I think Spotlight is fine - but the problem is, when you do a search for something in the finder - it's starts looking right away, and the problem is because it starts searching right away, you can't finish typing in the word. That problem doesn't exist in Spotlight though.
Well, we should not ignore the fact that Apple borrowed some features from Longhorn. Thurrot is right that Spotlight was first discussed roughly a year after MS unveiled its plans to implement WinFS (ironically now pulled from Vista). Similarily, I saw the merged window title-bar that Apple uses in Mail and iTunes first when MS showed the Longhorn UI studies.
Apple is by far more innovative than MS, but once in a while, they have photocopiers too.
Please...Apple hired Dominic Giampaolo (father of BeFS) before MS even mentioned anything about WinFS. Just because Apple doesn't announce things before it's competition, it doesn't mean it hasn't been in the works for a long time.
MS can afford to talk about things before they're even at the conception stage because even if the competition happened to not have thought about it and copy it before MS can ship their implementation, MS will still win through marketshare and mindshare.
But don't claim MS has thought about this before Apple and that Apple copied MS...it's simply untrue. If Apple had announced it when they hired Dom and if MS hadn't been thinking about WinFS, they'd for sure have started thinking about it. It just so happened that they did think about it without Apple's influence (which is commendable considering this is MS.)
I think Spotlight is fine - but the problem is, when you do a search for something in the finder - it's starts looking right away, and the problem is because it starts searching right away, you can't finish typing in the word. That problem doesn't exist in Spotlight though.
Well, depends on the speed of your comp.
And can I please say, "Spotlight shouldn't be integrated in the Finder?" another time?
And can I please say, "Spotlight shouldn't be integrated in the Finder?" another time?
eh? If I'm understanding you correctly you don't want Spotlight in the Finder? I think there should be an option to turn it off and use normal search for older computers - but it should be built in for those with G5s etc.
I want to see Spotlight and Smart Folders better integrated. I can search for content in Mail messages in Spotlight but I can't create a desktop smart folder based around the same search. That's a bit silly if you ask me.
I want to see Spotlight and Smart Folders better integrated. I can search for content in Mail messages in Spotlight but I can't create a desktop smart folder based around the same search. That's a bit silly if you ask me.
If it's to do with mail messages Mail will have to be open and checking your mail for the smart folder to be updated. Why not just have a smart folder in Mail?
eh? If I'm understanding you correctly you don't want Spotlight in the Finder? I think there should be an option to turn it off and use normal search for older computers - but it should be built in for those with G5s etc.
The comment about find-as-you-type being a bad thing is ridiculous, sure. I presume Thurrott never read Jef Raskin.
Even if it was too slow today, we get more CPU power all the time and code can be made faster too (well, the latter only seems to happen in OS X not Windows...) so the problem will fix itself. If it's fast enough, then find-as-you-type is a clearly superior way. I'd be very surprised if Microsoft did not change their search to work the same way before Vista launch.
It's also a little.. surprising.. how much he makes of that there are no ready-made smart folders. If there are ready-made ones, will that really make people figure out what they are, and make their own? The other way they could be useful was if people were using the ready-made ones as is, but there is little chance of any such folder suiting specific needs of a person. If you don't use them, then they are bad. Hick's Law.. anything you see will slow you down regardless of if you use it or not. Even to delete the ready-made folders, you would first have to learn what they are to realize no content is lost. Therefore, while most people won't use them, most people will also never remove them.
In other regards I thought that was a pretty good review - of Vista Beta 1. It's not quite fair to name it "Tiger vs Vista", because I don't think he is performing a comparison as much as he is doing a review of some of the cooler things in Vista with the occasional comparison to Tiger.
Check out Thurrott's actual Vista review. Even if the new Explorer looks confusing as hell, the new address bar looks useful. I wonder when we could get one of those in Finder? Preferably as a textbox that let you do what you can do in Vista, but also type in it if you want.
Check out Thurrott's actual Vista review. Even if the new Explorer looks confusing as hell, the new address bar looks useful. I wonder when we could get one of those in Finder? Preferably as a textbox that let you do what you can do in Vista, but also type in it if you want.
That's just like column view but requires more clicks - why would we want that in finder? Unless you wanted it for Icon view...
As for Finder, it sucks. The first thing of many they need to do is to put all previewing into a separate thread. If I keep the preview on and browse in Finder onto a 700mb divx AVI, the Finder beachballs for five to ten seconds. Consider that if I'm keyboard browsing, I might have to browse over several to get to the one I want. This is just stupid. It's a little better than it used to be. Previously QT also produced a dialog about missing codecs that you had to click to continue your Finder "experience".
You'll get on first name terms with the beachball also if you regularly connect, or attempt to connect, to Windows shares. Again it's a little better than before in that it usually doesn't beachball.
