Live data from Hacker News

Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

kepter.app

151–160 of 219 posts

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#151

Each and every comment that is in agreement here is a bunch of former Windows users who wanted to move Explorer to Mac with them. I have used MacOS for over 15 years. Finder has never stood in my way. I don’t even know what “see the file system” means. Too many words to say “I don’t know how to organize my files on a computer but I consider myself a power user”

    I don’t even know what “see the file system” means.
It just means they want to see the hierarchy that the filesystem exposes. Here's a useful diagram [0] from the Wikipedia page on hierarchial file systems [1]. There are ways to show paths and directory structure in finder, but you're fighting against the intended usage.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Fi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_file_system

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#152
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dolphin in KDE has to be one of my favourite GUI file managers ever. Simple to use until you need it to be complicated, then it probably does what you’re looking for.

Our KDE development motto (and a contrast explained in our HIG) is "Simple by default, powerful when needed". It's nice to see someone re-state it so naturally and eloquently in the wild!

I can't thank KDE devs enough, so thanks :)

Not just Dolphin is among the best in class.

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#153

As a Windows user for years until 2 years ago, I can’t believe how unusable finder is. It’s just terrible. I feel like it actively hides the filesystem from you at every turn. Windows was bad but at least Explorer (windows 10 version anyway) let you easily SEE the file system I’m sure as hell not buying a subscription project to fix that though lololol

To Apple, files are an unsightly thing they need to sweep under the carpet, if you have to interact with files they probably believe they’ve done something wrong. Look at Apple Mail, they used to bury attachments behind a button and even now they just drop them at the end of the email.

Then why did Apple keep the hierarchical file system when moving away from HFS? Could've gone with a kv-store kind of system.

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or you click on "Go" in the menu bar. What key combo did you want that would be less 'magical'?

A path bar anywhere in the interface? I also want this to be able to copy a file’s path. Right now I’m not even sure how to do that aside from cmd-i to get info and then clunkily drag select the parent dir to copy. Repeat for the file name. Am I insane or is there a better way? Just use terminal? For a time I used pathfinder which had a feature to copy the full path but I ended up hating the subscription and constant…

Surprisingly nobody suggested yet to just select file in Finder and press Option-Cmd-C to copy file path.

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#155

As a Windows user for years until 2 years ago, I can’t believe how unusable finder is. It’s just terrible. I feel like it actively hides the filesystem from you at every turn. Windows was bad but at least Explorer (windows 10 version anyway) let you easily SEE the file system I’m sure as hell not buying a subscription project to fix that though lololol

To Apple, files are an unsightly thing they need to sweep under the carpet, if you have to interact with files they probably believe they’ve done something wrong. Look at Apple Mail, they used to bury attachments behind a button and even now they just drop them at the end of the email.

> if you have to interact with files they probably believe they’ve done something wrong.

So it's wrong to be power user using mac.

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#156

My most recent laptop purchase was a Macbook Pro, because the price/performance is just so lopsided with the price of memory pushing everything up to Apple-like prices, it didn't make sense to buy an x86 laptop. But, coming from Linux it's a miserable user experience. I genuinely hate macOS. Every time I use it, I'm surprised by some weird thing about it, some limitation, some annoyance, some weird bug. Installing so…

>My most recent laptop purchase was a Macbook Pro, because the price/performance is just so lopsided with the price of memory pushing everything up to Apple-like prices, it didn't make sense to buy an x86 laptop. I see people justify their Mac purchases this way all the time, but IMO it's just cope and not their actual primary reason for making that decision. I've never seen where the math actually worked out where t…

Have you looked at the CPU performance of Apple Silicon lately?

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#157
post #9

In the end, it turns out for me that the classic explorer Tree View is the most intuitive. I know where things are as a sub-tree system. I get that hard links etc. complicate this and perhaps there are smart folders etc which do not fit this model well but I find I frequently want to “Go Up” in the hierarchy and this requires an uncomfortable shortcut on a Macbook (arrow key) or a menu button rather than a toolbar ic…

Once I got used to column view, I miss it on other operating systems. I don't feel like there's anything I can't do with two Finder windows in column view. And for everything else there's the terminal.

column view is the one saving grace of finder; the rest is best left untouched

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#158
It's funny, as a 20+ year macOS user, I've really struggled with file managers that are not Finder.

I don't think it's that Finder is brilliant -- it just encourages a unique set of power user workflows that aren't replicated elsewhere.

For example, Open/Save panels that act as drop targets, and navigate to the dropped file's parent folder. I use this all the time, and it drives me nuts when I can't do this on Linux (Nautilus) and Windows. Enter to rename, too. These habits are very hard to break!

Re: Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

#159

As a Windows user for years until 2 years ago, I can’t believe how unusable finder is. It’s just terrible. I feel like it actively hides the filesystem from you at every turn. Windows was bad but at least Explorer (windows 10 version anyway) let you easily SEE the file system I’m sure as hell not buying a subscription project to fix that though lololol

MacOS spawned a whole cottage industry of paid software that make up for it's deficiencies.
Post reply on HN