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Death of Finder?

Maclver

Maclver

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 23, 2008
2,869
2,674
New Mexico
Just re-watched the portion of the keynote about Lion and I kinda struck me that with launch pad could we see the end of Finder? Because to me finder just shows you apps, files, etc everywhere on your mac and potentially launch pad does the same thing! Am I alone in this?
 
Maclver said:
Just re-watched the portion of the keynote about Lion and I kinda struck me that with launch pad could we see the end of Finder? Because to me finder just shows you apps, files, etc everywhere on your mac and potentially launch pad does the same thing! Am I alone in this?
Click to expand...

I don't think Finder will go away. It will still be needed to browse the file directory for things that the Launchpad would not be used for, such as preference files. Finder allows us to drill down deep into the OS whereas from what I saw in the demo, Launchpad is just another way to quickly load apps or files that you would use frequently.
 
I think the poster above who said it might be for power users has the general idea, or at least it will become less used by the average users even if he or she will need to get ther once in a while.

I think OS X will move towards the iOS way of doing things, with them being simpler, but it can only simplify things so much until OS X loses functionality(and Apple knows this and how much it would hurt sales, so they won't do it)
 
zap2 said:
I think the poster above who said it might be for power users has the general idea, or at least it will become less used by the average users even if he or she will need to get ther once in a while.
Click to expand...
By hiding, I meant moving it to the LaunchPad. I agree with you.

zap2 said:
I think OS X will move towards the iOS way of doing things, with them being simpler, but it can only simplify things so much until OS X loses functionality(and Apple knows this and how much it would hurt sales, so they won't do it)
Click to expand...
I'm with you on this one.
 
or maybe it's just being hidden because it's still being re-tooled for 10.7 and wasn't ready for the 1st small sneak preview event.
 
I can't wait to see more.. Hopefully we see a beta soon.... how long after Leopard or Snow leopards "preview" did it take to get it to get into the hands of developers?
 
QuarterSwede said:
I don't remember it as I was a Windows user from 95-XP (wasn't a fan of System during that period) but that's definitely relevant. Great comparison.
Click to expand...
Yeah. It's interesting, and will clearly appeal to some users who like a simplified and easy to navigate GUI.

I however, will stick with good ol' Finder. ;)
 
Finder appears in the Dock on the Lion preview. You still need it for file manipulation, and you don't even need it now for launching applications as you can either put the Application folder in the dock or use Spotlight to launch any application. (I, for one, never use Finder for application launching!)
 
Not to go off topic, but what is the point of Launcher?

Isn't the Dock for having your most frequently used apps? If you want to caterogize apps, couldn't you just make a folder for said group & place it in the Dock? It would take less clicks to access your "Games" folder as opposed to clicking Launcher and then navigating to the "Games" homescreen.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I don't think Finder will go away. It will still be needed to browse the file directory for things that the Launchpad would not be used for, such as preference files. Finder allows us to drill down deep into the OS whereas from what I saw in the demo, Launchpad is just another way to quickly load apps or files that you would use frequently.
Click to expand...

Yes but it could be reduced to just a file browser application.

Each time you open a finder window it could be a completely separate application instance, normal App to App copyPaste would deal with moving file between windows.

So one isn't tied up by another a stall in one network service won't effect everything else. Similar to Fuse, each type of file system or network share would have a specially geared application. A special "SideBar" Application would look after launching new instances to suit media types. Because each is it's own app you can park them in the dock and they'll always remember how you wanted them to be.

That would be my take.
 
In a perfect world there is no need for Finder. But it will definitely not be gone from 10.7.

The Steve Jobs way of looking at things has always been to remove files and let Applications handle their documents and content themselves. If you wanna continue on your Book, you open Pages and select it there. If you wanna listen to music you go into iTunes and choose what you wanna listen to. iPhoto, etc... Just look at how iOS is built usage-wise.

This is how Steve Jobs wanted to do things since the beginning. I think we will get there eventually and I agree that it is a far more intuitive way of doing things than having to handle files manually. Handling files is something the computer should be doing for you, not the other way around.
 
hachre said:
In a perfect world there is no need for Finder. But it will definitely not be gone from 10.7.

The Steve Jobs way of looking at things has always been to remove files and let Applications handle their documents and content themselves. If you wanna continue on your Book, you open Pages and select it there. If you wanna listen to music you go into iTunes and choose what you wanna listen to. iPhoto, etc... Just look at how iOS is built usage-wise.

This is how Steve Jobs wanted to do things since the beginning. I think we will get there eventually and I agree that it is a far more intuitive way of doing things than having to handle files manually. Handling files is something the computer should be doing for you, not the other way around.
Click to expand...

I understand this, but what makes a computer feel like a computer is the fact that you have access to the file system. Sure, I'd be fine if by 10.8 they have file storing and handling like this, but I don't want Finder to go away.
I'd like it to be like Terminal: You only use it if you want/need to use it.
 
