Subjective Morality

The Finder: It’s long been the bane of power-users. It’s been criticized for being slow, buggy, and ugly, but it’s still part of the “Macintosh Desktop Experience.” Here’s what’s wrong with it:

It’s Schizophrenic

The Finder can’t seem to decide what it wants to be: A spatial file manager, or a navigational one. That little capsule-like button on the upper-right of Finder windows switches it between the two modes, but it’s definitely not the best solution to the problem, and it ends up making both modes less usable. Spatial file management is basically what the OS 9 Finder did: each window is tied to a folder, and each folder opens in a new window. Windows retain their size and other appearance properties so that the user can create a “nest” wherein they memorize the window positions and attributes of their windows, and can instantly tell folders apart based on these attributes. The solution to this problem is simple: Apple just needs to have an option for spatial mode. Get rid of that damn capsule, and just give us a toggle in Finder’s preferences that’ll enable or disable spatial mode.

.DS_Store Files

.DS_Store files are a scourge. The Finder uses them to remember windows’ positions, sizes, and other things. They’re a scourge because the Finder creates one for every folder it visits. Apple needs to come up with a new way to store this information so that the Finder doesn’t have to create a new file in every single directory you visit.

View Preference is Global

In the Leopard and Snow Leopard Finders, when you switch to a different icon view, every folder you visit is also switched to that view. The previous behavior in Tiger – down was to save that view option for each folder, so that if you had one folder in Icon View and another folder in List View, those folders would always open with those view preferences. That is the way it should be.

No Cut Command by Default

Cut, the bastard child of Copy, is not turned on by default in the Finder’s context menu. You can’t even use the keyboard shortcut. Luckily, there is a preference hack you can use to get it there:

defaults write com.apple.finder AllowCutForItems 1

No Dropdown List for Back Button

If the Finder is going to take a more navigational approach and eschew its spatial roots, it should at least use basic browser conventions, like having a dropdown menu come down when you hold the Back button showing the history.

No Tabs

This is also an old one, and somewhat of a power-user’s complaint, but, hey, if the Finder wants to be more like a browser, why not implement tabs?

No Location Bar

Also another navigational feature missing from the Finder, a location bar located somewhere in the window would be nice. Typing in a path can sometimes be easier than double-clicking folder after folder. There is a keyboard shortcut (cmd-shift-G) that will allow you to go to a folder by typing in the path, but this isn’t as convenient.

No “Up” Button

I can’t tell you how much I wish the Finder had this. When you open a folder that is way out of range of your home folder, you aren’t allowed to go back, and then you have to click on the sidebar, which is cumbersome. There’s a keyboard shortcut for this too: cmd-up, but still, I’d prefer a button.

Better FTP

Networking has long been the weak point that many Finder-haters kick at with glee. It has gotten drastically better with Leopard and Snow Leopard, but FTP access is still read-only, which just makes no sense.

The Finder, for all its quirks and bugs, is still an “OK” file manager in my opinion. It’s not spectacular, and it’s not overkill. There are alternatives like PathFinder, but I think those are overkill. The Finder could be a lot better if the development team behind it would just get some vision and listen to the concerns of Mac users.