This is a beautiful machine. Once again, Apple excels at hardware.
But what the living hell is going wrong with Apple's desktop software? OS X and Apple's applications suite have been getting steadily worse with every release. Look at the App store: the latest releases of OS X, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers are (in stark contrast to earlier versins) all rated at 2.5/5 stars, with the plurality being 1-star reviews. People are LIVID -- and not just for trivial NOOB reasons, either: the quality of the work is frankly shoddy. Who's steering that part of the ship???
Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time.
I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a bulge behind the screen. Surely you agree that the appearance of a thin edge is more important than usability of Finder or connectors."
Or a yearning for more battery life, or even just a swappable battery? "The bottom of our laptop looks better than the top of theirs!" Or, why is the text on my iPhone suddenly so low contrast and hard to read? "Surely you agree that having a fresh look matters more than readability! Look, the icons are flat. Don't you realize how critically important that is?"
Or, the apps get worse, not better, over time, and you always have to ask yourself whether each free OS upgrade is worth the risk of unreliable WiFi. Can't you work on this, Apple? "Thinner!"
Apple used to emphasize software quality and usability. Now, it's all about the style, about how the edges look in fashion magazines. And yet the rest of the industry is so fragmented that they don't do any better in terms of usability. The frustration is that unlike them, Apple could do so much better, but ever since the candy-colored iMacs, they've decided that Fernando (Billy Crystal's old SNL character) was right. When it comes to look and feel, "It's better to look good than to feel good!"
Curious - what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be?
I do most of my file management at the command line so I don't experience the pain of Finder very often, and I've generally been able to get Finder to do what I want without much fuss. Windows Explorer is, to me, a painful experience (but its 1980s DOS command line is so much worse)
I've found the various Linux desktop file browsers I've dabbled with clunky but serviceable, but again, I'm a command line guy. Just wondering what is out there that the Finder haters would prefer.
I'm a big fan of the Finder of System 7. It seemed to hit the sweet spot where you could do just about everything you needed to easily (it had collapsible tree views, folders, computed folder sizes, drag & drop, copy & paste, labels, etc.), but it didn't try to hide things from you or restrict what you could do, it didn't get too fancy and guess at your common tasks, it actually showed your filesystem instead of Apple's prescribed guess at what your filesystem should do, and it was still simple enough that you could wrap your head around exactly how it worked.
There seems to be this phenomenom where good products seems to get better right up until they get mainstream adoption, and then they steadily get worse. It's like up till then you have room to improve, and then suddenly you've hit the pinnacle of product design in your category, but rather than hold it there, you have to make random changes so your employees have something to do and don't quit.
(To be fair, the one company that's tried the "great, let's make a great product, kill off the competition, and then hold it there and reassign all the people" was Microsoft with IE6, and that worked fine up until Firefox and Chrome came around and then completely screwed them over.)
I'm also a huge fan of the spatial Finder concept, but memory has a way of rendering the past in better lighting.
System 7 (or 8, 9 for that matter), didn't have copy & paste.
You could copy file names into SimpleText, for example, but you couldn't use it to manage files. Also, clicking anywhere outside a window would deselect every file you had carefully chosen, so dragging and dropping was a Zen exercise.
And there were invisible files, plenty actually. Like, the desktop for instance? An invisible folder. Or every single custom icon? An invisible "Icon\r" resource fork file. We inherited the invisible attribute in HFS+ from those days.
We did have a much simpler file system structure, and I miss that as well. I welcomed the column view, but the spatial Finder is indeed missed, though it still lives in a sense in iOS's springboard.
The latest software has several deficiencies, but this isn't one of them.
Copy, then hold down the Option key while pasting, by keyboard or menu. In the Edit menu, "Paste Item" will change to "Move Item Here".
Even though it's not as discoverable as it should be, this is a well-reasoned UI move on Apple's part. Even on Windows, cut & paste has different semantics for files than for text, and this solution sidesteps the weird "cut-in-progress" mode and inability to paste again.
A thousand times this. I loved the "spatial Finder" of System 7. It was such a 1:1 mapping onto the filesystem that even my DOS-using friends realised that this wasn't a GUI abstraction over something cruder, this was the Mac and this was how it worked.
23 years later and I still can't consistently switch off "browser view" in the OS X Finder. Cmd-option-T works for windows on my local disks, but then I'll insert a USB stick or similar, and they appear as standard in browser view. Ah well.
It's not quite the same. The old Mac OS had a one to one mapping of open windows to directories in the filesystem. As I recall, you couldn't open two windows of the same directory, it would just bring the existing one to focus. Hence the term spatial, opening a folder wouldn't create duplicate windows, there is only ever one in existence.
1. It preserves the metaphor of your desktop being a place where you can directly manipulate your files and folders. On early Mac versions, the Finder "was" your files, it wasn't just "a browser for" your files. That metaphorical consistency is very important for building a good UI, but products these days have gotten so complex that most of them lose it.
2. It prevents you from getting into a situation where you've opened up a bunch of Finder windows, navigated through them, and then find that they're all pointing at your home directory again. Ironically, the reason Steve Jobs gave for the new MacOS X finder was that the old one popped open a bunch of windows that you'd have to manually "garbage collect", but I feel like I'm garbage-collecting a lot more on MacOS X than on System 7. The reason is because on System 7, the Finder window I had open was a natural extension of my current task and I just closed it when I was done with the task, while in MacOS X, I just usually have one or two windows open and then periodically feel like they're a distraction that's getting in my way.
Another benefit of the mapping is that the window's properties such as height, width, display style (list or grid) remained the same even after closing, they are properties of the directory, not of a specific file browser instance.
But that requires opening each subfolder in its own window, right? I can say ever since Win95 I've been setting that stupid Folder Options > 'Open each folder in the same window' setting because I could never stand having the next level down appear someone random on the screen and just clutter up the entire desktop.
Usually, I'd navigate to a folder and then have the content in list view (which was really useful, like windows' "detailed" view, only better) and then drill down to the subfolders via the collapsible tree.
So, yeah I miss the spatial finder too, but after 10+ years, I have gotten over it. People blow this out of proportion.
They're both the real file. The file does exist only once. Are you saying in the spatial Finder you can't have duplicate views of a particular directory open?
Or are you referring to the files themselves? So if you open up somephoto.jpg in Preview, you couldn't open it up a second time?
The behavior you're describing is the behavior of a browser. The parent post was talking about maintaining the desktop metaphor; my actual desk has one drawer with pens and sticky notes in it. I can't open another drawer that also has the exact same pens and sticky notes in it.
I'm not necessarily siding with the parent post, but I think the point was fairly clear.
Now I've seen the video below, I understand the point. It's been a long, long time since I used earlier versions of MacOS and I was never a regular Mac user back then. I'm not sure if that was a better or less convenient method of browsing files. I can see the benefits of both Finders to be honest.
Sorry, but this doesn't really answer the question for me.
As far as I can tell, the current Finder has all of the things you list as desirable features.
I don't understand what is confusing about the filesystem as it is presented. It is exactly as it appears on disk, with some system folders hidden. Which can be unhidden easily. That's it.
>it didn't get too fancy and guess at your common tasks
I have no idea what this means.
>it was still simple enough that you could wrap your head around exactly how it worked
What one earth, _specifically_, is confusing about the new Finder?
All of the complaints I hear about it are so incredibly vague, like the ones above.
The fact that you have to install XtraFinder to get Finger - sorry, Finder - to do something basic like auto-size columns doesn't say much for Apple's diligence.
There is a clear and obvious problem with the quality of Apple's desktop software. Someone in charge is making very bad decisions about the competence of Apple users and their requirements.
The software has always been questionable - not least iTunes, which is a horrible example of how not to make a clean and elegant UI.
But lately it's been getting worse. The cosmetics are - possibly - improving. But usability and features are suffering.
If you're finding your system is unstable, it's probably due to using XtraFinder. That hack does various unsavory things that can cause stability issues.
> it didn't get too fancy and guess at your common tasks
When does the current Finder try to guess your common tasks? Sure, by default it shows all the files in your home directory but this can be turned off easy as pie.
I'm not really sure what your problem with Finder is. The defaults are there for those who have little/no experience of OS X but all of these can be easily overridden if you've got the more than the very basics of OS X skills.
Like one of the commenters below, I'm finding you're being rather vague in what your problem is with it.
I'd have comments on other points as well but if there is one thing KDE apps generally aren't then they consistently aren't pretty. I know, eye of beholder, but it's almost as bad as TK. In the link you provided there are:
- grooved borders between every second UI element.
- icons are way too colorful with gradients everywhere.
- underscore hints on menus are ugly.
- places panel takes up way too much space and eats away at the tree view panel.
That said, I use Dolphin, but only because other file browsers on Linux are for various reasons bigger catastrophes.
Most of those complaints seem to be down to fashion, rather than usability. In five years, people will be moaning about icons being "too monochrome" or "undifferentiated".
