5 ms·

The Finder is dead.

39 points by thedob 16y ago

thedob 16y ago
While 90% of the time I agree with the ease of sandboxed and cloud-synced file management, there's still that 10% of the time that I'm annoyed by it. If I want to copy, rename, share, or email a specific file I find it easiest to do it in the file. I find it almost as easy to do it in an app that facilitate it easily like iPhoto (with it's built in share and email buttons). I find it much more difficult to do it in an app that doesn't make it quite as easily facilitated through the UI, like iTunes. I would love for the finder to go away, but I'd hate for it to go away at the expense of every app developer having to rebuild mechanisms into each app to expose general file manipulations that the finder handles quite well right now.
mattezell 16y ago
I, for one, hope not - not specifically Finder, but the file/folder model in general. I cringe every time I HAVE to drop to shell just to manipulate a specific file the way I would like to.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
jawngee 16y ago
This article is full of flaws. Finder was just rewritten from the ground up, from scratch. Heavy investment. Spaces is about windows management, which has nothing to do with Finder. Same with Expose. iPhone and iPad deal with files, one way or the other.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Finder was rewritten because Apple is aggressively moving to 64-bit code which means Cocoa, not Carbon. Despite such extensive changes, the Finder (as seen by the user) arguably changed less than it had in any previous upgrade. Similarly, iPhone and iPad deal with files one way or the other, but the point isn't how it works underneath -- you could have a team rewrite iPhone OS to use Newton-style "soups" and have essentially no change to the user's experience. Files are a convenient abstraction for programmers (and, remember, an abstraction is all they are -- in the end, disks are just a linear stream of bits that the kernel/file system layer "artificially" organize into "files"), and there doesn't seem to be any need to hide a file system from programmers. But users are, in most cases, better off dealing with app-specific document managers.
- dcurtis 16y ago
  iPhone and iPad deal with files, one way or the other. For mere mortals, the 'file' as a concept is further up on the pyramid of taxonomy; most people think about their stuff in lower classifications like photos, movies, documents, etc. When you see a bear, you don't say "Look, an organism!" You say, "Look, a bear!"
- a4agarwal 16y ago
  the finder was rewritten (so i was wrong about that) but it didn't functionally change. Apple isn't actively innovating within the Finder. Spaces and Expose are not "Finder" directly, but they are still concepts trying to deal with the issues around windows, multiple apps, and sharing between apps.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Look at Gnome shell for some fresh desktop innovation.
DrumLady 16y ago
It may not be dead, but its been in perpetual suck-mode for multi-monitors since its inception.
Zak 16y ago
Do not want. Limiting the amount of interaction the end user has with a hierarchical filesystem may well be a Good Thing. Increasing the degree to which each application is a black box containing all associated data is a Bad Thing. Making each application responsible for the mechanism by which data can be transferred, archived and synchronized is also a Bad Thing.
- jf 16y ago
  Excellent point. As frustrated as I am with the limitations of the "file" and "directory" abstractions. Without them, transfer, archival, and synchronization of data would likely be far more difficult than it is now. Not that the systems we have now are anything to be proud of.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    It seems Apple has evolved the iPad past "application / data - same place". It now looks like a common area with different types of data accessible by apps. This is actually a pretty good solution. People know how to use a search engine and the current hierarchy is not a good solution.
- orangecat 16y ago
  Right. Getting rid of the (constantly visible) filesystem could be a good thing if it's replaced by a metadata-rich database that lets you do interesting queries. But based on Apple's recent history they won't actually expose any of that functionality, and we'll be limited to what the apps are specifically written to do.
hughw 16y ago
Yeah. The command line is dead too. That's what purists believed in 1986. The Mac killed it. Except, it just keeps coming back because it's so danged useful.
- ROFISH 16y ago
  How many people do you know, whose job title does not start with computer and/or IT and/or sysadmin, actually use the terminal? Think of this as a "meta-filesystem". Instead of asking the OS for files and folders, an app just asks the OS for "photos" or "music". Most people, and by most people I am referring to the lowest common dominator like your grandmother, don't care where a file is and actually constantly loses where files are. As with all things Mac, since Apple obviously dogfoods their systems and servers with their computers, the filesystem will not go away. But it will be hidden from the bottom 99% technical layperson who simply doesn't care. Files and Finder, like Terminal.app, will be there for those of us who do care. You need to differentiate between what's good for the people/commoner and what's good for the developer/pro-user, since they are in extremely difference market segments given technical proficiency.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    The terminal is not the only command line. I would imagine a lot of people use Start->Run, Windows Search, Spotlight, Google Desktop Search, and search engines, and those are all command line interfaces in a sense.
