many to enhance _management_ > > secondly, your statement seems contradicted by the proliferation of GUI file > managers on Linux and the fact that there are numerous Windows file manager > replacements (though i don't know the market well) Linux is a strange beast, if one guy with some programming skill wants a different file manager, you get one. Even then, there are only two File Managers in common use anymore, Nautilus for GNOME and Konqueror for KDE. As to Windows, there isn't a single Explorer replacement with anything approaching the uptake or press of Path Finder. Most of the oens I've run across are used only in the custom UI scene, where they need thm since they're replacing the Windows UI entirely anyways. > > and in a followup message: >> >> The one simple change Apple could do to make Finder more usable is >> adding an Address Bar with the current folder path in it, bonus if >> it's clickable > > look closer ... it's been there since 2007; of course Path Finder has had it > for much longer > It's not in any screenshot of the Leopard or Snow Leopard finder I can find. -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
