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Mac OS X Updates and Next Generation Finder Development
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Silencio said:
seriously no doubt. now that machines are getting fast enough to where it doesnt really matter...their going to finally do something about it? they should of dealt with that while we were still running G4s. well...im still on a G4 but im sure i made my point.
mdavey said:Smart folders.....in the OS would be very cool.
hahahahahahahaha
you lose your apple point for that one. back to the end of the line for you.Mr Lizard said:
you can already select photos in a folder and use the contextual menu to enter slide show mode. and at that pont you have the option to add to iphot
Here's another position having to do with the "notorious file browser":
https://jobs.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebO...wo/gWDbj73U4g0et1CpL58GOg/3.4.39.1.17.1.131.3
I wonder how many more there are.
https://jobs.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebO...wo/gWDbj73U4g0et1CpL58GOg/3.4.39.1.17.1.131.3
I wonder how many more there are.
BWhaler said:
ok, you lose your apple point too. sorry, but to say apple needs 10.5 to be as significant a change as OSX was to OS9 is just....silly...and proves apple shouldnt listen to yet another user.
sorry, i'll stop with the negative posts.
SiliconAddict said:Yes I've aware of the various environment variables. I script for them all the time with SMS installer when I repackage software. But your average user does not and frankly shouldn't. And you dang well better look into your temp dir from time to time to clean it up.
This is about a month's worth or crap on my work system. I should really delete and defrag this weekend.
defrag? whats that?
slb said:
That's odd, why would more than one person at a time quit or die?
beatle888 said:ok, you lose your apple point too. sorry, but to say apple needs 10.5 to be as significant a change as OSX was to OS9 is just....silly...and proves apple shouldnt listen to yet another user.
sorry, i'll stop with the negative posts.
Leopard needs to be Toy Story 2 to Tiger's Toy Story.
In fact, Leopard simply needs to be... worth the cost of upgrading.
Good stuff!!
Any improvement to the Finder would be great - especially with mounting / unmounting Appletalk network volumes. The beachball is a regular occurrence when an Appletalk server suddenly disconnects and you try to unmount it.
aussie_geek
Any improvement to the Finder would be great - especially with mounting / unmounting Appletalk network volumes. The beachball is a regular occurrence when an Appletalk server suddenly disconnects and you try to unmount it.
aussie_geek
Spotlight should work continuously
Wouldn' it be nice if Spotlight would search continuously? When I would select,for example, a word file it would show me related information; whom created the file, which persons I send it to, older and newer versions of the document, links to other files in the document and all these kind of things.
The same thing should be in mail too. When I receive a mail I would like to see more data too; Mails that were exchanged between us, projects we are working on and even some searches in google on the sender and the subject of the mail.
I'm sure more examples can be found where spotlight could help more when working continuosly.
It is one of my pet peeves you know. Why doesn't my computer know which information is available on it. I always have to specifically ask to show me something.
Wouldn' it be nice if Spotlight would search continuously? When I would select,for example, a word file it would show me related information; whom created the file, which persons I send it to, older and newer versions of the document, links to other files in the document and all these kind of things.
The same thing should be in mail too. When I receive a mail I would like to see more data too; Mails that were exchanged between us, projects we are working on and even some searches in google on the sender and the subject of the mail.
I'm sure more examples can be found where spotlight could help more when working continuosly.
It is one of my pet peeves you know. Why doesn't my computer know which information is available on it. I always have to specifically ask to show me something.
SiliconAddict said:Yes I've aware of the various environment variables. I script for them all the time with SMS installer when I repackage software. But your average user does not and frankly shouldn't. And you dang well better look into your temp dir from time to time to clean it up.
This is about a month's worth or crap on my work system. I should really delete and defrag this weekend.
Boy, does that look ugly or what?? Hahahaha...Windows eats crow...really...
By the way, does anyone know why, with my Microsoft (gasp) Intellimouse, I keep clicking on Finder buttons (like minimize etc.) and it doesn't acknowledge such commands? I mean, I have to click ELSEWHERE and THEN back to the point which I wanted to click...does anyone have that?
gweedo said:Boy, this would be a dream job for me... <sigh>
Anyway, I would hope they would get some of the nice clean features that were there back in the NeXT days.
I miss the shelf badly. It was SO useful & intuitive...
I miss having one inspector. It is really annoying to have to bring up the inspector multiple times on files. This should at least be an option. One inspector by default with some key combination or something to bring up more than one. When I'm clicking around on files, it is annoying to have to keep bringing up another inspector. Perhaps I've overlooked some option in OSX?
And where I appreciate the concern for screen space, I sure preferred the NeXT style menus. Especially the ability to drag one off and keep it persistent on the screen.
