Questions from a possible switcher.

[AngelGuy7]

I'm currently considering making the switch from XP to OSX but I have a few questions:

1) In Windows Explorer, if you navigate to a particular folder it's possible to copy the entire path of the folder because it is displayed in the "Address Bar". I know with Finder you can see where you're at but how in the world can you copy that location to the clipboard? I know that if you "Get Info" of a file in a folder it shows you the entire path, but it's not selectable. It's often easier for me to just copy the file path as opposed to typing it all out. Is this possible within Finder?

2) I know that by default Finder only shows thumbnails of images where they're created by an application (like Photoshop), but it's also possible to have Finder create them on the fly by selecting an option. However, I noticed that it doesn't always create a thumbnail for every image. I applied this option and set it to occur on every window, but sometimes when I would navigate to another folder full of jpegs I wouldn't see thumbnails. Why?

I know these questions might seem minor to some people, but from a long-term Windows user it would baffle me if OS X didn't have this simple functionality built into Finder.

3) I'm a heavy multitasker when I'm getting work done in Windows. At any given point I have Outlook, FeedDemon, uTorrent, Firefox (with 5-10 tabs open), AIM, Yahoo Widgets, Object Dock, Photoshop (usually PS7 because it gets the job done with less resources than CS2), Dreamweaver, Notepad, Calculator, WinAmp or iTunes and Windows Media Player (maybe not all doing something at the same time, but minimized for quick access), and a few Explorer windows ALL running. Oh, and ofcourse Norton and Apache are running in the background. And this is all on a 1.8Ghz, 768MB Windows XP box. I asked a good friend of mine who owns an older G4 Powerbook if multitasking like this on OSX is possible and he said that it would kill his machine if he did all those things. I've also read that OSX doesn't do that great of a job managing memory, so would multitasking like this make things horribly slow? Would it be possible to do this on a new Macbook Pro?


Honest answers are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Sesshi]

3) 2 gigs - absolutely. Even then, expect the occasional beachball. 3Gb maybe (in this case your only recourse is the MBP, no Macbook). OS X's VM management is severely lacking when compared to Windows. With Vista, the gap yawns wider.

1) & 2) I'm sure someone else can answer. It's never occured to me even to refer to these things under OS X.

 

[26139]

1. Not sure what you're trying to ask here and, like the previous poster, it never occured to me to try this in OS X.

2. This has boggled me for ages. Good luck.

3. First of all, how old was this guy's powerbook? And are you seriously telling us that you have 10-15 applications open and running with ZERO slow down? I mean, I have about the same amount open nearly 24/7 on my 12" PB (1.5ghz, 1.25 ram) and I rarely, if ever, see a beachball.

 

[AngelGuy7]

1. Not sure what you're trying to ask here and, like the previous poster, it never occured to me to try this in OS X.

Ok, here's a basic example. Let's say you're helping someone out here on the forums and you're writing a reply to their post. In this post you want to reference a file that they need to do something to but you're not sure exactly where it is... so you go searching for it manually in Finder or you use Spotlight and lets say that this file exist in:

/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Fonts

You bring that folder up and you want to copy the path "/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Fonts" into your post because it would be easier than typing it all out (and there's less room for error). How can you? Windows Explorer has an 'Address Bar' that shows you the full path of where you're at and it's text is selectable so you can copy it to the clipboard. This functionality seems very simple and basic but Finder doesn't appear to have this... does it? Or atleast is there even a hotkey or shortcut to copy the file path to clipboard?

3. First of all, how old was this guy's powerbook? And are you seriously telling us that you have 10-15 applications open and running with ZERO slow down? I mean, I have about the same amount open nearly 24/7 on my 12" PB (1.5ghz, 1.25 ram) and I rarely, if ever, see a beachball.

No, I might experience the occassional slowdown but nothing that would effect my workflow.

 

[26139]

Okay

I see your point with the selectable folder path bit. It might not affect more than a small minority of people, but it would be cool to do that. I'm sure Apple has its reasons, but God knows what they are.

 

[mkrishnan]

You bring that folder up and you want to copy the path "/Macintosh HD/System/Library/Fonts" into your post because it would be easier than typing it all out (and there's less room for error). How can you? Windows Explorer has an 'Address Bar' that shows you the full path of where you're at and it's text is selectable so you can copy it to the clipboard. This functionality seems very simple and basic but Finder doesn't appear to have this... does it? Or atleast is there even a hotkey or shortcut to copy the file path to clipboard?

I'm not at a Mac right now, but I am fairly sure that if you click on the icon in the top middle of the Finder window (the one next to the name of the folder), wait for a second so it becomes draggable, and then drag it to any text box or window in which text can be input, and drop it there, it will insert the text name of the path at the carat. At least I am certain it does this with Terminal windows...AFAIK it should do it in any other text box as well, but I can't test at the mo'.

 

[wordmunger]

I'm not at a Mac right now, but I am fairly sure that if you click on the icon in the top middle of the Finder window (the one next to the name of the folder), wait for a second so it becomes draggable, and then drag it to any text box or window in which text can be input, and drop it there, it will insert the text name of the path at the carat. At least I am certain it does this with Terminal windows...AFAIK it should do it in any other text box as well, but I can't test at the mo'.

Yep, that works! Very cool!

 

[mkrishnan]

Yep, that works! Very cool!

Mostly if you're using Expose via hot corners, there are a couple related cool things you can do: If you drop it into an open file locating dialog, it will move the dialog to that location. You can also take a file located anywhere in the filesystem and drag it into the open dialog, and the carat of the dialog should move to that location and that file. And you can also do the same thing for the most part dragging songs or videos from iTunes or photos from iPhoto etc to those locations. I use this all the time....