If you care deeply about the latest fashions and what the new black of UI design is this season, then KDE is definitely not for you. If you just want something that works then it can be fine. I don't find any of those things to hinder my actual use of KDE, quite the opposite.
The bad design isn't of this trivial sort. If you think of stereotypical web pages from 90's you don't think that their design isn't current, you think that that their design is intrinsically bad.
> the latest fashions
KDE's analogue in clothing fashion is wearing potato sack. That is - this isn't even a mater of fashion. This isn't like ror, node or react.
> rather than usability
Nobody denies potato sacks can have nonzero usability. Visual clutter affects usability. That they completely fucked UI, even if usability were perfect, doesn't give users needed confidence that other areas were done competently either.
I did that. It's still the wrong default.™ That's why I use KDE/Dolphin, you can beat it into something usable but you still have to eat the ugly which bothers me more than it should.
I am picky about file managers. Since switching to Linux on my primary desktop a few years ago, a file manager remains the only thing I miss from Windows. I used Directory Opus. It wasn't perfect, but was damn close for me (admittedly a power user as far as file management tasks is concerned). The one key feature that I have been unable to find in any Linux file manager is extensibility. I also dislike the lack of a queueing mechanism. I shouldn't have to sit around and wait for a 40GB copy to move from one network location to another before I can start another bit of data movement. And I should definitely be able to create a custom button that launches tools or performs certain common operations like flattening a directory tree or creating an ISO from a VIDEO_TS folder. In Linux I rely on the commandline, and don't mind that terribly, but if I had the time I would create a file manager that was easily extensible with Python taking design cues from something like Sublime Text. Should anyone do this I am certain it would be a successful product. I paid something like $95 for Directory Opus, and Opus is a fairly successful product despite its high price (a good bit of that high price comes from the company being based in Australia). I contacted them when I switched, telling them that a Linux port would be profitable for them, but they are not interested.
> I shouldn't have to sit around and wait for a 40GB copy to move from one network location to another before I can start another bit of data movement.
KDE and Dolphin send the transfer into the background immediately. You can track the progress in the system tray. Meanwhile, you can begin your next operation.
I think what he means is that transfers wouldn't be concurrent but sequential - quable. For example - you start transfer from A to B (in KDE and Dolphin it goes to background), then you would like to do a transfer from C to B - in reality they would be transferred simultaneously, but what the author above wants is queue - that transfer from C to B would start automatically AFTER A to B finishes.
Yes, that is precisely what I mean. I should have been clearer. Ideally if a copy operation involved busy devices that would be the only time they would queue, but I would settle for a background processing queue that prevented long-running operations from running concurrently. I've never seen anything smart enough to base 'concurrent or not' off of what device a piece of the filesystem is on though, so I'll give that a pass. I'd also really like a file manager that had a little daemon (or interacted with an rsync daemon or such already running) on boxes over the network so when I say 'copy from network share A to share B' the data never has to transit my desktop but goes directly from A to B. I think about file manager a lot. I have a long wishlist...
> integrated command line whose PWD matches the directory shown in the graphic view. This is killer.
This does sound good. I have a keyboard shortcut which launches a terminal in the current directory so that is kind of a workaround.
>- automatic numbering if you rename a bunch of files.
>- a tab-completeable navigation bar.
>- integrated context menu items (e.g. send via email, compress, encrypt, convert file type).
>- pretty, Apple-style image previews.
The fundamental problem with the Mac OS X Finder is that it tried to combine the NeXTSTEP File Viewer with the classic Mac OS Finder, but the designs are complete opposites of each other, so the combination doesn't really work.
In NeXTSTEP, as well as in Norton Commander and its clones, the view properties are associated with the window. You create a window, set the window size, adjust the sort order, set some filter and so on – and then you can visit any number of folders with those view settings applied. Another window can offer a different view of the same folder at the same time. This is the "browser" approach.
In the classic Finder, and in the OS/2 Workplace Shell, the view properties are associated with the folder. A folder can only be open in one window – the window is the folder. Other folders open in other windows. Any particular folder will always open its window in the same position and the same size (and in OS/2 have the same window background and various other properties). This makes it easier to find things (for reasonable amounts of files) because they stay where you put them and have the appearance you give them. This is the "spatial" approach.
If these very different approaches are combined they break down. If you try to use it as a browser, individual folders can suddenly override your view configuration. If you try to use it as a spatial file manager, folders will have their settings mangled any time you accidentally open two views of the same thing.
I also think the Finder interface is just fine because there are so many other ways to navigate around. From the command line of course, spotlight works great as well, and usually files and folders will also be better browsed from the application managing them (e.g.A text editor's file panel, or photo management software, vlc or itunes, etc.)
But, what iritates me is very poor handling of network shares. Those are critical to me, and it just won't work perfectly. On a previous job there was a windows share that could be browsed in command line but Finder wouldn't open the folder.
Or the credentials would get messed up every once in a while, with old values filled in when I logged in with the new credentials so many times already.
Or the Finder would go beachballing and stop responding when an nfs share is disconnected while navigating it in the Finder.
Or the list view refresh on a dropbox share while renaming a file, which can result in a partially typed file name getting commited automatically.
I hated windows, but I have to concede Explorer was rock solid and basically bug free in comparison.
Interestingly, all these things, screwed up credentials, weird refresh issues when editing network file names, hang-ups, all happen to me on Windows 7, too.
My biggest issue with my Mac was eventually working out that my Ethernet over Power bricks don't actually forward any mac networking info, so networking only works properly over wifi for me at home!
Despite no arguments or valid reasons in your post, Windows 3.11 that I used actually had a really good file manager, FileMan.exe which sadly disappeared after Windows 95 some time I think? Or was it 98?
It was really fast. As would be popular these days, it was WHITE everywhere and everything was FLAT.
That was the point finder is still not as good as the first good filemanger windows had let alone the Amigas.
I would cite regular frustrations with finder I wish I had been more assertive and suggested a move to windows server and stopping buying any macs at my curret place would make my job a lot easier and save money!
I think Explorer has gone downhill too though, so looks like we'll have to revert to Midnight Commander or Total Commander or some equivalent to get stuff done.
Fairly new OSX user and I kind of hate finder. My first gripe is of course the feeling that no one cares about these basic conveniences @apple.
Some of these are also found from other people's comment but I want to highlight that they also matter for me.
1. The fact that most file browser has editable auto-complete location field.
2. That it doesn't show the size of the selected files in status bar.
3. That when you try to fix it by opening the info menu on the selection it does the most idiotic thing possible (in my judgement) and open a separate info window for each file. As far as I know I have no way in finder to find the size of a selection (to guess the time for a copy operation or space needed).
4. That the most basic operation in a file manager getting inside a folder or getting back requires a two key action (cmd+enter, cmd+delete). Seriously?
5. That opening a file is not the default but renaming is. Again seriously?
6. No cut-paste.
7. No compact view. Without it browsing a large selection of files quickly and organise cut/paste don't really work for me.
8. Zero find ability without index. Am I suppose to index all my portables?
I have been using xtraFinder so I don't know if I remember all the problem correctly. But I was almost ready to rip my hair off when I first moved to OSX specially when it felt like most people were happy with finder. It feels to me that for apple finder is kind of a file viewer in a limited sense and you are suppose to only organise files through the respective programs iPhoto, iMovie etc. I will shy away from calling finder a 'File Manager'. The way I try to manage/organise my files, finder is a nightmare.
The gold standard for me right now is Nemo. Handles all the above case and as a bonus (for me)
Just start typing and the cursor moves through sub selection starting with that prefix. Very helpful with a quick find or selection.
Having moved to OSX at work last August, I tried to approach it as openly as possible, and to learn how to use it the way everyone else in my company uses it. Finder is terrible. Window management is terrible. Installing uBar helped a bit with Window management. I'm going to be working in OSX for a long time, but for file and window management, give me Windows 8.1 any day of the week. Or Windows 10, which is purring along nicely on my six year old Dell laptop.
XtraFinder solves a few of the problems for me like enter/backspace for navigation. But thanks for chipping in with some of the solutions.
7 - Essentially is the default view of Windows Explorer, files are listed from top to bottom and wrapping around to next column. This is the most compact way to browse a lot of files when you are not worried about their size/type and only interested in the names.
But even if some of the problems can be fixed by installing extra software or obscure shortcut the fact remains finder is simply painful to use as is to manage or work with files. It can't even find files unless someone provides an index and it's named finder.
Apple and OSX has a lot to love from build quality to universal copy-paste (a sore issue in linux). But I find in some failures/limitations apple is by far the worst player around.
I think the main criticism the Finder receives is due to it being very different from Windows Explorer (and the many midnight commander's heir) and worse than the classic Finder in a few but important ways.
But to me, it is still far better than any of the alternatives. I like the way it protects the user from doing potentially dangerous actions by hitting a single key and I'm not bothered by command-o, command-delete at all.
