
A Clone of the Classic Mac OS Finder in Modern Cocoa and Objective-C - dannyow
https://bszyman.com/blog/classic-finder
======
munificent
It's crazy how deeply embedded the old Finder is in my subconscious. I opened
the app and _instantly_ noticed several differences from the original, even
though I haven't run the old System 7 Finder in, what, twenty years?

Things I noticed:

\- Command-W doesn't close a window.

\- No animation when opening windows.

\- Dragging outside of the close button while still holding the mouse button
(uh, trackpad button) down should revert it to the non-pushed state until the
cursor re-enters it.

\- Obviously, the fonts shouldn't be anti-aliased. The metrics on Chicago look
weird too.

I am so filled with nostalgia right now I don't know what to do with myself. I
_loved_ the System 7 Finder. It's one of the things that got me into UI design
and pixel art.

~~~
mjcl
I really miss the System 7 Finder, the 'spatial' nature[1] really clicked with
me and other file browsers still sort of bug me because of that.

[1]
[http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm](http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm)

~~~
snuxoll
Nautilus (GNOME Files) used to have a spatial mode, I was rather perturbed
when they didn't bring it forward for GNOME 3. Obviously Apple killed the
spatial finder with OS X, though it's always had the quasi-spatial mode with
the pill button (remember that? I'm a little miffed about that one too,
especially now that they've gotten rid of the dedicated full screen button
that gave it the boot to make me hold Option every time I want to zoom a
window instead of full screening it).

~~~
TheCoreh
You can still enable the spatial mode by hiding the toolbar via the "View"
menu

~~~
wool_gather
But unfortunately you then lose the actually-somewhat-useful sidebar.

~~~
ken
It makes sense to me that the sidebar is incompatible with spatial browsing.
It changes the size/shape of the window, and the items there are a list of
aliases that don't exist in that space.

~~~
wool_gather
You make a good point, and I don't disagree. But it does come in handy
occasionally.

------
inspector-g
> A smaller, more secondary reason for creating this was to sort of observe
> how a Classic-era app might run on today’s hardware. As our hardware gets
> beefier, it seems like our software gets chunkier. If we could port
> yesterday’s software to run natively on today’s hardware, how might it
> perform? Very fast, I’d imagine.

This reminds me of a small personal project I decided to take on a couple
years ago. I did it both as an experiment in performance and for nostalgia's
sake.

I bought as pristine an example as possible of Apple's last machine that could
run Mac OS 9 natively, a PowerMac G4 (the 2003 MDD vintage). I upgraded the
CPU and RAM as much as possible (dual 1.25 GHz G4, 2GB RAM), and replaced the
hard drive with as fast an SSD as the system could handle (don't recall which
SSD model at the moment).

In short, I was astonished at the "snappiness" of the system. Boot time took
no more than 15 seconds. Shutting down took only about one second. The system
entered sleep mode near-instantly. Opening and closing windows within an app
happened as fast (or faster) than I could react to it. Opening and closing
classic apps themselves was at least an order of magnitude faster than what I
would consider reasonable analogs from today.

I already had a decent amount of disdain for how much time I spend on a modern
Mac/iOS device waiting for the system to catch up to my inputs, but it got
worse after having done this experiment. A simple example, but which pains me
near-daily, is the creation of folders in the modern Finder. After typing
cmd+shift+N, I often must wait an amount of time that must be on the order of
several hundred milliseconds before typing the name of the folder (if I don't
wait, the first couple characters I type will be missing from the folder's
name, which is yet another time-sink to go back and fix the missing
characters). And this is on an iMac Pro! I tried this exact test on my old-
but-quick PowerMac G4, and I _never_ had to wait nor lost any chars no matter
how quickly I attempted to type the command and the subsequent folder name.

~~~
sgt
> A simple example, but which pains me near-daily, is the creation of folders
> in the modern Finder. After typing cmd+shift+N, I often must wait an amount
> of time that must be on the order of several hundred milliseconds before
> typing the name of the folder (if I don't wait, the first couple characters
> I type will be missing from the folder's name, which is yet another time-
> sink to go back and fix the missing characters). And this is on an iMac Pro!

That is very odd. I tried this a few times now on my 4 year old MacBook Pro
and it was instantaneous each time. No delay. I wonder what may be causing the
delay on your side. iMac Pro is after all absolutely state of the art.

