Recent arstechnica article about the Finder surely brought up a lot of reaction in the Mac blog world (Daring Fireball, Michael's Mostly Mac, MacSlash are just a few reactions), so I decided to drop my stone into an already ripply pond.
Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with fellow bloggers and Meister Siracusa, I wanted to take a look at the imaginary all-redesigned Finder in Mac OS X Panther, that will be previewed this summer. I am not affiliated with Apple in any way, and I haven't seen the new Finder, so we are just discussing the imaginary Finder, okay?
First of all, our all-new Finder will be brushed metal. Some people dislike the metal look, and I was one of them, but recently I noticed it's not as annoying as I found it to be before. Apple has made a significant effort to make all applications that are part of the core OS functionality (iLife, QuickTime, iChat, iCal, etc) to be metal, so the next logical step is to make the Finder metal. I will take it even further, probably in Panther Apple will restrict the metal appearance for non-Apple applications for the above mentioned reasons.
Second, the new Finder will gain more similarities to the NeXT interface. We'll get our NeXT-style shelf on top of the screen where you could temporary hang files into, or possibly also store some sort of favorite locations on disk. (John explains pretty well what shelf is in his About the Finder article). The mentioned shelf will hang somewhere under the menubar in a look resembling Finder tabs, and will spot a familiar Dock-like interface with zooms and white letter tags.
Third, the new Finder will make an extensive use of metadata (let me dream here a bit, okay? ;). It will feature an iTunes-like interface for browsing and grouping your files, and it will not depend only on hierarchical location of your files. You will be able to group and browse your files based on a set of common criterias pre-defined for you, and based on the criterias you set yourself. Moreover, Apple will try to move us away from the disk-file-folder metaphor in favor of these new, omnipresent metadata sorting live queries. The new Finder will also have an option for you to automatically organize your files based on their categories, much like iTunes do with your Music library.
And yes, new Finder will be Cocoa (this means it will be even slower than the current Finder). Oh well, we can always make faster processors (new PPC anyone?). And no, I don't hate Cocoa. I just know it's not the best out there when it comes to a speed GUIs. But the GUIs made with Cocoa are less buggy. Heh. Stability vs Speed, a fair tradeoff, right?
Don't be surprised if my expectations of Panther's Finder are way off when it comes out. But also don't be surprised if they are not. After all, it's all about logic, sense, and a fair doze of insanity, something Apple always been known for.
Posted by slava at 03:25 AM
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First post w00t!
Actually, I am very anxious to see what they got cooking in the Cupertino Kitchen. I am so anxious! I WANT TO SEE!!!! I was so disappointed when they moved WWDC back. I KNEW they would show it off there, but didn't realize they'd move it!
*sigh* I can't wait three whole months.
I bet it'll be kick ass. Can't wait for leaked screenshots to start pouring out.
Posted by: Jason Anderson on April 3, 2003 5:03 AMMy secret spy cams inside of Steve Jobs's office has revelled that Apple is bringing back HyperCard and using that to write the next Finder. :P
Posted by: Terri on April 3, 2003 8:35 AM"Third, the new Finder will make an extensive use of metadata (let me dream here a bit, okay? ;)"
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to switch to BeFS ;)
Posted by: Feanor on April 3, 2003 6:08 PMAll I want for Christmas is a Finder that behaves the same way my office desk does.
- a folder can't be open and shut at the same time
- a folder can't be in two places at once
- the size and shape of folders is related to the size and shape of their contents
No matter how messy my desk gets, I can always find the stuff I'm working on through a sophisticated system of knowing what pile of stuff has what work in it.
Now, how hard could that be?
Posted by: dug on April 9, 2003 6:13 PMWell, the new Finder is here now.
If someone who knows can let me in on whether the new layout is optional or mandatory, I'd really appreciate it. If it's mandatory, and you can't keep the original behaviour (or run both Finders), I won't bother on any more upgrades for my Mac, and I'll go back to watching for a better Gnome or KDE release under FreeBSD.
Posted by: Peter da Silva on June 24, 2003 4:12 PMKeep comments on topic. If a comment is unrelated to this post, it may be removed or moderated.