It finds files on unindexed disks for me, it just takes longer (as expected).
You might have a permission problem or using an unsupported format (like NTFS, through FUSE)
> But to me, it is still far better than any of the alternatives. I like the way it protects the user from doing potentially dangerous actions by hitting a single key and I'm not bothered by command-o, command-delete at all.
What danger is finder saving a user from that other file managers aren't?
Its great for you that you don't mind command-o for open and return for rename. But please don't ask me not to think that making the most used file browser operation to be multi-key shortcut isn't beyond insane. This is exactly the thing that I hate most about this ... 'you are holding it wrong' is the kind of feedback I get from most OSX users.
I'm honestly not sure whats the point of this. I don't want to fit many files just for the sake of it. I want it to be useful like this http://imgur.com/EqB1drO
What danger is finder saving a user from that other file managers aren't?
Accidentally deleting a file by pressing a single key
But please don't ask me not to think that making the most used file browser operation to be multi-key shortcut isn't beyond insane.
What do you think is more likely: that other people have different trade-offs and are perfectly happy with the way things are or that they are all beyond insane?
This is exactly the thing that I hate most about this ... 'you are holding it wrong' is the kind of feedback I get from most OSX users.
Some things can be objectively measured, others can't. The funny thing about the 'you are holding it wrong' comment is the absurdity of thinking that there is a right way to hold it. There isn't (or there shouldn't be).
for your issue 3 about not being able to check the size of multiple files:
In the right click menu (where you'd normally go to "get info"), hold option/alt. You'll see "get info" (cmd+i) change to "show inspector" (cmd+opt+i).
Couldn't agree more that it's dumb, but there's your multi-file properties window.
How about showing the actual filesystem? Instead of some restricted fictional view? For example, how the hell do you get to /tmp from the Finder?
What's with the stupid column per directory level? This is an extremely bad use of display space.
Haven't used Windows in a long time, and the equivalent in Linux is useless. (Or, more precisely, I don't use it.) But there are a number of irritations that have been there for a long, long time.
I only realized recently after switching to a new Mac just how much the default Finder sucks. If you switch that option on, switch off almost everything in the left hand pane except common folders and ~ / then it becomes bearable.
Other options are here, I wish I remembered all those I had changed because I still haven't gotten by Finder back to how I had it:
In Open and Save dialogue boxes, you can also start typing with a / to open up a "go to path" dialogue box that lets you enter the unix path (with tab completion).
To be fair the average user doesn't ever need to see hidden folders. Who cares what the defaults are, set your Mac up however you want, I'm sure everyone here is plenty capable.
Also, people will spend days customizing their Linux systems, but think OS X needs to be exactly the way they want it out of the box. Why is that? I agree the software quality has declined over the past few years, but many people here seem to be nitpicking.
"dude", yes, I know. Once found, nothing is hard to find.
But it's shitty UX. You can navigate to folders, except this arbitrary list of them that you can't control, in which case you go somewhere else to navigate to them.
And the 3 or 4 ways to view the folders, in (at least) one of them you can't create a new folder, but others you can. Brilliant.
I usually just use the Terminal, but when I need to open the current directory in the Finder I just type `open .`, one of the most useful (and unknown) shortcut of OSX.
Keeps getting hidden and you have to set a preference option via the command line to show it... only for it get hidden on the next OS update. Very frustrating!
Hiding in plain sight. There is so much crud, in so many menus, you tend to not read them after a while. I still have no fucking clue what Services are for, yet it's in the first menu of every application, and has been for years. (Probably something useful.)
Nobody is claiming a gold standard. With that said, I prefer windows explorer because you can simply type a path into the address bar (with tab completion if you need it) and navigate to a place on the filesystem. That's all. If finder added this one feature I'd be overjoyed. Instead, I find myself opening up menus to get to so many locations on the machine. For example, if you want to simply go to your home directory you have to use the 'GO' menu, which is just too much work for something so simple and common.
Shift+Command+G doesn't seem particularly strenuous. Admittedly, you need to work to learn the shortcut, but like all shortcuts, once you've got it it costs nothing.
[edit] it's Shift+Command+H for the home directory, which you were targeting specifically, Shift+Command+G lets you type in the path to any directory (with tab completion)
Yes, I use that a lot but something I miss from Windows Explorer is that i can actually copy the path. The widespread suggestion is that you can drag and drop the icon in the title but I prefer the other thing.
Iirc you used to be able to have the path visible at the bottom of the finder window but like so many things in OSX you have to set it to visible in the View or settings menu. I'm at work on a Winbox right now, anyone want to confirm this?
why do you need to use the go menu? command+shift+h takes you home. The keyboard shortcuts are listed right in the go menu you refer to. It's also a default in the Favorites pane on the left side of all Finder windows.
I agree Finder could use some work, but I find your criticisms odd. If anyone is fantastic at consistent, system-wide keyboard shortcuts, it's Apple.
I don't think Home is in the favorites pane anymore as of Yosemite (just created a new user to test ... it's not).
What's worse is that choosing something known to be under the home, like Desktop or Documents, yields a bare window with no way of seeing what's above it, in any of the view modes.
Eventually users will discover "Go" menu (yeah I guess Home is someplace I might want to "Go" - but I assumed that's where I already am and that it was just a view issue). Go menu seemss a pretty odd place to stash such an important location.
Not going to bite on the subject of requiring a three-finger solute just to go home ...
The "three finger salute" has a lot of utility, as cmnd+shift+a/d/f/h/o all take you to useful places and only Documents ended up with a second rate key (as D goes to desktop). cmnd-h is hide, and is hide in all apps so does have more utility than going home, so does deserve the shorter command IMO. I still strongly stand by that Apple's key commands are the best around, most consistent and better return on investment than any other desktop environment.
Seems a lot of people don't know about holding command then clicking on the folder in the title bar to view the hierarchy. I'm not sure what I think of that because I think once it's learned it's a pretty decent solution to the problem. Discovery is an issue though.
In the end I still say the Finder isn't perfect, but I find most complaints against it are from people that haven't learned it very thoroughly.
Yeah I agree that for power users who use OS X a lot this is not really an issue for long, but it is an annoyance and an unnecessary one at that.
For more typical users it's a bigger problem I think, because they never learn to organize their files. I've seen the results of this with users having a Documents folder containing just a huge list of files with no organization whatsoever - just grouping some related files to send to someone else was a big chore. Theoretically, tagging is superior to a folder hierarchy, but most people just don't "get it" with tagging and never will. Tagging is not even very good for power users, because they will often use software that doesn't see the tags (cross platform editors/IDEs).
I don't disagree that Apple has done a good and thorough job with their keyboard shortcuts. I never felt motivated to learn these myself though because I spend a lot of times on various other platforms, where that muscle memory would be actually detrimental. This is as opposed to e.g. IDE/emacs/vi muscle memory which caries over pretty well across platforms.
But I just think Apple has taken a big step backwards by hiding home in favor of "All My Files". If you have a couple of repos under your home, or anything else with a lot of files that get updated from time to time, then "All My Files!" becomes pretty useless. I think they've pushed too far towards the tablet mentality and that it doesn't suit desktops and laptops very well for the way they are actually used.
They even removed the little dropdown widget that used to show the folder hierarchy (looking for that thing is what wasted my time and annoyed me before finding home under "go" menu). And the status bar at the bottom that shows the used/free space on the machine is also gone (you can turn it back on under the view menu but why make busy people go fumbling around to find these basic things?). Ask most Mac users now how much space they have left on their drive, and watch them fumble around for several minutes...
3) Selecting a bunch of files and having it tell me how big the selection is so I know if they're going to fit on my 4gig USB stick BEFORE I try to copy them
4) Letting me sort thumbnails by newest modified. Finder's version of this seems to be completely broken IMO. It makes endless rows grouped
5) Letting me print photos with all kinds of options without any special software. 1up, 2up, 4up, etc.. (not that I need to print anymore :P)
6) Letting me use pretty much ALL features of windows explorer from any open/save dialog vs OSX where only some features are available.
Selecting a bunch of files and having it tell me how big the selection is
This one does have a solution: Select your multiple items, then use Command-Option-I instead of Command-I. If you're not careful to include Option in this chord, you'll be highly displeased with the results, especially with many items selected.
With the File menu open in the Finder, holding Option reveals that this feature is called "Show Inspector". And since it does follow an "inspector" metaphor, it's a persistent window that will remain in place and update its display as you continue changing your selection. Useful.
I'm a former Windows user and now an all Mac user and I find that Finder is sub-par compared to Explorer.
Even silly things like wanting to create a new folder and instinctively right clicking to look for a "New Folder" option. Nope, gotta go to the top menu and do it from there!
Agreed, those things suck. But as someone moving in the other direction (Finder -> Explorer), let me share a few of my Explorer grievances. Hopefully I'm missing a hidden option, but more cynically I expect that I'm in basically the same situation you are: stuck putting up with the persistent mediocrity in big-name graphical file navigators.
