spring loaded folders

[G-Dog]

I know that many of u are sure that they are coming in an update soon. Well I have found proof of that. somebody may have already found this but, In the apple script dictionary for the finder. go to it's "type definitions and look at the "preferences", it is currently "unavailable" but within it's properties you can see that it has one's for:

spring open folders boolean -- Spring open folders after the specified delay?
delay before springing small integer -- the delay before springing open a container in ticks (1/60th of a second) (12 is shortest delay, 60 is longest delay)

[G-Dog]

oh...I forgot...list anymore that you guys can find here. It may give us a peek at what is up next for OSX.

old news

People argued about the validity of that a long time ago and whether or not it was a "leftover" from the old Finder. That's been in the dictionary perhaps since 10.0... I can't quite remember. Same goes for labels.

[G-Dog]

oh well...I gave it a shot.

[G-Dog]

oh well...I gave it a shot.

[Junkyard Dawg]

Thanks for pointing that out, G-Dong. It dovetails with screenshots posted all over the web of 10.2, did you see them? They were shots of a preference pane with adjustments for spring-loaded folders. Looks like we'll be getting them soon enough! These are the one thing I really missed from OS 9, thanks Apple!

I wouldn't be surprised if labels were implemented as well. Many of these features were written into the OS X finder, but Apple has been turning them on one at a time. It seems that the current development strategy is to add only a few features at a time, then debug/optimize, add a few more features, debug/optimize, and continue the cycle ad infinitum.

Actually I like this method much better than what Apple did previously. It seemed more like, add a buttload of features (OS 9), debug (9.0.1), debug (9.0.2), debug (9.0.3), debug (9.0.4), and finally OS 9 was a usable, stable OS. Then 9.1 was further optimization.

Apparently this is the NeXT model for OS development, with lots of small updates rather than large bulky ones that introduce a slew of new bugs.

This wouldn't be possible without the emergence and widespread adoption of the internet. With Software Update, Apple now has a reliable means of releasing an unfinished product, and then building it in small steps without the potential to introduce too many bugs, and then disseminating the small builds over the internet. Very Borg-like.

This development strategy also has the advantage of keeping OS X highly stable. Lack of features doesn't get much press attention, all it suggests is that the OS needs time to mature, but stability, or lack thereof, will quickly become part of OS X's reputation. In hindsight, it was clearly better that Apple released OS X without a DVD player, and endured a few months of complaints, finally releasing an impeccable DVD player that is flawless on all but a few of the older hardware-assist playing Macs.

I guess what I'm saying is, Apple could just turn on all the features in OS X, dump them all into a single update, and then sort out the nest of bugs afterwards. But I like the way they have chosen better; incrementally turn on the features, while debugging and optimizing between each round.

A few years from now, it will all make sense, as we Mac users pride ourselves in using the most stable consumer OS known to mankind.