That's just like column view but requires more clicks - why would we want that in finder? Unless you wanted it for Icon view...
Yeah, for icon and list views, although text input would make it useful for column view as well. After ranting about the very same subject on this forum, I was suggested column view and that's what I have used from that day. The other views just lack the navigation necessary to work in them. (Why is it not even possible to back out of a folder while drag-and-dropping?) If they gave me an addressbar, or an equivalent that showed the location of the folder and let me navigate down in the folder tree while dragging a file, I'd most likely live in list and icon views, and never go to the column view.
I guess the column view would work perfectly, if all your folder- and filenames fit in the columns, the window was always sized to your whole folder tree, and did not exceed screen width.
Filenames never fit, so scratch that. The other things I can just about accomplish by stretching Finder to HD screen width - not a chance with laptop screen width.
(Oh, and while trying this, I noticed a bug in toolbar item positioning. There's a limit to how wide a flexible space can go, so the search box supposed to be on the right side is left hanging in the middle. When I put in two flexible spaces, it works. Hardcoded flexible space length of about 1000px? This is beyond stupid.)
As it is, it's very hard to drag and drop to the column view when what you want to reach is out of sight either vertically or horizontally. The zones you have to drag in to accomplish scrolling are incredibly small, and because springloaded folders compete with scrolling for your input, the whole process is erratic and unpredictable.
There are still many wish-list features that i want to see in tiger or leopard. Many of the built in apps have a LONG way to go before i'll be satisfied.
iTunes needs to allow you to separate the library into multiple libraries, one for your music, one for your videos, one for your audiobooks, etc. The video player in iTunes needs to pick up the transparent full screen controller from QT7.
iChat needs a new minimalist skin at the very minimum. It also needs to have hassle-free, comprehensive Video and Audio support between other services. This includes VoIP and GoogleTalk support. Screen sharing is important too
There needs to be a standardized screen badge API. Growl is great, but it often leads to incompatibilities because its still in beta and always changing.
iPhoto needs to be a free app, because photo management in OSX is craaaaap without it. Picasa is a free app for windows - make iPhoto like iTunes
Apple needs to buy cocoatech and make Pathfinder 4 the new standard apple finder. enough with the crappy Carbon based finder.
Comments
Originally posted by Ra
I liked this part the best:
What a comedian.
I think Spotlight is fine - but the problem is, when you do a search for something in the finder - it's starts looking right away, and the problem is because it starts searching right away, you can't finish typing in the word. That problem doesn't exist in Spotlight though.
Originally posted by Smircle
Well, we should not ignore the fact that Apple borrowed some features from Longhorn. Thurrot is right that Spotlight was first discussed roughly a year after MS unveiled its plans to implement WinFS (ironically now pulled from Vista). Similarily, I saw the merged window title-bar that Apple uses in Mail and iTunes first when MS showed the Longhorn UI studies.
Apple is by far more innovative than MS, but once in a while, they have photocopiers too.
Please...Apple hired Dominic Giampaolo (father of BeFS) before MS even mentioned anything about WinFS. Just because Apple doesn't announce things before it's competition, it doesn't mean it hasn't been in the works for a long time.
MS can afford to talk about things before they're even at the conception stage because even if the competition happened to not have thought about it and copy it before MS can ship their implementation, MS will still win through marketshare and mindshare.
But don't claim MS has thought about this before Apple and that Apple copied MS...it's simply untrue. If Apple had announced it when they hired Dom and if MS hadn't been thinking about WinFS, they'd for sure have started thinking about it. It just so happened that they did think about it without Apple's influence (which is commendable considering this is MS.)
Originally posted by the cool gut
I think Spotlight is fine - but the problem is, when you do a search for something in the finder - it's starts looking right away, and the problem is because it starts searching right away, you can't finish typing in the word. That problem doesn't exist in Spotlight though.
Well, depends on the speed of your comp.
And can I please say, "Spotlight shouldn't be integrated in the Finder?" another time?
Originally posted by Placebo
Well, depends on the speed of your comp.
And can I please say, "Spotlight shouldn't be integrated in the Finder?" another time?
eh? If I'm understanding you correctly you don't want Spotlight in the Finder? I think there should be an option to turn it off and use normal search for older computers - but it should be built in for those with G5s etc.
Originally posted by superted
I want to see Spotlight and Smart Folders better integrated. I can search for content in Mail messages in Spotlight but I can't create a desktop smart folder based around the same search. That's a bit silly if you ask me.
If it's to do with mail messages Mail will have to be open and checking your mail for the smart folder to be updated. Why not just have a smart folder in Mail?
Originally posted by MacCrazy
eh? If I'm understanding you correctly you don't want Spotlight in the Finder? I think there should be an option to turn it off and use normal search for older computers - but it should be built in for those with G5s etc.
No no, Spotlight's obnoxiously slow on G5's, too.