    - swernli 16y ago
      I disagree with you there. Yes, those are command line "interfaces" in terms of what the GUI (or lack thereof) is. But typing in a name into a search box and being presented with a graphical list of results as links or icons is not at all the same thing as a command line interface that lets you actually type commands, parse results, and execute other command line programs. Don't confuse a search box with a command line, because those are very different things.
      - 16y ago
aarongough 16y ago
I hope I'm not alone in really disliking the current over-use of the word 'App'. An 'App' is merely a shortening of 'Application', they are not different things. Even on the iPhone an App is still just an Application. Postulating that the current model of user's interacting with files mostly because Applications are now called Apps is faintly ludicrous. On the other hand I think that hiding the intricacies of the filesystem in a user-friendly way would be welcomed by most people that use a computer for non-technical purposes. It certainly reduces the likelihood of problems caused by accidental deletion of config/application data.
luckyland 16y ago
I don't see why the Finder and file concept have to die just because personal computing's storage model is evolving. In fact Finder capabilities should only grow as many people choose to de-centralize and sychronize their storage.
moron4hire 16y ago
A 10% market share company is going to change the face of computing... in a way that everyone has been predicting for the last 15, 20 years? I somehow doubt it.
- blehn 16y ago
  To be fair, they were a 0% market share company when they changed the face of handheld computing (iPhone).
  - moron4hire 16y ago
    Has it? The iPhone is popular with geeks and rich folk, and mostly only in the US. Last I checked, such people weren't the majority of people. The iPhone has certainly pantsed WinMobile and Palm... but those were pretty easy targets to begin with. They haven't even come close to touching the global Symbian marketshare.
    - blehn 16y ago
      Who knows how accurate this is, but AdMob reports the iPhone as having a 50% share of the worldwide smartphone market. Moreover, even if they had a 1% share, I'd still say that Apple has utterly transformed that market. Any new versions of WinMo, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian, Android, etc will be influenced by and compared to the iPhone OS. src: http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49169-report-android-based-devices-threaten-iphones-dominance http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49169-report-androi...
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Apple's mindshare is far greater than its market share.
lurkinggrue 16y ago
Yay! Lockin! The future is one big black box that it difficult to manage or migrate.
- ugh 16y ago
  Doesn’t have to be, though. Can’t you have both? iTunes does pretty well but doesn’t make it all the way. More a fault of the of metadata than iTunes. You are be able to access your music the old-fashioned (crappy) way – which doesn’t make any sense for music – but there you go. All nicely organized in folders. That’s how it should be. I want specialized apps, I don’t think any generic file browser could be as feature rich as specialized apps without turning into some kind hybrid monster and usability abomination. So it’s possible. Sure, it’s also hard.
  - habitue 16y ago
    It's possible sure, it's not hard, Apple will just never want to do it. Just like Microsoft, lock-in is not something they want to avoid.
philwelch 16y ago
In June or so (according to macrumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/23/mac-os-x-10-7-appearing-in-web-logs-dev-release-at-wwdc/ http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/23/mac-os-x-10-7-appearing-...) 10.7 will be pushed out to developers at WWDC and we'll see for sure. Personally, I can't stand this speculation that, just because Apple designed an iPhone and iPad, that they're going to cripple the Mac. I think if they think people will be better off with a limited device, they'll just try and sell them an iPad instead of a Mac. Hierarchical file systems aren't terribly usable--how many people do you know who just splay all their files across their desktop--but I can't imagine Apple replacing it with just an app model. (Personally, I like Gmail's archive/label/search system for a filesystem UI, but it's hard to see what wrinkles we'd run into translating it into a general FS.)
Tichy 16y ago
Try attaching a photo from iPhoto to an Email.
- swernli 16y ago
  There is a button in iPhoto for that. You click it, it asks you what size you want the photo(s) to be, compresses them for you if needed, opens up Mail, opens a new mail window, and inserts the photos for you. What any other mail client does by requiring you to search through folders, potentially needing to go back and "save as" the photo if it's too big, iPhoto does with 2-3 clicks.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    Just found that, but it only seems to work with OS X mail. I use Thunderbird.