0) Good trackpad gestures.
1) Explorer can't sort alphabetically by name. WTH? No matter what I do, the closest I can get is "sort by folder/file status, THEN sort alphabetically by name." This really sucks for the common use cases of navigating the file tree by keyboard or unzipping into a crowded directory.
2) The retarded file open dialogs. I don't mean to say that all file open dialogs in Windows suck (although none of them allow drag-to-jump-to-file which is a minor PITA), I am referring specifically to a subset of file open dialogs which seem to be developmentally impaired by a few decades. They display the entire file hierarchy in a tree view that you have to scroll downwards vs the usual click-to-change-directory + breadcrumbs view. Ctrl+L to jump to a path doesn't work, they don't remember your location between invocations, they don't display common locations (desktop, docs, etc), jump-to-first-letter is broken, and they don't allow easy use of the down arrow to scroll because the next item is invariably hidden beneath the fold. These things are straight from the pits of UX hell, yet for some unknown reason they seem to constitute about ~20% of file selection dialogs on Windows. Ugh.
3) There are no consistent "jump to file" semantics (you know the "Open Enclosing Folder" contextual menu? Like that, but more universal). On OSX, this is the command key. Command click a document's icon in the header to jump to open an enclosing folder. Command click a search result or dock icon to jump to its location in the filesystem. Very handy. Very frustrating to find missing.
4) Hot corners to turn off the screen. Some screen/laptop manufacturers have a physical button, but some don't. Finder provides a built-in workaround. Explorer doesn't. In order to solve this issue I have to navigate the fake-download-button gauntlet and crapware-installer gauntlet twice before writing a line of code to emulate this feature with a keystroke. Yuck!
Funny thing about 1), when I switched to OSX i hated that it did not put folders on top. I actually have something installed to allow finder to do that, because I absolutely hate the way finder does the sort.
I haven't used Windows in a while so maybe these are fixed but the two biggest annoyances for me were the lack of spring-loaded folders and the lack of Details view being able to show the size of directories. #1 on your list was also really annoying. I'm also a big fan of disclosure triangles which Windows doesn't do.
Explorer does disclosure triangles (well, pluses in Windows's case) in the Folder tree side panel. It works better than incorporating it in the main view, IMO, but your mileage may vary.
True but I'm not sure how that would work as in the details view you're showing the files available in a particular directory. How would it sort by path? How does it work in Windows?
It does show resolutions, but it's terribly inconsistent. A little more than half the time it didn't show the resolutions for me, for files that definitely would have resolutions shown in Windows Explorer.
I came here to say this as well. There is nothing this software (+ plugins) cannot do.
want to open an avi as a series of frames and extract individual images? Want to open MSIs and extract individual files from the installer? ISOs? Floppy images? DEB files?
Want to copy files from a website in explorer view? An ssh server? Dropbox/GDrive/Onedrive? Ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, HFS/HFS+ partitions?
There are also integrated viewers for everything from DBF files to SWF files, and the ability to add almost any file metadata as a sortable column in the file view. Having regex everywhere is also killer.
I can't overstate how much more productive I am with this tool. I wish the native file managers were anywhere near this good so I could have a high-quality experience on any given machine without having to install additional software.
I use http://doublecmd.sourceforge.net/ on linux, which is pretty-much a clone of total commander. I still like total commander better.
As for open source - this one is, but it's written in delphi (pascal?) which makes it hard to contribute. Then again, it works well, so not sure what to contribute anyway.
Looks like truly handy software. but my god that website. I mean, if you have have a counter that old, I wouldn't touch it either, but the rest... oiy. I want keybindings for browsing through screenshots, damnit!
I agree. The product itself is not updated as regularly as I would like, yet it's still way ahead in many areas - multi-rename tool, search, FTP client, plugins, customizability to name a few.
Since nobody else mentioned it: Directory Opus. Looks big and clunky at first look but it's actually very fast and 100% customizable. You could strip it down to a dual list view and operate it purely by keyboard shortcuts. Buttons are defined in a copy pasteable xml format, are scriptable, come in various forms and let you bind events for left/right/middle click. The only caveat is: windows only. I would kill for a Linux version.
My brother! Seriously though, Directory Opus is a magnificent tool. Its interface could use a lot of work, but its extensibility isn't matched by anything in the Linux world. I know, I've looked and looked. I couldn't even find a decent open source project I could dive into with the goal of making it as flexible as DOpus. I emailed the DOpus guys and they definitely won't create a Linux port. And as I'm sure you already know, it doesn't play well with Wine. If I were creating a comparable application for Linux I'd make it extensible via Python rather than the custom scripting language they use, and I'd take a good long look at things like Sublime Text for UI cues (how to present a massively customizable and extensible system and maintain a very 'clean' interface). It would be a big project, but if I had the time I would gladly sink those hours into such a thing if only so I could use it at the end...
Path finder on OSX comes close. DO on the Amiga circa 1992 is still superior with the commands down the middle, kinda like Midnight Commander but better.
I'm also curious - what about Windows Explorer makes it a painful experience? I learned how to use computers using DOS/Windows and it's what my idea of "correct" is. I'm curious about the other perspective.
Yeah, but in Windows it's usually supported officially (and documented) and you know they won't completely pull the rug out from under you on the next release. Apple on the other hand will break the API without even telling anyone. How could you depend on such a company?
The worst thing of new versions of WinExplorer in my opinion is that you can't position files at the location you want (with the exception of the desktop). I have some folders in my Mac that I organize strictly by location, and that is impossible to do in recent versions of Windows.
For me? Lack of tabs and lack of right-click open-in-terminal. I don't use Windows much anymore, but I remember those, so I guess they're the worst ones. But nevermind the file manager, it's the Windows terminal that really sucks.
I'm sure it's not the gold standard, but the best file manager I've ever used is Windows Explorer from the XP era, with the blue left pane replaced with the hierarchical filesystem view.
1) somewhere to copy the file path without opening a "get info" dialog
2) tree-based view instead of the HORRIBLE thin columns that never auto-size to display filenames in a way you can view
3) ability to open command line from whatever folder you're in
I could go on and on - these are all trivial to implement and they never ever happen. number 2 is one of the most irritating of all.
When I ctrl-click (two-finger tap on a trackpad) on a file in Finder, I get a popup menu with several options, one of which is "copy". If I do this and paste in to a terminal window, I get the full pathname.
Alternatively, if I hilite the file in Finder, and press standard command-C (copy), then again the full pathname is pasted into the terminal window.
I used to be a Path Finder guy but since I moved almost all my file management to the terminal I haven't even installed Path Finder since I switched to a Retina MacBook Pro in late 2013. But I could definitely agree as a power- or semi poweruser Path Finder seems much more sensible but to be honest my mother understands Finder so much better than Path Finder and The Explorer on Windows. For me OS X probably peaked around Snow Leopard but there's probably a lot of novice users that like the new features and iOS-users that switched to OS X probably likes the similarities in App Store, Launchpad, etc. Sadly it feels that Apple is giving us powerusers less and less love.
I agree in general, but I think there are simple things that even non power users should have. The column interface is one that could drive anyone crazy, especially with the unintelligent defaults for sizing the windows and columns. It's damn near impossible to get around a filesystem with finder as is.
It seems as though apple is pushing non power users away from the finder altogether via apps that hide any notion of a filesystem from the user. Just try copying a movie project file from Final Cut - it's maddening. If they're going to continue down this road, then why not provide some additional features in finder for people who could use them (like breadcrumbs and the ability to type a file path like in windows, any IDE, etc).
I know, but why should this have to be a tack-on. These are things that can drive anyone crazy and have for the last six versions of OS X. They're willing to completely overhaul interfaces elsewhere (iTunes, iOS), why not add some unambiguously useful features here?
I'm not saying it's the gold standard, but it's serviceable enough: at the very least it has these two features I terribly miss in Finder:
- Having a foldable tree structure of the system on the left, and the list of the current directory on the right
- Having the full path of the current directory on the top (and being able to click on any subdirectory of the path, or being able to select the full path).
In Finder you have the choice of different views, none of which has the same practical use in my opinion. In any of those I'm always missing something.
You won't get any argument from me about the command line, though.
I thought the excellent standard of GUI file management was XP's Explorer - since then it has gone downhill with:
1. additional shortcut areas (instead of just a file tree; now we've got Favourites and Libraries)
2. big display areas (that irritating bar that sits above the status bar, repeating all the data found in the status bar)
3. a keyboard navigable top-of-list bar in list view (which stops you being able to tab between tree view, address bar and main pane)
4. a file tree that doesn't by default update the main pane on the right so you can quickly have no idea where the main pane actually "is" on the hard disk, or which part of your hard disk it is displaying because the treeview on the left can have an entirely different directory highlighted
5. inconsistent placement of menubar and toolbar / jigsaw-puzzle-designed ribbon bar (does the menu bar go ABOVE the toolbar or below? What does Windows' guidelines say? Load a few Windows apps [even under Windows 10] and spot the difference: Control Panel, Explorer, Internet Explorer, MMC, Notepad, MSPaint - none of them look the same; in fact under Windows 10 see how many different folder icons you can see: about 10 - is it flat, at a jaunty angle, at the opposite jaunty angle, bright or dark yellow: see https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Ia9kxBln51WTF0ekVWWjZCVnc for all the inconsistent icons and window layouts, non-themable notebook pages, with the View and Search pages in that notebook being white but the general page having an older window toolkit panel on it which ignore theming)
6. an additional bar to organize/uninstall and other things that are part of system management NOT file management, with this bar being on its own bar instead of the toolbar.