~~~
peterburkimsher
Which version of macOS is on your 4 year old MacBook Pro?

I noticed a difference between Mavericks and El Capitan.

SSD upgrades require a newer OS though, and I'm weighing up the inconveniences
of older versions of Mac OS compared to Linux.

~~~
sgt
Currently on High Sierra 10.13.5 (17F77)

I only upgraded to High Sierra a month ago, and it was probably good that I
waited, as I've seen no negative consequences so far. It's lightning fast,
even with APFS and the other changes it brought.

------
Joeri
_I’ve learned many things throughout this journey. One of them is that modern
user interfaces are absolutely gigantic compared to the user interfaces of the
earlier days.

I mean, I guess it kind of has to be that way, in the age of high DPI monitors
and bad eye sight, but WOW. Run Classic Finder just once and you’ll see what I
mean._

Classic mac os ran at 72 dpi, compared to the modern 1x dpi of 96 to 110, so
those controls were actually much bigger on screens of the day.

------
pseingatl
It looks like the link is undergoing some problems:

RuntimeException (500) Failed to read /var/www/bszyman-
dc/user/pages/07.feed/listing.md: Unexpected characters near ": '/blog'" at
line 3 (near "items: 'page.descendants': '/blog'").

~~~
djsumdog
Seems weird to run a React app for a static content blog. (I think this is
React?) and also to run it in development mode in production.

~~~
guessmyname
> _Seems weird to run a React app for a static content blog._

> _(I think this is React?) and also to run it in development mode in
> production._

They are using PHP —
[https://i.imgur.com/vy5Q2bq.png](https://i.imgur.com/vy5Q2bq.png)

------
rbanffy
What I would _love_ to see on a Mac (or Linux, I don't mind) would be Eric
Traut's "Out of Context Menus" extension for MacOS 9.

[https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-
contest-1999...](https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-
contest-1999/)

------
jinonoel
I really miss the top-right button in classic Finder windows, the one that
resizes the window to just the right size to show all it's contents.

~~~
JonathonW
The zoom button (option-click the green traffic light button, or double-click
the title bar) in the (current) macOS finder is still _supposed_ to do that,
if Finder's in its "spatial" mode (turn off the toolbar and, optionally,
switch to view "as Icons"\-- back in the day, there was a window control that
did this in one step).

It's actually broken in current macOS, though-- using the zoom button on a
Finder window ends up forcing some of the content underneath the title bar
where you can't reach it. Guess that shows how much attention Apple's putting
into the "little details" of their operating systems these days (very little,
it seems).

~~~
donbright
i find that fascinating... this is the kind of thing certain builder
philosophy would say "no user would ever notice", but users do notice and it
bugs them.

meanwhile, we can also get an insight into the internal social dynamics of a
corporation by looking at it's products. the people who cared about this type
of 'little detail' have lost influence inside the organization - they are not
being hired, not being promoted, not being retained, and not being listened
to. but those kind of people did used to be there. so what happened to them?

its kind of fascinating, like some kind of corporate sociology based solely on
research of artefacts left behind by the corporate culture.

------
1996
I absolutely love the idea (fitting more data on the screen, ala Tufte), the
execution (brings back memories of trying MacOS on an emulator) and the design
(flat!! yes!!)

I don't understand why flat design gets such a bad press.

One of the best thing I have ever used was a classic windows phone. Efficient,
organized, straight to the point.

Maybe it is just part of a retrocomputing trend, but I really like that.

~~~
sjwright
> I don't understand why flat design gets such a bad press.

Classic MacOS isn't flat design, there are hard borders all over the place and
(by today's standards) subtle cues of dimension throughout.

Flat design gets bad press because when it is done poorly, usability suffers
greatly. I love the iPhone—and I like many aspects of its current UI
aesthetic—but the UX design is woeful in many places, with countless problems
that arose when the dumped the "classic iOS" appearance.

