Nov 05 2007
Leopard doesn’t quite stack up
I’m a Mac fan boy, and I’m very tolerant of change. When the Mac using world screamed when they replaced OS 9 with OS X, killing a lot of the nice functionality in OS 9 in favor of a brand new OS, I drank the kool-aid and made the change as soon as I could.
And I’ve been a big fan of each major revision of X — and have run all of them right out of the gate, warts and all. But I’m not sold on Leopard.
The loudest touted features are either useless, or already existed in 3rd party apps for 10.4.
- Spaces is just VirtuDesktops — and a concept I never had any use for. I’d much rather have multiple monitors then multiple “virtual” screens.
- TimeMachine is just a back-up app — granted its well integrated and looks pretty. But the method I have in place now is much less intrusive (not to mention more fire-proof) and doesn’t require me to be tethered to a local external hard drive.
But nothing bugs me more than Stacks…
Stacks kills a feature I’ve used and loved in OS X since they killed the Apple menu’s hierarchical app-launching capabilities from OS 9.
It used to be, in OS X 10.2-10.4, that you could drop any folder onto the right side of the Dock and turn it into a menu by right clicking on it. In this way I could add my very organized Applications folder to my Dock and use it to find applications in a very simple manor (I’ll admit, its kind of like a Start Menu, but come on — its a good way to organize your apps).
In 10.5 that great feature was replaced with either a silly, and surprisingly static, curved list, or a box full of icons. Now that box can contain subfolders — but if you click on them, it opens a window. That’s a window you have to close after you find your application. Unacceptably stupid.
Know what else is stupid? Apparently there’s a massive data loss bug in the new Finder. For years — literally, we’ve been complaining about how awful the Finder is (even compared to its OS 9 grandparent) and this is the fix they offer us?
Damage to the Dock and a bad upgrade for the Finder aside (I do like the new sidebar, btw) Stacks are not what they were supposed to be. A “Stack” was designed as a replacement for (or addition to) the folder concept. It was an organizational item that existed in the Finder, had a single icon that could be dragged around like a file, but expanded when clicked to show a collection of items. There are plenty of UI prototype videos on the web showing what Stacks meant to us before Apple polluted the term.
I’m ditching Leopard for the time being. The only feature I really wanted was the improved Front Row… maybe there’s a way I can run it in 10.4. If not, I’ll just hold out hope that Apple gets their crap together with upcoming updates.
Update: Yay! It looks like they fixed stacks… a little bit!
The move bug goes back to at least 10.4. (I actually think I first ran into it in 10.3.)
Oh, good to know! Another thing they haven’t fixed in the Finder yet… good thing we’ve got Cover Flow, though!
Of course, this ‘move’ bug (goes all the way back to 10.2, if not further) only applies if you do MOVE a file/directory to another volume. The safest way around this - and not really that much of a bugbear as most people will use it this way - is simply to COPY (just drag n drop rather than command-dragging) the file/directory and then once safely copied, hit CMD-DEL, then SHIFT-CMD-DEL. I know it’s an extra 2 keystrokes, but its better than losing a bunch of your stuff!
Still… it’s about time it was fixed as it’s a massive glitch. Have they sorted out the awful networking issues that have been wrong since the original 10.0? Annoys the hell out of me that on an OS 9 machine, if I lose a connection to a server the Mac responds immediately, but in every version of X it sits there for 5 minutes beachballing before telling me what I already know!
I’m totally with you over the stacks issue though - they’re shite!!! If only they’d listen to long-time Mac users and BRING BACK OUR OS 9 POP-UP FOLDERS!!!! They were far more use than any incarnation of the dock and certainly more use than stacks. Fully configurable in terms of views, arrangement, behaviour… using full drag n drop… much more time/space efficient - AND you can navigate them from the keyboard.
Also - have they implemented keyboard navigation of the dock yet? I get irritated having to switch back to the mouse when the kbd is far quicker and more efficient for navigation - I use kbd navigation of the menus all the time for anything without a shortcut, so the dock’s a big hiccup in the workflow.
FYI : there is a replacement (or was - might not still exist for current versions of X, as I haven’t used it since 10.1) for the old Apple Menu Items folder. It is (was?) an app called Fruit Menu that allowed you to bring back a lot of the Apple Menu’s usability (and point!). Add Aliases for your hard drives for quick navigation, add commonly used apps and utils that don’t warrant taking up space in your dock. Not sure if it allowed drag n drop support, but it’s worth a look if it’s still around.
There also used to be a little docklet for system prefs that gave you a pop-up menu from the dock showing all the prefs and allowed you to go directly to a specific pane. That was cool, but last time I had a copy it got broken in a point upgrade to X.
It’s a shame that Apple don’t take more notice of the very cool 3rd party add-ons to X that are out there and consider writing more of them into the OS. They did do that with Konfabulator (ripped off and called Dashboard), but if they paid the original authors for their ideas it’d promote a healthy 3rd party developer scene and encourage some clever innovation, rather than just eye-candy.
Right… I’m rambling… I’m out!
I still think Konfabulator is better than Dashboard anyway. I’d much rather choose what layer my widgets are on, then have to hit a hot key…
Very useful comment, btw. Thanks!