In short, it's a befuddled mess.
Finder's design means you have to use the mouse for most things. Using the keyboard, try moving a file from one place to another if you're in the List view: if you've got a directory expanded and are under a child node (with that child node highlighted), where does the file get pasted?
It forces you to open loads of new windows to move files. Admittedly this is easy if you're new to computers but it's frustratingly slow compared to the Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V.
I used to love the physical cabinet I had in the fifties. The sound of it opening, the actual rustle of the paper under your fingers - these _were_ your files, with real letters written on real paper, not some representation of them in a window on a screen. They don't make finders like that any more....
Windows Explorer is, by no means, perfect, but it is miles ahead from finder. I use both regularly and find myself cussing at Apple far more than at Microsoft. Applications too. Get rid of "Save As". Now you have a doubly useless menu on top if each monitor instead of on the app window, where it belongs. They are trying to stick to an interface that worked fine on a single screen 9 in mac in the dark ages. Well, it sucks. Don't believe what I say, go run a Mac with three 30 inch monitors and have a dozen apps open. Do the same on a PC. Even if you go back to Windows XP it is FAR more usable. No contest. All if our machines have 2 to 3 large monitors so these grievances are a source of daily frustration and productivity hits in the real world.
I am mostly on Ubuntu and only use a Mac occasionally, was really surprised that there is no quick way to copy the current folder path in Finder ( Something like Ctrl + L in Ubuntu ). Agreed its a pretty minor issue but still an annoyance.
I consider the gold standard of file browsers to be the one the pro-NeXT+Cocoa/anti-Carbon camp swore on Jesus' grave that would vastly exceed and suck less than the Carbon one once Apple finally rewrote it entirely in Cocoa. Well that happened and yet there's been essentially no change. It still hangs and spins a beachball when a network is disconnected, it's still gets confused what icons to use, and duplicate app icons in contextual launch menus, on and on, it's like - yeah it's not a Cocoa vs Carbon thing, can we admit that now?
What bothers me most is the fact that tabs aren't as useful as they should be - I want folders to always open in tabs, resulting in just ONE finder window unless I explicitly say otherwise. Instead whenever I trigger an action that shows something in finder I'm presented with a new window. In my typical use case I'll end up with several finder windows unless I manually merge them.
Finder tabs should behave like browser tabs, where opening in a new tab is the default action unless the user really wants a new window. Total Finder, a third party app, did this better.
I don't know about perfection, but I know this; Explorer is, imo, more usable. Seriously. I can Windows+D, start typing, tab to autocomplete, and be in the folder I want in a couple of seconds. I can set focus in the window and start typing to quickly get to the file/directory I want, press enter, repeat. In finder I can type to filter... but I have to press the arrow button to move the next... column (column? WTF?).
I can't even configure Finder to show the damn full path at the top at all times.
> Curious - what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be?
I'm a big fan of the approach Directory Opus used on the Amiga. On Linux I'm pretty much a full time midnight commander user, on OSX I use forklift. The latter's not as full featured as DOpus but it gets the basics right.
Personally, I use mc since I grew up with Windows and mc is a great little curses Commander clone.
Path Finder is a good Finder alternative but despite its nifty use case features I can't justify a license for it. Especially when i'm already using mc or CLI-fu.
I haven't had used any file explorer that perfectly fits my usage pattern because usually it does not matter that much, but Finder is plainly horrible. I cannot open /tmp without using the terminal, there is no "cut" command (I know you can copy then press Alt for "Move to here", but that is non-intuitive and illogical) and the "enter" command renames rather than opens (which one is the more common operation?). These are just on the top of my head.
Basically, Finder never lets me do my work without thinking. I am always tripped one way or another, so usually I just use the terminal instead.
I wish I was able to right click a folder and get an option "open terminal here" and then terminal opens and directory changes to the current selected folder. Is this available currently that I'm not aware of ?
Else, make it easy to copy the path.... Just like the windows explorer does.
your comment highlights that we all perceive "risk" now to upgrading. I used to not worry about this, but it seems that new OS X releases are broken enough to warrant not upgrading
You can drag the file or folder (from the title bar or file list) icon icon into a terminal window and the path of that file/folder will be written to the command line. Not quite the same, but very useful (and a feature I often miss in Windows).
edit: I was mistaken about dragging files/folders into the Windows CLI, I was thinking about something else.
I'm a DOS guy not even PowerShell and I usually drag the folders icons to the CLI to browse directly to the location and complete the operation from the terminal ...
What could your problem with Windows Explorer possibly be? It is generally considered to be the gold standard as far as I know.
It's far better more robust than Finder, it's got a much more powerful plugin environment and the keyboard acceleration actually makes sense, unlike Finder.
Personally I hate it, I use NexusFile whenever I can. It may just be personal preference but I think Explorer is hard to use, doesn't preview anything like Finder does (and the Enlightenment File Browser also does on Linux). I think a lot of my dislike actually stems from the Windows file system, I just don't like the way in which files are organised (in comparison ti unix-like systems).
Adds a pane in Windows Explorer that shows a preview of the file. I believe it was on by default back in the XP days, but since then it's just defaulted off.
EDIT: Huh. I knew it was there, but I never turned it on. It...actually looks pretty awesome. You can read an entire PDF in the preview pane.
I don't have access to a Macbook right now, can you elaborate how that works? Do you basically select a file, press space, and a preview comes up over the screen or something?
FWIW the Windows Explorer preview is much improved compared to what it used to be - it's not a little box, it's the entire right side of the Windows Explorer window. There's ample space to actually read a PDF, you have pagination controls, you can read spreadsheets, etc. I wasn't sure it even still existed until this thread, so thanks for that. :)
Finder lets you highlight a file then by pressing space it will show images in 100% size, play movies of certain file types, show PDFs in 100% size and let you scroll through them. It basically pops up a window much like a jQuery lightbox plugin overlay. In columns view you can also see something similar to the windows explorer preview.
>what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be?
When bash is more useful than finder, there's probably an issue.
Case in point: not being able to open a specific path (unless I bookmark it)
Case in point: when I open my home directory in finder, I don't necessarily want the directory tree that was last expanded to still be expanded. For directories with a large item count, this can take a _long time_, even on a retina imac.
Renaming a file is always an exercise in "did I click it in just the right way? Oh, crap, no, don't launch it to edit it."
Hopefully most of us already know these tips and tricks, but for a new user Shift + Command + G is something that they will probably never discover. Even click and enter to rename is excessively complicated compared to adding a rename option to the context menu like Windows.
⇧ ⌘ G is right under the [Go] menu item in the Finder. Never discover ... if they don't poke around in the finder menu for 5 minutes. One needs to learn their tools or find a better tool. Suffering in a fog of dis-edumacatedness is a fools <noun verbular>.
Most computer users don't understand or give a damn about managing their file system. It seems like many HN users do, yet clicking on the "go" menu to see options and keyboard shortcuts available when they want to go to a folder is too confusing for them.
Apple's slowly becoming a fashion company. I'm being only slightly facetious.
I'm not an Apple hater despite saying that. If anything, I usually prefer Apple products over the competitors, and I've used iMacs or Macbooks for years now. But, between the $17k gold Apple Watch and the recent updates to the Macbook Air and iPad lines, it seems clear to me where Tim Cook is taking the company. And I don't think Apple as a fashion company is even a bad thing, it's just a transformation that some will like and others will resent.
Ditto, pretty much. Though I think it's not so much "fashion," with all of it's pure aesthetic implications, as I think it is an emphasis on visual polish, visceral satisfaction, vertical integration, and novelty - all at the expense of many things "power user" oriented. It's a path to expansion, buy-in, and pundit-fodder, and apparently a tremendous market cap. I've known for about 5 years that I have some variety of Linux in my future, it's just a matter of time. Though I will likely always have need for Adobe products professionally.
I agree - I'd love to see them re-think Finder. I just don't grok Finder... I do most of my work in the terminal and occasionally midnight commander or nerdtree inside vim. I tried free ones like muCommander but don't like the overhead of starting a java app... Similarly I don't want the overhead of running an X server so I can use an X based file manager. And I don't want to buy some 3rd party File Manager. We should get a great File Manager OOTB with OS X. I don't see why Apple can't implement a modern File Manager... At least give us something comparable to Windows Explorer... or take the time to make a video to convince us Finder is actually good for those who may not grok it.
