Chilstrom's Profile

The Finder, like some other OS X apps such as Mail, Transmit, Safari and FireFox, creates new windows the same size as the last sized window. I consider this a feature when a program respects my window sizing preference. There is a logic to how spring loaded folders work in List and Cover Flow views, as it is clearer to the user that you can escape the drop by moving outside the target folder window. This is equally true in icon view (by dragging the item outside the window), but it’s less obvious. Interesting idea about Cover Flow being a mode of the other views, though the current implementation seems a simpler solution. The path bar is more then just a path view and navigation aid. You can also drop an object on any folder in the path to move or copy it there. Tiger nicely groups items by type, but you can do the same in a Finder window by clicking the + button and choosing the file type you want to focus on. Arguably, the unique Spotlight window in Tiger is harder to grasp, as you lose the familiarity of the Finder interface that you gain in Leopard. Tiger is weird in that there are three Spotlight interfaces. At least Leopard cuts it down to just two. Unlike “Copy”, “Cut” is a destructive operation that is extremely prone to causing data loss. I suspect that Apple has rejected implementing cut for that reason. I’ll have to experiment with my XP machine to see what happens to a cut file when I perform another edit action which overwrites the previous action. Multiple undo?

I'm a big fan of Panther too, though I disagree with many points in this article. My biggest objection with the Finder isn't stability, but rather that it's not all that proficient at finding things, hence your advocacy of QuickSilver as a superior file finder. Between Smart Folders and Spotlight enhanced search in the Finder, we finally have a Finder with an elegant search capability. I wouldn't equate Spotlight with Quicksilver at all. There are several major innovations in Tiger around search. Full content and metadata indexing on the fly is big. Tiger does much more with metadata than Panther. When someone sends you an attachment (in Mail at least), metadata is attached to the file, including the sender's name. We have a whole new metadata type for the time a file was last viewed or opened. And Spotlight opens future possibilities of a GPS equipped laptop that would note exactly where you were when you read or created a file. Spotlight is like nothing else currently on any other platform. It's not just a little search icon in the upper right corner, it's the underpinnings of making the whole mac experience more user friendly. Heck, even Keychain Access in Tiger has a search field added to it. And, any developer can add Spotlight functionality to their email client, news reader or whatever. Including RSS in Safari is totally logical. The whole point of an RSS reader is to lead you to articles you want to read in a browser. To be at all adequate, this means including the browser in the reader or visa versa. I believe that Safari RSS will turn a whole new generation of users onto RSS, and it looks to be beautifully integrated in the browser. Dedicated news readers provide their own advantages, which will secure their place in the market. Mail is almost certainly the most dramatically improved application in Tiger. The entire (and anemic) search engine in Mail has been yanked out and replaced by Spotlight. Search in Mail (via Smart Folders) now offers all the search criteria in Mail rules. There are lots of nips and tucks in good places, and as for Panther Mail crashing a lot, maybe for you, but it's very very stable for me. Maybe it's all those Konfabulator widgets you're running :-) I've been a regular user of Mail because it was "enough" for my needs, but with Tiger, I can be unapologetic about my choice of email software. I'm not as ga ga about Dashboard as some (nor interested in the Konfabulator/Dashboard debate) but I would note that the underlying technology is quite different despite the superficial similarity. Dashboard widgets are significantly less resource intensive than their Konfabulator cousins. You failed to mention Automator, which is pretty geeky, but geeky cool. Automator isn't just Applescript for the masses, it's the Unix command line for the masses. What makes the command line so powerful is that you can take a file, have a little Unix application do some work on that, pipeline the result off to another application and so on. The pipe in the Automator icon's claws is a tribute to its command line heritage. I predict that we'll see a flurry of great (and free) Automator actions that could change the way we use our Macs.

The point of Spotlight is not to eliminate the usefulness of search in individual applications but to supplement it with a global search capacity that incorporates data from disparate sources. As you know in your web work, a project can easily have parts generated in many applications, and some times you just need to bring up everything; files, correspondence, invoices, etc. to find the pieces across different applications for resolving an issue about a particular project. While expert users, such as yourself, may be able to keep track of whether the desired information is in an email, a Word file, or a Quark document, believe me the average user often needs all the help they can get to track things down. Microsoft and Apple are both investing considerable energy in this area because it is a major usability issue on every platform. The key for application developers is to expose as much "free" metadata to Spotlight as possible so that "fuzzy" searches may be made such as finding all Photoshop files with five or more Adjustment layers, or Illustrator documents with objects colored in Pantone 239 or iMovie projects that utilize a checkerboard transition. While these may seem like weird queries, any metadata about a file is potentially valuable, especially for graphic files where text may be absent or minimal. My dream file system is what I call the "big bucket" where everything gets dumped. No folders, no file hierarchy, no endless hours of organization, and a powerful search tool that can find anything everywhere. The Mac originally borrowed the metaphor of files and folders because of its real world familiarity, but the metaphor breaks down badly when information is stored across applications in multiple and unrelated locations. Spotlight transcends the limitations of the Finder and utilizes a simple search approach familiar to most folks who have used a computer. It's a very, very good thing.