Versus
Window Explorer vs. Finder
After more than 2 years since I moved over from PC to Mac I still complain about Finder.
If there was one thing I could wish that they changed on a Mac, it would be to bring Windows Explorer to the Mac. Winexp is still the best damn file browser out there.
I’ve had my Mac now for a little over a year now. It wasn’t the hype that got me on to it, I just happened to acquire it when someone left our company. Now I’m not one to jump on a fad or a trend just because everyone else does, in fact, I tend to resist it as much as possible. So when I did make the switch there were some things that I missed about the PC - Windows Explorer I miss you.
Apple is good at a lot of things, but when they made Finder I’m not sure what they were thinking. I dreamed that they would make it better when Snow Leopard came out but that didn’t happen either. As a PC user for years the most painful part of the Mac was Finder, which in my opinion is perhaps the most useless file browser that exists, and it’s quite simply because of the lack of one thing - the address bar.
The address bar on Windows Explorer allows the user to copy and paste the address of the current window into a Save As dialog box negating the need to click through a folder tree to reach the appropriate folder destination. The lack of this singular functionality in Finder makes it a comparatively inferior application over Windows Explorer.
I was so desperate to find an alternatively that I bought Path Finder, which is a Finder replacement. However, I didn’t end up liking Path Finder much either as it offered too much functionality that wasnt important to me, and it still does not offer an easily accessible way to copy the path of a file or folder destination.
Right now I have pretty much given up on the whole address bar thing, I suffer with it and hopefully one day, some Apple genius will discover the address bar and maybe, just maybe put in the next update.
LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS HERE
Dorian Douma
I do miss the address bar too, but where else can you find column view (except back in time)? And cover flow right where you need it, and with instant lightbox-style preview just by hitting the spacebar? I hate going through folders of images in Windows, it’s terrible!
Plus Windows would never give its file manager enough memory or whatever. How many times have you had to restart a copy operation because it just crashes?
What you feel about the Finder, Dayton, I feel about Apple’s open and save dialog boxes. In Windows, this is where the magic is - you don’t even need to run the explorer, you can just have the task manager open and pretend to go to run something, just to get one of those windows up! All the same file management features are in there, isn’t that the real beauty of Windows? Whenever I get into a modal Apple box I feel trapped and afraid! I have to cancel and go back to the finder if I want to compress or rename something at the last minute.
Joey Caughey
It’s ignorance that makes you feel that way and nothing else. Why have an address bar when you can have an immediate response search functionality. There is no need for an address bar. It was deprecated because the address bar became unpractical. Why type the absolute path when you could just type the file name or folder name into the search bar and have immediate access to it. It’s all about doing something better and doing something right which apple is all about. That’s also probably why Microsoft fails to innovate time and time again and why their business model is failing and they are moving towards a more open or as they would call it shared source model for Windows 7. Also with the resource of shortcut keys that finder has it speeds up productivity ten fold. Learn them and you will be enlightened.
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