And yes... I liked the scroll bars on the left too.
For the shelf and left scrollbars: I agree with you, I miss them too. Mainly the Shelf.
As for the NeXT menu: there are pros and cons, and from apple's point of view it would create large confusion among users to have menu layout changed. For me, it would be ideal to have a combination of the two: detachable menu. Click on menubar and drag it anywhere you like - change it to horizontal NeXT menu. Or ... have at least detachable submenus, this can be quite useful for applications that either do not have keyboard shortcuts for some items or ave complicated shortcuts or you want some commands to be quickly accessible by mouse rather than keyboard.
For the single inspector: I am not on my Mac at the moment, but try Cmd+Alt+I, that will bring you one inspector panel that will change by selection.
DCBass said:
This annoys me too - I only have a 1024x768 screen and would love to see iTunes maximise. It's annoying to resize manually.
Otherwise I think the green button does a great job. Took a bit of getting used to after switching but I much prefer it now.
sunfast said:
I agree with all of this, the "green button" behaviour is great, but it feels like it should cycle through more options, and as a result, I'm not sure "+" is the right character to be on it: if in iTunes + cycled through: mini, optimized, max
That would seem to make sense (except the three click thing, which is less attraactive but I'm sure apple could figure a way to make that feel more usable).
However in general I don't "get" the problems with finder at all. As a long standing windows user, and an Amiga user before Win95, I have no issues with finder. In general over the last year as my Mac experience has developed I've found that in general I've found better ways of doing everything, and my problems have been more centred around all the MS "training" I've had over the last 10 years.
All of that said, quicker, leaner, more previews, etc are all good things to do, I just get the whole FTFF thing. Maybe I'm just too noob to have gotten annoyed yet?
I downloaded pathfinder last night in response to many of the posts in here. I'm not sure I can see where the enthusiasm comes from. To my mind it packs a hell of a punch, but at the cost of a lot of simplicity. Much of this may be "configurable", so I headed off to the preferences, and found that they were extreemly obtuse, and it was hard to understand the impact of many of the settings.
It does some neat things, the drop stack is nice, but hideously implmenented (functionality is fine, but it just doesn't seem to "do it" right, right click complexity). The whole iTunes breadcrumbs thing is nice, would be a nice addition to finder, but that's it. It's info dialog is smaller, not simpler.
Anyhow, not wishing to start a pathfinder flame war, but it just felt like there were some great ideas in there, that were lost in a "torrent" of other features. DropStack seems like a great little feature which properly engineered would be an amazing product all on its own.
So, am I missing something here, what for those pathfinder fans, are the killer features? Do you keep most stuff turned on, or have you narrowed it down to a smaller site of critical features. For example, the terminal drawer is _really_ nice idea, but doees it end up being used, if so how?
Educate me.
It does some neat things, the drop stack is nice, but hideously implmenented (functionality is fine, but it just doesn't seem to "do it" right, right click complexity). The whole iTunes breadcrumbs thing is nice, would be a nice addition to finder, but that's it. It's info dialog is smaller, not simpler.
Anyhow, not wishing to start a pathfinder flame war, but it just felt like there were some great ideas in there, that were lost in a "torrent" of other features. DropStack seems like a great little feature which properly engineered would be an amazing product all on its own.
So, am I missing something here, what for those pathfinder fans, are the killer features? Do you keep most stuff turned on, or have you narrowed it down to a smaller site of critical features. For example, the terminal drawer is _really_ nice idea, but doees it end up being used, if so how?
Educate me.
this is welcome news. serious work should be done to find a method of navigation which does away with the clutter of todays finder and provides something beautiful, elegant and simple. jeff raskin's zui is such an inspired concept. (though young)
I feel that the concept of the finder has been tuned to its peak performance. much of the extra drawers and tool bars seem to be 3rd party-ish stuff that wastes apples time, mucking around. same thing with the themes. make the system theme-able and get over your brand!
plug in architectures were mentioned. thats a very good idea. the farther OPEN apple can make the finder without opening it up to bugs and incompatibilities the better.
Apples plan seems to be "we have no developers so we need to develop everything ourselves" I think making the platform more attractive to consumers has more to do with the finder and less to do with introductory cute apps.
I feel that the concept of the finder has been tuned to its peak performance. much of the extra drawers and tool bars seem to be 3rd party-ish stuff that wastes apples time, mucking around. same thing with the themes. make the system theme-able and get over your brand!
plug in architectures were mentioned. thats a very good idea. the farther OPEN apple can make the finder without opening it up to bugs and incompatibilities the better.