Corndog5595 said:
I understand this, but what makes a computer feel like a computer is the fact that you have access to the file system. Sure, I'd be fine if by 10.8 they have file storing and handling like this, but I don't want Finder to go away.
I'd like it to be like Terminal: You only use it if you want/need to use it.
Click to expand...

Yeah I also think that in such a capacity, similarly to Terminal, it won't go away soon. But it won't be an integral part of the desktop usage paradigm anymore at some point in the future.
 
hachre said:
In a perfect world there is no need for Finder. But it will definitely not be gone from 10.7.

The Steve Jobs way of looking at things has always been to remove files and let Applications handle their documents and content themselves.
Click to expand...

This is an application-centric way of looking at things, which works well for some uses, but if you are a project-based creator you have a collection of files that are operated on by potentially many programs (and some files by multiple programs) for which a file/folder-centric approach works best. Frankly, without a folder hierarchy for organization I'd be in trouble. I've got 99,000 files in my "Projects" folder now, and that doesn't include photos (in a separate folder hierarchy), video clips (another folder hierarchy managed by iMovie), and email.
 
I can't see Finder going away, for many reasons addressed here in this thread.

I understand the desire to have files managed by the programs themselves, but what about someone who is working on something on multiple environments.

Sometimes I do some image editing work on my MacBook Pro, sometimes I need to use those files on my iMac, sometimes I bring in stuff to work with me on the PC. Without access to the file system how do I copy off the files I need to work on to use on other systems? I've been working on some programming and those files I need to not only be able to move between machines, but sometimes I need to use on completely different IDE's, I need access to the file system to grab those too.

OS X also does not have a document management program built into it. If you want Pages or Word you have to buy that separately. So what about little text documents I need to create? Maintain those with Textedit? Where do I keep my directory of images I use for various desktop backgrounds?

I know these are some trivial examples/tasks, but they are reasons why someone like me in particular would still have a need for Finder. What I didn't like about Lion was the feeling like it was trying to start shoehorning iOS into OS X, but I just don't think that they would move towards a complete shift in converting OS X into iOS.
 
zap2 said:
I think the poster above who said it might be for power users has the general idea, or at least it will become less used by the average users even if he or she will need to get ther once in a while.

I think OS X will move towards the iOS way of doing things, with them being simpler, but it can only simplify things so much until OS X loses functionality(and Apple knows this and how much it would hurt sales, so they won't do it)
Click to expand...

I used to despise the mac os because I thought it was for "the worlds idiots". Then for a while I forced to use macs, and after using them, discovering xcode, terminal, etc, I realized that it isn't overly simplified, and can actually be used for more that email and music. This is the reason I'm still using Mac OS X today. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that there are many people just like me, that use macs for technical things. Apple doesn't want to make OS X like the wii (requires difficult and possibly illegal modification to even see the file system), because they will loose many customers to Windows. Bottom line, apple looses finder, they loose 30%+ of their sales.
 
lynkynpark86 said:
I used to despise the mac os because I thought it was for "the worlds idiots". Then for a while I forced to use macs, and after using them, discovering xcode, terminal, etc, I realized that it isn't overly simplified, and can actually be used for more that email and music. This is the reason I'm still using Mac OS X today. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that there are many people just like me, that use macs for technical things. Apple doesn't want to make OS X like the wii (requires difficult and possibly illegal modification to even see the file system), because they will loose many customers to Windows. Bottom line, apple looses finder, they loose 30%+ of their sales.
Click to expand...

This!

I can't imagine the Finder ever disappearing at all. Maybe it will be used less but it has to stay there. Its been there since the beginning of the Macintosh. If Apple removed the Finder it would be like Microsoft removing the Windows Explorer. A complete disaster!
 
I'm usually the one rolling my eyes at the people who are reluctant to let go of the old every time an OS update comes out, but this time I'm right there with them. LaunchPad seems really redundant to me. I mean, just look at the screenshot they have of it:
lion_springboard1_20101020.jpg

How many of the icons shown on LaunchPad there are sitting a few inches below in the dock? I guess the idea is to have all the apps available in LaunchPad, but isn't that just the Apps folder?? I've been putting my Apps folder in the doc since 10.2, maybe they just need to make that more official. But I guess this could all go along with them trying to push more of a market for more and more Apps.
Anyway, all this talk of killing the Finder sounds silly to me, it doesn't sound like progress at all. It only sounds like making things more constrained and inconvenient. I'd say less than half the files I use fall nicely into the simple categories like "Music", "Photos" and "Documents". I have folders dedicated to certain aspects of what I do, and those folders will contain a mix of all sorts of different things. For example, one project I work on has its dedicated folder. That folder contains word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, pictures, presentations, poster layouts, sound files, movies, data files in .txt format... I don't want to have to access all those different files by first opening their respective apps. I think that would be a step in the opposite direction from the CoverFlow/QuickView stuff they added recently where you can access things in a folder quickly WITHOUT needing to open the dedicated App. And often i have files that I need to open with multiple different apps depending on what I'm doing. I really think the Finder needs to stick around in order to handle this kind of stuff without being completely clumsy.
 
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