And a swappable battery would be wonderful but I can live without it.
I think the problem is that file management does not fit Apple's vision for the future. It is simply too abstract a task with too many use cases to really design something simple and elegant in the spirit of how Apple normally approaches problems. There are obviously a million ways to make the Finder better than what it is, but what Apple really wants to do is kill it entirely. Of course they're nowhere near being able to kill it, so instead they hold it at arm's length as a necessary evil.
In the meantime, if, like me, you are stuck on OS X because it's the best GUI for a *nix now and in the foreseeable future, I suggest buying PathFinder (http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/) to bridge the gap. It's certainly a much better tool than Finder or Windows Explorer.
I think you are probably the most correct of all the posts here. Apple wants a system where you can't access the filesystem period, at least not by default. Seeing that there is a filesystem underneath the system is, to their eye, as appealing as those devices popular in the 90s with transparent shells that let you see the electronics. Their ideal future is basically the iPhone. They even said as much in their unveiling of the new Macbook. They said the phone/tablet will be your primary computing device and a laptop or desktop will just be an accessory (eventually literally, as mobile chips get more powerful and Intel continues to nerf desktop offerings).
In my experience, trying to replace core OS apps with 3rd-party replacements just never quite works 100% in all situations. My preference is more toward apps that augment/improve the core OS apps. Xtrafinder is of this type, adding additional functionality to Finder, rather than being a wholly separate app like TotalFinder.
Have used TotalFinder for a couple of years, just tried XtraFinder. Found that the side-by-side view and shortcuts for sliding in the pinnable Finder just didn't work, even after a couple of uninstall/reboot/install/reboot cycles. Has some nice features and seems like it should cover what I want from TotalFinder, but just isn't there yet.
I also don't understand your sentiment for preferring it over TotalFinder... they both feel and act like augmentations. I got the impression that XtraFinder would work alongside the normal finder, but that's not the case.
I find the complete opposite. Xtrafinder side-by-side view and everything else advertised by xtrafinder does seem to work great for me. Totalfinder might still be better as I have not tried it yet. They both look like fine augmentations of finder in general. What else are you looking for?
Right in so many points:
"Now, it's all about the style": that's right, it's an accessory, it's the long awaited iPad pro + keyboard, a glorified browser for your social network, check photos and look chick and trending.
Why are we here? People have decided with their pockets, Apple is now the biggest company in the history of humanity.
Don't get me wrong, Apple has done a lot of stuff right, the amount of design and engineering behind the original iPhone it's incredible, and yes maybe a lot of the technology already existed but they polished the combined products until they got something that worked in such a nice fashion; that's the "magic" behind their products but from there is downhill.
iPad: bigger iphone.
iPad mini: mini- bigger iphone.
MacBook Air: let's trade some some performance and take away the capability of upgrade the machine in a pursuit of a more thinner machine.
MacBook: let's take the least powerful CPU from Intel (the reason behind the no-fan design"), cripple the typing experience, take away all upgrade-ability, cripple the semantics of touch from the track pad, take away all the ports.... WTF.. charge for the hub... and make it more expensive.....
But I think the problem is not Apple but the people buying their products and how they use them. It's a super glorified version of "I belong to the better group" psychology.
now that I type all this... it could make some sense to start looking all this not as a computer... or apple as a computer and software company but a boutique selling accessories.
I would love to tell you that thinkpads still make sense but the "no leds" and "screw keyboard" may prove me wrong.
Who needs to upgrade to the next device? More likely, you'll upgrade every N devices, where N depends on your personal needs.
This, incidentally, is almost certainly the purchasing behavior of the vast majority of computer owners. RAM and disk upgrades (particularly on laptops) are performed by a fairly tiny minority of consumers. Yet it seems disproportionately cited when shopping, likely due to an illusion of control or the laughable (in computing terms) myth of "future-proofing".
I'm speaking from experience. I'd really like to be able to add more RAM to my MacBook Air. 4GB isn't working out as well as I had hoped. I knew about the RAM being soldered to the MB when I bought it, but I figured I'd be financially able to upgrade by the time the amount of RAM it had became a problem. Unfortunately, I'm not able to do that. I cannot afford to upgrade.
Also, I do upgrade every N devices. I'm not someone that buys the new model everytime they release one. I guess I should have phrased it "because not everyone can afford to upgrade to a new device".
Doubling the RAM, replacing the disk, or buying new batteries are all much cheaper than acquiring a new laptop. Not everybody can treat a US$1299 device as disposable.
Besides, when I pay a premium price for a product I expect it to be useful for more than a couple of years.
From what I can see apple laptops have a longer working life than other higher end laptops, there must be a reason 2010 macbook airs are still selling on ebay for $400+.
Sure they do. My mother is still using my MacBook white 2008, which I upgraded from 1GB to 4GB RAM and replaced the battery. I also expect to get at least two more years from my MacBook Pro 2012 after upgrading my disk to a SSD and the RAM to 16GB.
I was specifically replying to this comment:
> Why is hardware upgradeability so important? What's the harm in just upgrading to the next device?
Not everybody has the money to buy the next device, so upgrading is a great option to get a couple more years of work from a little old but otherwise solid laptop.
Apple laptops have their share of woes (see the video issues on earlier Macbook Pros).
But, whatever the reason, Apple hardware tend to hold on to its value longer, without doubt.
I recently sold my 2010 13' Macbook Air, dented and with a cracked screen a for 300$ on ebay (and I expected more based on similar auctions), about 1/4 the price of a new model for a broken 4.5 years old model.
Technically you could just upgrade every year and recoup at least 60%-70% of the original price.
WiFi... every upgrade I've done since Lion has caused me pain. Upgrade, and WiFi stops working reliably. Last time was on a virtually new MacBook Pro, upgrading to Mavericks, and it took me two weeks to get it working again.
So I'm kind of wary of the 'wireless everything', which would be great if the wireless was working solidly in the first place.
I believe there is distinction between Apple as a hardware company and Apple as a software company. First part works extremely well while latter one - not so much. I would not mix them together.
Yup. The MacBook Pro I use today is likely to be my last Apple machine - I've been using their kit for decades - but they've stopped being about software, or hardware.
They're all about brand. This was ok when they had technically excellent products to talk about, but their products are today mediocre, arrogant, and speak of a new, stupider, wealthier target audience.
Random story from last week, and my experience with Apple software. I don't use Apple products too often, but I was downloading some apps for a family members ipod touch 4g (latest model being 5g). The 4g only supports up to iOS 6, and nearly every app I tried downloading on the device gave an error saying it required iOS 7 and it couldn't be installed.
I thought that was strange, I used most of these apps before on older devices, why does everything no longer work on a device that's relatively new? According to those error messages the device is basically useful, it can't install apps any more, which is the heart of the ipod touch.
I searched around online and there's an official solution. I had to install itunes on a computer and login to the same account as the Apple account on the device. Then I had to download the incorrect iOS 7 version of the free app I wanted. That would assign it as a purchase to the Apple account. Then I could delete that download. Then, I had to open up the Apple store on the device like I was doing previously, find the free app on there again, and click download. After doing all that, it wouldn't give an error saying the device wasn't supported, but now ask if I wanted to install the last compatible version.
My mind was blown. How could such popular software provide such an awful user experience? The ipod touch said the app isn't supported for the device, but then I 'buy' the free app on itunes, and magically it is supported and I can download a compatible release.
The 4G was launched in 2010. It s not what I'd call 'relatively new'.
The reason for the block on just automatically downloading an old version is that it is not the version advertised on the App Store. Advertising a product with features you won't actually get is generally frowned on. The reason the hack works is that it tricks the App Store into thinking you must have 'bought' an earlier version of the software, so supplying a previous version is fine.
Bear in mind governments take advertising accuracy very seriously. You casualy talk about free apps, but there's no such thing on the App Store now because the EU doesn't consider apps provided at no initial cost, but which might be add supported or have in app purchases as being free.
The 4g ipod touch was discontinued May 30, 2013. So, they've been selling it to customers as a new product on store shelves until less than two years go.
I think the ideal scenario would be to show the App Store description and screenshots from the last available version. This way, it would be the version last advertised on the App Store.
Because they are trying to nudge you into upgrading. Lets face it, the fact that Apple ruthlessly kills hardware after 3-4 years is both a benefit to Apple (sells more hardware) and developers (don't have to support old versions of the OS). Though, as a consumer sometimes it makes it difficult to know if you're buying a dud (iPod Touch 4th gen) vs something that'll have a long happy life (iPad 2nd Gen)
It's awful for consumers, though. And for developers, it's not great, either, because you end up having to support a customer on an old version of OS X, for example, which means keeping a suitably old environment around just so you can keep your builds compatible, or jump through all kinds of hoops.
I don't feel like this is a good thing to encourage in an industry that already has more than enough churn as it is.