Apples plan seems to be "we have no developers so we need to develop everything ourselves" I think making the platform more attractive to consumers has more to do with the finder and less to do with introductory cute apps.
rayz said:
Sorry that I am turning this into "train bug the ex Windows user how to use his mac" but what exactly does "Disk Cleanup" do? Yes I've read the help pages, but they pretty much say "It cleans up your disk" which even I had guessed.
Again, forgive the windows user, but what about de-frag... I'll tell you why I ask. I downloaded pathfinder last night, and saw that disk-space bar, eeek! My mini hard-drive is only 2Gb off full. Wow, I thought, windows would have died in thrash hell by now. So I move my iTunes onto my external drive (which is always plugged in) and getting my 17Gb back (Apple have had their monies worth out of me I tell you).
What stunned me is performance picked up immediately, it also booted more quickly this morning, much more quickly. Does the Mac really deliver a "you don't need to run a defrag tool" file system? If so, is there anything I can do to help it maintain that position?
What amazes me is that 12 months in (almost) I am still finding features and capabilities in the Mac Mini that was let's face it, almost free, that astound me.
puuukeey said:
What's the clutter? For me the tool bar is simpler than Windows Explorer, I love the side bar thang (much nicer way to display favourites). Navigation bread-crumbs ala pathfinder would be nice... but hey these are tweaks. What's clogging it up for you?
hellasketchy said:
And Apple-Shift-Cursor Up
bugfaceuk said:
I feel that apple has been working on an essential problem. performing basic file/folder operations quickly without a million window, navigating the hierarchy.
now shortcuts through the hierarchy are everywhere. there's a customizeable drawer and a customizeable tool bar in every window. as well as a customizeable dock not to mention the desktop. all elements essentially do the same thing.
also theres the issue of being in too many places in heirarchy at once. this results in too many windows. this has been fixed with Exposé.
however I think, to the geniuses of computer/design (not I), these are mear bandaids.
bottom line: tweaking the finder is good. but advances in how we really use our computers have been dormant and needed and apple is the company to do it.
EDIT: Or maybe we need a second coming of a new young steve jobs on a second acid trip
I think your final point makes a lot of sense, I feel like we are ready for a new paradigm, just not sure what it is. But in the context of the current paradigm, I like the options apple gives me, and I like having them in a number of different places.
You're right though, Apple are the team to deliver the shift, although Sun is starting to think very creatively also.
EDIT: Ok not your final point, but the one just before it ;-)
You're right though, Apple are the team to deliver the shift, although Sun is starting to think very creatively also.
EDIT: Ok not your final point, but the one just before it ;-)
Militar said:
You, Militar, are a god among mortals. 5 years, and I never thought to try Command+Option+I .
SiliconAddict said:Yes I've aware of the various environment variables. I script for them all the time with SMS installer when I repackage software. But your average user does not and frankly shouldn't. And you dang well better look into your temp dir from time to time to clean it up.
This is about a month's worth or crap on my work system. I should really delete and defrag this weekend.
That sure looks better than OS X.
[/sarcasm]
the.snitch said:
while in print utility, select the printer you want, and from the 'printers menu' select 'create desktop printer...''
my camera (Minolta) shows up on the desktop, as do all other camera's I've seen, except for Canon (based) ones, for some reason.
I don't use the cable anymore though, bought a USB-2 card reader, so much faster
I use windows daily, and i HATE the maximize button. I like to do a lot of things at once. This makes screen real-estate worth a lot to me. The best way to be able to switch tasks is to have each thing you're doing take up absolutely no more space than it needs to. For Safari, I can use the zoom button to make my browser the same width as the page, so I don't have 400 pixels on the right of the page of just background color on my browser.Nudist said:One area which Apple has neglected from Day 1 and which M$ got right from Day 1. Minimize, Maximize windows that works intelligently to optimize use of screen real estate. There was a utility pre Mac OSX (there were several utilities if I remember correctly) one of which did just this.
For some apps, the amount of space it needs to take up is the whole screen, and you know what, for the most part, The zoom button DOES this. If I open iPhoto, I want it to take up the whole screen, because it really needs to. I hit the zoom button, and it takes up the whole screen.
There are some problems with it. In iTunes, it toggles between the window size you set and the miniature player. I often use iTunes as at parties in which case I want it to take up the whole screen, and I'm sure there are other applications like iPhoto that I want to take up the whole screen but the zoom button won't, though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.
I'd like the zoom button to stay how it is. However, I think a maximize menu option with corresponding key command would be the perfect compliment to this. If a program doesn't zoom the window how you want it, its a quick backup.
edit- changed '400 pixels' to '400 pixels on the right of the page of just...'
Chobit said:
One of the biggest features to actually transition me from Windows to OS-X as my "first choice" platform, is the ability to work with many windows open. It's not a speed thing, it's just how easy it is. Expose is genius through simplicity.