Even if it was too slow today, we get more CPU power all the time and code can be made faster too (well, the latter only seems to happen in OS X not Windows...) so the problem will fix itself. If it's fast enough, then find-as-you-type is a clearly superior way. I'd be very surprised if Microsoft did not change their search to work the same way before Vista launch.
It's also a little.. surprising.. how much he makes of that there are no ready-made smart folders. If there are ready-made ones, will that really make people figure out what they are, and make their own? The other way they could be useful was if people were using the ready-made ones as is, but there is little chance of any such folder suiting specific needs of a person. If you don't use them, then they are bad. Hick's Law.. anything you see will slow you down regardless of if you use it or not. Even to delete the ready-made folders, you would first have to learn what they are to realize no content is lost. Therefore, while most people won't use them, most people will also never remove them.
In other regards I thought that was a pretty good review - of Vista Beta 1. It's not quite fair to name it "Tiger vs Vista", because I don't think he is performing a comparison as much as he is doing a review of some of the cooler things in Vista with the occasional comparison to Tiger.
Check out Thurrott's actual Vista review. Even if the new Explorer looks confusing as hell, the new address bar looks useful. I wonder when we could get one of those in Finder? Preferably as a textbox that let you do what you can do in Vista, but also type in it if you want.
Originally posted by Gon
Check out Thurrott's actual Vista review. Even if the new Explorer looks confusing as hell, the new address bar looks useful. I wonder when we could get one of those in Finder? Preferably as a textbox that let you do what you can do in Vista, but also type in it if you want.
That's just like column view but requires more clicks - why would we want that in finder? Unless you wanted it for Icon view...
You'll get on first name terms with the beachball also if you regularly connect, or attempt to connect, to Windows shares. Again it's a little better than before in that it usually doesn't beachball.
Originally posted by MacCrazy
That's just like column view but requires more clicks - why would we want that in finder? Unless you wanted it for Icon view...
Yeah, for icon and list views, although text input would make it useful for column view as well. After ranting about the very same subject on this forum, I was suggested column view and that's what I have used from that day. The other views just lack the navigation necessary to work in them. (Why is it not even possible to back out of a folder while drag-and-dropping?) If they gave me an addressbar, or an equivalent that showed the location of the folder and let me navigate down in the folder tree while dragging a file, I'd most likely live in list and icon views, and never go to the column view.
I guess the column view would work perfectly, if all your folder- and filenames fit in the columns, the window was always sized to your whole folder tree, and did not exceed screen width.
Filenames never fit, so scratch that. The other things I can just about accomplish by stretching Finder to HD screen width - not a chance with laptop screen width.
(Oh, and while trying this, I noticed a bug in toolbar item positioning. There's a limit to how wide a flexible space can go, so the search box supposed to be on the right side is left hanging in the middle. When I put in two flexible spaces, it works. Hardcoded flexible space length of about 1000px? This is beyond stupid.)
As it is, it's very hard to drag and drop to the column view when what you want to reach is out of sight either vertically or horizontally. The zones you have to drag in to accomplish scrolling are incredibly small, and because springloaded folders compete with scrolling for your input, the whole process is erratic and unpredictable.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
No no, Spotlight's obnoxiously slow on G5's, too.
I take it you haven't ever used Spotlight or a G5 before.
Originally posted by Placebo
I take it you haven't ever used Spotlight or a G5 before.
I take it that the G5 you used Spotlight on had next to no files on it.
Spotlight's really promising, but it's present implementation is pretty sad. But we need not get into all the terrible details of that again.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
I take it that the G5 you used Spotlight on had next to no files on it.
Spotlight's really promising, but it's present implementation is pretty sad. But we need not get into all the terrible details of that again.
My harddrive is almost full on my PowerBook and Spotlight isn't that bad so I doubt a G5 could possibly be that that slow.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
I take it that the G5 you used Spotlight on had next to no files on it.
Spotlight's really promising, but it's present implementation is pretty sad. But we need not get into all the terrible details of that again.
Let's see, 120.34 gigabytes used.
Yeah, that's the default install size, sorry.
iTunes needs to allow you to separate the library into multiple libraries, one for your music, one for your videos, one for your audiobooks, etc. The video player in iTunes needs to pick up the transparent full screen controller from QT7.
iChat needs a new minimalist skin at the very minimum. It also needs to have hassle-free, comprehensive Video and Audio support between other services. This includes VoIP and GoogleTalk support. Screen sharing is important too
There needs to be a standardized screen badge API. Growl is great, but it often leads to incompatibilities because its still in beta and always changing.
iPhoto needs to be a free app, because photo management in OSX is craaaaap without it. Picasa is a free app for windows - make iPhoto like iTunes
Apple needs to buy cocoatech and make Pathfinder 4 the new standard apple finder. enough with the crappy Carbon based finder.
/rant