I've never run into that issue, ~90% of our users are on iOS8 or above. With iOS you can safely support the current version and last version while only pissing off 2-3% of the customers which is exceptional compared to most platforms. I also do Android development, Don't even get me started on what a mess that is, complete opposite..
holly hell ! How can this be an official solution ?
Ok, Android devices upgrade cycle could use improvements, but as far as back compatibility goes, it gets it right. You can publish different versions of your app, so even if you drop an old OS version with 1% of marketshare, you can still let users download the last version of the app for their OS.
From an user point of view, it is transparent, you click install and get the last compatible version, period.
Eh, well, the alternative is perhaps that you buy a "new" app, install it on your device, and find that it's never updated anymore. Their current workflow allows you to get the last available version of an app you already own, which is what you want. You don't probably want to newly buy an app to find that the last version released that actually works on your device is years old.
What year did this happen? Mashable reported in 2013 Sept that Apple implemented "legacy app" downloads [0]. Did it lose that functionality? (Not an iOS user, so a genuine question)
That's a very good point - Apple's desktop software is definitely not a highlight in the last few years.
What's not clear is: (i) how much it matters - the core desktop experience is very solid, and between web browsers and MS Office it's not clear how much the iLife(?) apps actually get run.
And (ii) whether it's a symptom of some deeper malaise - Apple still seems to be killing it in other areas so perhaps it's just a weak or resource-starved group within the company.
Even $100B is not a reason to dump money mindlessly. I generally don't trust moves that seem purely driven by money (e.g. facebook's VR hiring spree), and which don't have a clear goal in mind, and a strategy along the way. Given Apple's high aspirations, they probably don't know what to do with the desktop. Ive's expectations seem way beyond what native apps can fulfill ... perhaps the Windows way was the right approach after all, and the complexity of "other" operating systems was just right for the high complexity of daily tasks after all ... and maybe the Apple way of thinking is more apt for mobile use where the computer interface doesn't have the user's full attention.
Personally, in my last years of using OS X, all I had open was the PDF reader app, a browser and a terminal. I don't know if that was my personal interpretation of the Cloud age, but suddenly I was completely OS agnostic. Incidentally, this led me away from buying Macs, as the operating system didn't do anything for me anymore. I don't know about the desktop experience. Either it seems to be "power user web crawling", for which the cloud is the best fit, or it's about spending the whole day in a random Pro App with its very own user experience.
I'm looking forward for their cars and watches, but I don't care much about their desktop computers. It seems they don't, either.
While I agree with regards to iLife, the software overall just seems to have gone down in quality. Since upgrading to Yosemite I've had a ton of issues with Apple Mail (which is a staple for me) and wifi in general. Having to toggle your wifi on & off throughout the day gets pretty old pretty fast.
Still a tough sell to go outside apple simply due to the hardware quality & resale value, but at least we have some contenders today where a few years back there were none.
I have constant crashes/freezes when waking up on Yosemite, and something about having iCloud disabled makes every iLife application show unrelated dialogs (usually "This will overwrite the existing file on iCloud" warnings, despite the file not existing at all, nor having iCloud), the EULA box randomly shows up in System Preferences and gets stuck in an infinite loop of showing me the terms even when I press cancel, yada yada. I agree with the word "shoddy". I can work around all this, but it's like nobody bothered to test it. I'm part of the Appleseed program and send in every bug I find, but apparently they're all minor enough to not be patched. Frustrating.
I agree. The Mail client is constantly beach ballin and freezes at times. The issue is resolved by deleting the account and recreating it again. Surely not as intended. Especially for an app that virtually everyone on a Mac uses on a daily basis. I keep sending my crash reports but Mail client software updates seems to never come...
Also, another really annoying bug is when screensaver goes on and locks the screen. Sometimes, if I try and wake it up to fast it will freeze with a black screen for 60-120 seconds before I can unlock it again.
Yup. The iconic lack of care on software side can be seen since forever when ejecting an usb. What used to become an eject icon with an eject label it's an eject icon with a trash label
That is just the smallest of thing, but is so easy to spot and fix and really his square against the level of detail the hardware side gets.
With Apple I think the problem most comes from their aspiration for a mobile-only world. But they might just be suffering the same problem many (if not most) software packages face: The software gets near perfection.... but the organization does not have the capability to process this. They've got a team of developers, and developing on that particular piece of software is what they DO. There are managers of that team, and their career depends much more on keeping their team busy and working on some new thing far more than it relies upon the quality of the software itself. It doesn't look very good if your career seems to 'plateau' and your teams activity is just bugfixes and polishing a stable, usable product. The guy on another team who 'took risks' and radically redesigned the interface or jammed in a few new features that changed the target audience of their application will fare far better, even if their existing target audience has abandoned the application in droves (though they probably won't, as lockin is real).
I've never heard of a company which had an endgame - what to do when the software is DONE. I have certainly suffered through many different applications which reached an apex of near-perfection and simply changed direction and went rapidly downhill though.
Yesterday was the first time this year I was able to open pages from youtube on the first try instead of over a 20 - 40 minute process of refreshing, resetting wifi, resetting router etc trying to get complete page loads with playing video. I had entire days where Skype text messages was the only internet access I had. Apple's forums have ten thousands of posts on people's wifi being ruined like this for this entire year and counting.
Without a doubt, some people have issues, but I don't think you can gage the overall reliability of a product based solely on a support forum. No one is going there just to post that their system is running properly.
If it is some percent unreliable the other percent doesn't change that. It's not just OS X, it's also iOS, Maps, iCloud etc, some of this stuff was famously bad. There's been a lot of discussion about this recently with many notable Apple enthusiasts chiming in - https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+software+quality.
Such beautiful machines to run iTerm2 and Vim. I almost feel guilty for having the latest 15 MBP Retina and 80% of my time is spent in a terminal coding.
In case anyone's thinking about buying a Mac and was put off by this comment:
I find OS X Yosemite to be fantastic. It works well, it's very stable. I run it on four different macs of different ages. The UX has definitely improved as a result of the redesign.
I'm not sure about the aforementioned apps. Keynote is fantastic, but I don't use those listed very much. iPhoto has always been a basic photo management tool; I use Lightroom.
There are times when a Linux box is preferable. I just run Linux in VirtualBox in those situations.
Agree about bugginess of Software. It seems that Apple shifted focus from overall flawlessness and coherence of UX to craftsmanship and advanced technological processes in hardware. And since we started to see all those weird "Connect phone to iTunes to receive push notifications" popups, etc. If we will have products, whose surface was polished by zirconium particles but that are always buggy and unreliable, it will be not the Apple we all loved. Not "advanced features" but "lack of annoyances and irritation" is what made Apple what it is now, in my opinion.
My guess is that somewhere deep in the basement they have an OS that unites iOS and OS X into a single system that will run on future devices. That OS will run both OS X apps in legacy mode and iOS apps. Apple is funding teams for the iOS versions of the apps because that is where they see the future.
Well they have an OS already which unites them, the API layer above is the heterogeneous bit, which they might unify with something like UXKit. Long term it would make sense, and as you say it would explain the move towards mobile paradigms on desktop and the relative neglect of the desktop software. Of course the other explanation is that there is just so much more money to be made in consumer electronics than in computers - that won't change.
I expect Apple under Cook to be far more predictable in this way and take the steps to maximise revenue that Jobs might have shunned in favour of something revolutionary and unproven.
At the end of the presentation, I was half expecting Tim Cook to pop the screen off the MacBook and say, "And by the way, we united iOS and OSX, so the MacBook can aslo be a fully-functional iPad."
The one area where apple really exels though, in both hardware and software is the touchpad. I cannot stand using the touchpad on any windows laptop I used, the touchpad is 99% the reason I still use a mac/osx.
Near perfect gestures integration, and the touchpad behaves very consistently and reliably system wide (osx has system wide smooth/responsive scrolling for example), and the touchpad hardware itself is just very nice and pleasant to use.
Windows touchpads are usually all over the place in my experience, mostly due to drivers/windows' poor touchpad support. super basic stuff like 2 finger scrolling is often very janky and unreliable on the windows laptops I've used. I had actually ended up switching from windows to linux on my previous laptops because the touchpad even worked better under ubuntu than it did under windows.
I love windows on my desktop PC, but I cannot stand on using windows on a laptop
If one has never used computers like my Lenovo Ideapad y510p ore previously my Asus laptop and had to wrestle with the Synaptic/eLan drivers but rather only ever used a Macbook their entire lives, they would not realize how terribly bad touchpads can be.
Yosemite is moderately buggy, and iOS 8 is buggy as shit. Meanwhile, I've been using Outlook 15 and now the Office 2016 Preview, and I have to say I'm really impressed. Thanks to Microsoft, and despite Apple, I'm really loving my Mac right now.