 

[AngelGuy7]

I see your point with the selectable folder path bit. It might not affect more than a small minority of people, but it would be cool to do that. I'm sure Apple has its reasons, but God knows what they are.

Yeah, it can be quite useful... maybe more useful than most Mac users realize. I'm a bit baffled how Windows and almost all Linux distro's have this, but yet Finder doesn't simply provide it. I've been hearing of a "Finder replacement" called Path Finder... I wonder if it allows you to do it.

I'm not at a Mac right now, but I am fairly sure that if you click on the icon in the top middle of the Finder window (the one next to the name of the folder), wait for a second so it becomes draggable, and then drag it to any text box or window in which text can be input, and drop it there, it will insert the text name of the path at the carat. At least I am certain it does this with Terminal windows...AFAIK it should do it in any other text box as well, but I can't test at the mo'.

Thanks. It's not really all that obvious but it's better than nothing.

 

[mkrishnan]

Thanks. It's not really all that obvious but it's better than nothing.

I think it's not if you expect a Mac to operate like Windows, but once you expect a Mac to operate like a Mac, it becomes somewhat more obvious... It's not so much that it's less intuitive as it is that it's not the same... give it a try. Or certainly try out Finder replacements if that moves you.

 

[Nym]

Just for the record, I've always learned that Mac's gave better use to memory than Pc's, in fact, I spent the whole year working in a eMac (1ghz PPC, 256 mb RAM, 32 MB GPU) with the whole Adobe CS2, Quark Xpress 6.0, Freehand MX and the system never crashed or beachballed me to death, if there was an occasional slowdown it was absolutely normal because sometimes I had Photoshop opened with large TIFF print quality images and Freehand MX for paging (30 pages opened), of course, to all this add iTunes playing music and Firefox constantly opened. And notice, 256 MB RAM!

In my new iMac 24" I only get slowdowns from non-universal apps, and I consider it normal, I have 1 GB RAM but still yesterday I had 5 messenger Windows opened, iTunes 7, Flash 8 Professional, Freehand MX, Lynotype FontXplorer, Firefox 2.0, Speed Download and a bunch of Finder windows opened and still exposé worked flawlessly as ever, very fast, no OS slowdown whatsoever :O

 

[AngelGuy7]

Just for the record, I've always learned that Mac's gave better use to memory than Pc's, in fact, I spent the whole year working in a eMac (1ghz PPC, 256 mb RAM, 32 MB GPU) with the whole Adobe CS2, Quark Xpress 6.0, Freehand MX and the system never crashed or beachballed me to death, if there was an occasional slowdown it was absolutely normal because sometimes I had Photoshop opened with large TIFF print quality images and Freehand MX for paging (30 pages opened), of course, to all this add iTunes playing music and Firefox constantly opened. And notice, 256 MB RAM!

In my new iMac 24" I only get slowdowns from non-universal apps, and I consider it normal, I have 1 GB RAM but still yesterday I had 5 messenger Windows opened, iTunes 7, Flash 8 Professional, Freehand MX, Lynotype FontXplorer, Firefox 2.0, Speed Download and a bunch of Finder windows opened and still exposé worked flawlessly as ever, very fast, no OS slowdown whatsoever :O

Wow, all this on a PPC system with only 256MB of RAM? I've read that OSX isn't really fully optimized for Intel chips so Memory Management on Intel Macs isn't that great... but if your 24" iMac can handle things so well then I'm not sure if thats true. I might have to go to the Apple Store and fire up tons of apps to see how it responds.

 

[yellow]

3) 2 gigs - absolutely. Even then, expect the occasional beachball. 3Gb maybe (in this case your only recourse is the MBP, no Macbook).

It should be noted, a beachball is NOT solely an indicator that there's 'not enough RAM'. A beachball happens when the underlying task that is being requested by the WindowServer isn't responding. This can happen for a number of reasons. Amongst them are networking issues, poorly written applications (like the Finder), swap, etc. One should NEVER simply throw RAM at the issue and expect there to never be a beachball.

OS X's VM management is severely lacking when compared to Windows. With Vista, the gap yawns wider.

I'm rather curious what concrete evidence you're basing this upon?

 

[trainguy77]

3) Personally I think mac os X is much better at multitasking then XP. Now if you don't have atleast a 1gb of ram or more it will not run so well. But OS X has great memory management. I don't know where some of these other people are getting there information but OS X is much better at these things then XP. For example when you run folding at home, which is a CPU intensive program, on mac os x there is no slow down when it is running, however you will notice slow down on a windows XP machine. As XP is not as good at multitasking. Just make sure you have enough ram and a fastest enough CPU for what your doing. What type of system are you planning on buying?

 

[Nym]

Wow, all this on a PPC system with only 256MB of RAM? I've read that OSX isn't really fully optimized for Intel chips so Memory Management on Intel Macs isn't that great... but if your 24" iMac can handle things so well then I'm not sure if thats true. I might have to go to the Apple Store and fire up tons of apps to see how it responds.

Yep, and notice that Freehand MX and Flash 8 are not Universal Binaries :O
And the eMac with 256MB of RAM, I never had a system crash or slowdown, good maitenance makes a good computer, of course the hardware helps but those were the first Mac's with OSX that I've worked and that experience was what conviced me to buy the iMac that I currently own.
Although, IMO, the Intel OSX build is not as stable as the PPC one.