When can we expect the finder to be really optimised?

addison

If we are at 6 o'clock, there are a lot of update to come. In the mean time although 10.1 was a huge improvement the finder is still so slow.



Sluggish is the best adjective I can think of to describe the effect. OS X is fast enough but the finder is awful. It look great though.

applemaster

Sluggish is a good word. I get the spinning rainbow circle a lot, and it doesn't really seem to be doing anything.



The finder is sluggish and hopefully they will speed it up soon.

ghost_user_name

The main problem with the Finder, IMO, is it's multithreading (or lack thereof) in the networking code. Next to that, there are the drawing issues.



Optimistically, I'd say we'll see a good speedup of the Finder by March 2002. Realistically, I'd guess Jan 2003.



[edit] Of course, between now and then Apple will be throwing new hardware at us, reducing the necessity to optimize the Finder. Yes, the truth hurts.



[ 11-12-2001: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>

dillyo1001

the biggest beef i have by far is the damn spinning cursor of despair ("scod", not my words). this is really frustrating when you're trying to mount an idisk. i finally set up my parents with os x back home and i tried doing that over a modem. i almost ripped my fingernails off in frustration!



other than that though, the finder is certainly usable on a g4/400. but that's not to say it couldn't be improved.

macway

I usually never see the spinning circle unless I'm doing something with the network, most notably with appleshare points mounted on the desktop. Managed to crash the whole system once too, when having multple volumes mounted and copying from them.



Besides that I'm fairly happy with the Finder in 10.1.

zonetuke

I see the spinning circle way too often for my taste. I have 442 MB on my G3 466! It's freakin unacceptable. But I do love OS X...

macway

For the record... My config is TiBook 500 with 512MB RAM.



While fixing the multithreading I hope they address the issue with the Finder forgetting about what views you have set in folders, that's annoying if anything. And the list view is buggy.



[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: macway ]</p>

david

man. while my finder is not exactly zippy, I definitely wouldn't say it's sluggish. I rarely get the spinning beachball (what an awful cursor!); maybe once a week. I have a Ti 400 with 384 megs of RAM.

bradbower

I get it too much for my tastes as well. It bothers me. What the hell about a spinning rainbow CD cursor represents "Your computer is either thinking really hard or trying to access network resources. Please wait!"? It should be a goddamn cup of coffee getting refilled (a hint to the person waiting), or the cursor doing something funny.



This reminds me, I've always wondered.. Apple made OS X so beautiful compared to the old Mac OS, why have they neglected the same old pixel-y black-with-white-borders cursor? Why isn't it shades of aqua or shadowed or translucent or pin-striped or brushed chrome/metal or like flowing water (i.e. the scrollbars)?



[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: bradbower ]</p>

flowerbob

network activity--most notably summoning iDisk--kills the finder for a looooooooooooooooong time.

also, clicking on a large movie file in list view should Not paralyze the finder for minutes while the movie is loaded. that's just ridiculous.

and it should be possible to turn off live-resizing at a system-wide level.

other than that , finder performance is sort of ok i guess.

i don't want any other cursor than this little black arrow with the white outline.

It's about the only gui element which apple happily didn't feel the need to "improve"

ender

Personally, I only get the scod when my hard disk needs to spin up. This is on both a G4 500 DP and a Ti PB 500. Both have 512 MB RAM and the tower has dual 40 GB 7200 ATA 100 drives (one for 9 and one for X).



I do think that Apple needs to take a look at it's hard drive utilization however. When I'm playing Wolfenstein MP test (or any other game for that matter) the hard drive spins down every 15 minutes (the delay I have it set for in the Energy panel) and then subsequently spins back up, stalling the game for 10 seconds or so. Weird.



-Ender

fluffy

They can take all the time they want to get the Finder up to speed, I don't really care about it. I think that usability and consistency is far more important:



1. When I hide the toolbar I want it to STAY HIDDEN! Holy crap this one bugs me! It just pops up at random times!



2. When I have my desktop hard disk set to open into column view when double-clicked, the system should know if the window is already open! Double clicking on the hard disk again should activate the open window, not open another one! Granted, this only happens when I have traversed into the file system inside that window, but it is the same window!



3. The Finder needs to be smart enough to tell the difference between folders and packages, frameworks, etc. Folders cannot have filename extensions and thus should not have them hidden, ever!!



4. Drag and drop needs to be implemented system-wide. If I drag an item onto a docked folder I should be able to traverse the pop-up menu and drop it into the hierarchy somewhere. Similarly if a finder window is minimized I should be able to add items to it by drag and drop into the dock.



5. Multi-threading. Duh.



6. The window-zoom widget needs to be fixed. The OS9 windows resize perfectly to fit all of the items, while the Finder leaves white space in strange locations, activates scroll bars when inappropriate, etc.



7. Columns in column view need to remember their respective sizes. Each folder should have its own column size that is used for all column view windows. Alternately, each column should be automatically sized to reveal the longest file name and allow resizing from there (and should honor the new size).



8. When a large list view is open, typing the first few letters of the filename needs to update the scroll thumb if necessary.



9. When Calculate Folder Sizes is on, calculate all of the folder sizes in the list! Currently the finder waits until a folder scrolls into view to even start the calculation.



10. Need to be multiple inspector windows ala MacOS 9.



11. Inspector window needs to actually inspect the contents to report an accurate size. Currently if a list view has decided that a folder is zero K and then is updated with items, the Inspector also reports zero K, even after the list window is closed and re-opened. WTF???



12....



Jeez, there are just so many problems with the Finder that I really don't see the point in continuing!!!



FIX THE FINDER!!!

marcuk

I WANT A HOTKEY TO HIDE THE DOCK ALA CONTROLSTRIP OS9, AND I WON'T USE OSX UNTIL I GET IT



SO THERE APPLE!

gorgonzola

[quote]Originally posted by MarcUK:

<strong>I WANT A HOTKEY TO HIDE THE DOCK ALA CONTROLSTRIP OS9, AND I WON'T USE OSX UNTIL I GET IT



SO THERE APPLE!</strong><hr></blockquote>



Try Command-Option-D.

jll

[quote]Originally posted by gorgonzola:

<strong>



Try Command-Option-D. </strong><hr></blockquote>



Caps Lock will solve another problem for MarcUK

eman

Surprisingly I don't find it too sluggish on my 500 MHz iBook. I'm pretty pleased with 10.1's speed.

noahj

[quote]Originally posted by gorgonzola:

<strong>



Try Command-Option-D. </strong><hr></blockquote>





Dang! You beat me to it.

addison

[quote] Surprisingly I don't find it too sluggish on my 500 MHz iBook. I'm pretty pleased with 10.1's speed. <hr></blockquote>



Try using a G3-300



Then you will soon realise it is very sluggish compared to OS9.



Even a Windows98 with a Celeron 300 seems faster to have a faster desktop than OS X.