Most critically is that unless you're an experienced user of iOS, it is no
longer obvious what (or where) is tappable. Buttons used to be obvious through
design, now they are just text on the screen, sometimes in a different colour.
Sometimes they're on the bottom, sometimes they're top-left, sometimes top-
right. This all used to make sense when there were title bars and arrow-shaped
back buttons that visually reacted when touched; now it is an ambiguous mess.

~~~
1996
I fully agree on how UI have become "harder to guess"

Most of the current interfaces require too much learning. It seems to come
with a cognitive load.

Fun thought: I can still use a windows phone after a few drinks. With an
android device, not so, while I have used androids for a longer time.

I don't know what causes it, but usability seems to suffer inded.

~~~
rogual
I wonder if they do it on purpose to create a “moat”. The more time you've
invested learning what's clickable, where to force-touch, etc., the more
resistant you'll be to leaving the platform.

------
etaioinshrdlu
Awesome. The author should make it such a great general purpose file manager
that we all switch to it. That would be awesome :)

~~~
randcraw
Especially if it let you change the sort order of files. Apple's goofy
nonstandard ordering drives me nuts.

------
GeekyBear
One of the things that I missed for quite some time from the classic Finder
was the ability to drag Finder windows to the edge of the screen where they
would shrink down to a tab you could click to instantly access that folder or
hover over while dragging objects so the folder would expand and allow you to
drop objects into that folder.

However, the sidebar and spring loaded folders now offer functionality that is
largely the same.

------
nvahalik
This appears to be a link to the source:
[https://bitbucket.org/bszyman/classic-finder-
app/](https://bitbucket.org/bszyman/classic-finder-app/)

And a link to the "main site" which has a download:
[https://classicmacfinder.com](https://classicmacfinder.com)

------
jackvalentine
Cached link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://bszyman.com/blog/classic-
finder)

------
apple4ever
This is really cool. I'd love to contribute, but it doesn't seem that easy
with the way he has BitBucket setup.

------
ChristianGeek
Meh...if it doesn’t involve constantly swapping floppy disks while you’re
launching an app then it’s not a true emulation.

------
johnzim
What a great project!

~~~
golem14
Made me wish for my trusty Atari ST GEM TOS again. And the excellent SM124
monitor.

Probably pure nostalgia, but I did like the simpler and more monochrome UI
back in the days...

~~~
golem14
Alas, does not play nice with the tiling window manager I use
([https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst)) -
highly recommended to those who seek tiling WMs.

------
extc
Your site is down

------
dreamcompiler
> It will really (probably poorly) perform Finder operations on your
> computer’s file system.

Ha! Given how horrifically bad the OSX Finder has always been at file
management (not to mention its numerous unfixed bugs), I can't imagine how it
could be much worse.

------
fit2rule
I believe that the abandonment of the Finder interface by Apple (both old and
new) is having a devolutionary effect on computing. Generations of people are
learning to use computers without understanding the differences between a
folder and a file system, with little skill in maintaining a hierarchical
system for organising their material, and so on.

Also, the fact that, today, you can't open a folder full of files and have the
Finder window auto-size to fit the content (in list view, for example) is an
indicator that Apple just doesn't seem to care about keeping this paradigm.

And thats a pity, in my opinion, because it makes stupid users. Being able to
fundamentally organize ones cache of documents on filesystem is a key first
step in gaining computer literacy, since very few computer systems out there
achieve anything without a folder and a few files in it.

So, I'm quite encouraged by the effort to rebuild Finder - if we had an open
source Finder alternative out there, which works to exceed the features of the
built-in Finder, I'm quite sure I'd contribute to it. The devolution of
Finder, and of filesystems in general, is personally a pet peeve of mine -
there is nothing more frustrating than having to explain the concept of
organising ones data to a user who really should know these things already -
but don't, because Apple (and others) have decided the user doesn't need to
have control over the fundamental building blocks of their system.

This deleterious effect, devolutionary in nature, of 'technologically refined
simplicity for the sake of the user' is a real issue. I expect to see more
examples of its negative effect in the coming decade ..