I gave up on my Windows Phone Nokia because it was buggy as hell, but they definitely have Apple beat in terms of design. The Metro UI is gorgeous and more usable than anything Google or Apple have put out
It's because the last few versions of OS X and Apple's applications have seen bigger changes than previous versions. And a lot of the more hardcore Apple fans tend to dislike change. A lot of Apple's more long-term fans hated OS X when it first came out, too.
I'm not trying to bash Apple fans when I say this - I'm an OS X user too, and admittedly I only finally moved on from Snow Leopard last year (I actually like a lot of the changes, and most of the ones I don't like are ones that are easy to ignore). This phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to Apple fans either - just look at how many people still refuse to upgrade to Windows 8.
6 of 1, half a dozen of the other? I agree there are things about the new software that are not as good as the old. OTH, it's really hard to maintain feature-parity on launching a new rewrite. I think a lot of this stuff will eventually get there. For the most part I'm liking the new Photos app.
Also, OS X has only been getting better IMO. They just need to do a release cycle where they work on polish, which I believe they intend to do.
I have been using Ubuntu 14.04 since it came out. Anyone who calls Yosemite buggy should try running Ubuntu as their primary system and see what buggy really looks like. YMMV, of course.
Yeah, I think Unity is the most productive desktop environment in existence and I especially like how good it is at handling huge amounts of windows but I manually installed the newest nvidia drivers and now it can't be started. KDE and GNOME Shell work just fine. Installing drivers is not a fringe use case. GNOME Shell is close in usability, except for its clumsy multi-monitor support. Also any Ubuntu update can break your computer. Happened to me. It actually makes me want to get a Mac.
Linux in general has problems with graphics, Wi-Fi and printers. I know this is not Linux's fault, but that doesn't fix it.
If a company came out and made a dedicated Linux distro for its own brand of computers a la Apple, took care of the video and WiFi drivers while keeping them up to date and also sold me a printer I would be all over it.
I guess the closest thing to a problem-free Linux experience would be the Dell developer edition laptops or maybe the Thinkpads, as Lenovo usually Ubuntu certifies them.
No, they sell it with Ubuntu. It works when you get it, but Canonical doesn't test new updates on System76 machines. Which means it will break. Because that's how much Ubuntu regresses.
I want the hardware and the software manufacturer to be the same company. I think that's the only way an open source OS could get sufficient funds and a sufficiently narrow group of hardware to support.
Gonna have to agree with you, I used desktop linux for years (even on one system76 laptop that had ubuntu pre-installed), and it felt like I was spending more time reporting bugs, working around bugs, and distro-hopping than actually using my computer. OSX has its issues but I've been a lot happier with it.
I'll also add to this what might still be the biggest burden of Macos: its file-system. It's amazing that they can get away still providing this horror in 2015!
Apple planned to replace its very old HFS(+) filesystem with ZFS, there were even dev beta releases and demonstration to the media. But OSX 10.5(?) didn't ship with ZFS. So OSX is stuck with an decades old filesystem almost as basic and bad as FAT32, where Windows has NTFS (and ReFS, ExFAT), Linux has Btrfs/XFS/extfs4 and *BSD/Solaris has ZFS.
But it's a big difference, if it's an optional driver or the default one. Currently, on OSX and iOS most users are simply using the default installation and are stuck with HDF+.
One can install optional filesystems on every OS. Like NTFS on Linux and OSX. ZFS on Linux, Ext4 on Windows.
Apple only supports a subset of OpenGL 4.1 last time I checked.
iOS8 supports WebGL. iOS4 already supported WebGL but exclusive to iAds. There is the new iOS only metal graphics API to compete with OpenGl/WebGL in AppStore.
That's an interesting effect. If it were just the apps that were previously for "pro-am" work (iMovie et al), I'd get it, but—what happened with Pages and Numbers? I used them years ago, I use them now, and they honestly don't seem like they've changed much.
They also removed a bunch of Pages features used by Powerusers. It used to be a reasonable substitute for Word.
I'm still on Pages 09 because I had a bunch of manuscripts made in that program. They don't format well in Pages 13. I'm going to keep using Pages 09 until Apple forces its obsolesence.
Probably will look at Word instead since they seem committed to stability and the ability to actually do real work on a computer.
For me osX was the reason to switch, yes, nice battery life (at the time, 2011) was nice but having iMovie for family movies, a pro-Photo-suite for 60$ (Aperture!) and being able to call family (who all have iPads) over facetime were most compelling.
Finder is indeed horrible, it never reconnects my Samba share, it never opens the way I left it and always in a window that I find too small, when browsing to a network share it may sometimes switch from icon view to tree view and the mapping of the folders in home is strange, in the terminal the folders are called differently in my language. And where is sshfs, ftp etc. Really, I have to download Cyberduck?!
I just had one of my first exposures to OS X, helping a friend get rid of particularly nasty adware called Downlite. It was nastier than anything I've ever seen since Windows 98, and obviously I've never seen anything like it on Linux. Stunning, really. I'm still considering getting my first Macbook though after this announcement, so I do hope they'll build a better security model.
For it to be nasty and hard to get rid of, your friend must have given it admin access when he installed it? No security model that I'm aware of can stop that; OS X out of the box stops you from being able to run unsigned code, which would've stopped that entirely.
Windows also prevents untrusted code from running as an admin user by default. As you say, the user clicked "Allow"; there's nothing that could prevent that except changing the mindset of the general end user.
Actually that user probably did more than "Allow". Apps non signed by Apple are prevented to launch entirely on the default config. You have to go disable that protection in system preferences or right shift to launch the app, to go around this. So you really need an extra step and also need to know what you're doing
I dual boot my old MacBook Air between OS X and Ubuntu - really nice because some software development tasks are just easier on Linux.
(Off topic, but a good tip: buy a 64gig memory card and always keep it in the memory slot with a file system friendly to both Linux and OS X - there are cards designed to fit in flush on MacBook Airs. This lets my old 128gig MBA comfortably support dual boot, and the shared file system on the card is handy.)
I'm curious which tasks you find easier? I was a hardcode Linux user before I got Mac, so I had to try it. Four months later, and I never boot into Ubuntu anymore because everything works equal or better on OSX.
Good question. There is quite a lot of software (dev tools) that are trivially installed with aptget, but not so easy (if possible) with homebrew.
I am mostly retired now, but I am working on a commercial product, and still write the occasional book, and advise consulting customers - that is my excuse for experimenting with LOTS of open source projects. If it is easier to check something out on Linux, then I take the minute to reboot.
That said, when developing I mostly "live" in IntelliJ (mostly for Clojure and ClojureScript, a little for Java and Javascript) and running IntelliJ on OS X (or even Windows 8.1) is nicer than on Ubuntu(because of trackpad issues).
I found that using brew to install GNU tools and replace Apple's FreeBSD tools really made my transition a lot easier. Now build tools don't randomly break because of some unusual command line incompatibility between OSX and Linux.
Annoyingly at the end of the day, I just want a Unix OS with working drivers, and that can run photoshop. Linux doesn't quite cut it (no matter how much I love it).
Hm. Which tools aren't easy to install with homebrew? I find it has pretty broad coverage of most of the command line tools I need, and it's reasonably easy to compile other packages from source if you need them.
Of course your needs are different from mine. Just curious.
OS X doesn't support Valgrind or GProf. That's enough for me to keep a Linux VM around. Additionally, I've found that software is often easier to build under Linux.
Must be a resource issue on their end. Would be interesting to know how many engineers were working on Watchkit/Apple Watch instead of e.g. iOS8. Now THAT is one buggy release. Especially considering how long it has been live already.
Hardware brings the $, hardware gets budget increased. Typical corporate strategy. The only way someone in power could adjust the focus is if, say, the company failed while they were on leave or something.
That machine wouldn't be viable if it wasn't for software. The force touch trackpad, which allows the MacBook to be thinner, desperately need the software to make the illusion work.
Because Apple is systematically downvoting negative comments. Most tech companies do some form of damage control on HN because they know a prominent portion of their userbase comes here frequently.
iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers were never any good. They were afterthoughts, always have been.
I've been an Apple user for about 15 years, never used any of Apple's own software besides the OS, Keynote, the Mail app, and I've regularly replaced the latter for long periods.
The notion that Apple's application software was ever on par with their hardware and OS is a myth. Keynote is pretty much the only exception.
For ten years people have been posting this BS about Apple application software going downhill, while in reality it was always mediocre to start with.
Have to take issue with you on Pages, I have always thought it to be far easier to use than Word. Many a time I have started out with a Word doc and after half an hour just scrapped it and used Pages or, more recently, LibreOffice instead.
But what the living hell is going wrong with Apple's desktop software? OS X and Apple's applications suite have been getting steadily worse with every release. Look at the App store: the latest releases of OS X, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers are (in stark contrast to earlier versins) all rated at 2.5/5 stars, with the plurality being 1-star reviews. People are LIVID -- and not just for trivial NOOB reasons, either: the quality of the work is frankly shoddy. Who's steering that part of the ship???