    - a4agarwal 16y ago
      You're kidding, right? iPhotos email button for photos is exactly my point. There should be intelligent communication and data sharing between apps, not at the Finder level. in iPhoto, there's a preference to set which email client it sends to
      - Tichy 16y ago
        What if I want to do something else with my photo, that iPhoto doesn't yet have a button for? How does a universal interface look like, that allows arbitrary other apps to get photos from iPhoto? Intents on Android do something like that, but I am not sure how much they live up to their potential yet. I am new to iPhoto and don't know about the config. I saw other people having problems with emailing photos from iPhoto, too. Not everything Apple does or want is automatically the best way of doing things. This model they push works best if all applications are from the same vendor. Guess who has a vested interest in pushing that model? Will all apps have the same kind of config? Or will I have to learn each new app, to make it work with another app? If I don't want to listen to my MP3s in iTunes, what do i do? Suppose I can send photos from iPhoto to Photoshop (or should I request them from within Photoshop, or should it work both ways?). Can I send them to The Gimp, too? If the Gimp adds a "request from iPhoto" button, will it add a "request from <Flickr|someOtherPhotoApp>" button, too? Will Photoshop? Because the file system is pretty simple and universal. It's true that a lot of people have some trouble with it, but there might be trouble with the alternatives, too. I think something like desktop search has maybe a better chance than the shiny GUIs.
johnrob 16y ago
I think you can go one step further and assume the browser is going to be the only app most people use. It's happening on the desktop, and there's no reason the same phenomenon won't happen on devices. If this seems far fetched, look at it this way: most desktop apps are becoming more like browsers given how they use the network. Spotify is a perfect example (for those who've used it).
teilo 16y ago
One of the reasons I love the unix world and despise Windows is precisely because things are not in black boxes. I can read and parse log files. Config is in text files that can be grepped. Automated processes are run from scripts that I can open and examine. Very little is done in a walled garden closed binary format. Even Apple's applications are folders inside of which I can find yet more scripts, text files, resources, etc. When something goes wrong I can usually figure out why. When something fails for some god-knows-why reason in Windows, I get an error box, and nothing else. Please don't try to hide the guts of a system from me. It is the thing I value most about my Mac.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  This is exactly why I think "computers" (using the 'folk' parlance here: I know iPhones and iPads are "computers") are on their way to becoming, essentially, workstations. Complicated tools to do complicated things. I don't see any reason that the Mac should ever move away from having Finder and Terminal (though they will become less and less used by the average user), but the vast majority of things that "end users" do with computers don't need to deal with this sort of stuff. The tools to make end user tools (end user tools such as device OSes, apps, and server software for end user apps to interact with), will always necessarily be of another level of complexity. Let the Mac stay a Mac (read: UNIX), I say. But I don't want to do most of my non-techie stuff on it anymore.
AndrewDucker 16y ago
In this delightful future, how do I change the app I use to edit my photos? Or change the app I use to listen to my music?
- a4agarwal 16y ago
  Every app should be able to access the music, photos, videos, and other files on a system through smart APIs. But the user doesn't need to know about it or manage it
  - AndrewDucker 16y ago
    So the user is going to be able to organise their files through smart apis, but doesn't need to manage it? How's that going work work?
cmelbye 16y ago
Has this guy seen the video for the iPad announcement? It makes it pretty clear that Apple intends on keeping Macs as the high-end/advanced machines, the iPhone as a somewhat limited portable device, and the iPad situated comfortably in between.
BoppreH 16y ago
This is bad. Sure, you can make the user forget about files most of the times, but not kill it completely, because: 1) It'll be a hell of work to parse everything. Should my music clips go into the music folder or video folder? Sure, you can associate file extensions, but what if the software isn't installed yet? If two programs have to share files? The relations can fail in too many ways. 2) All software to ever run in this machine would have to fully implement it's own "file explorer". The picture manager will have to be able to rename, organize move files, as will the document editor, the video player, the text editor... 3) Less freedom of movement. What if I want to send a set of videos, documents and audio files to someone else? Would I have to open each app and politely ask it to send an email (which they will have to implement, too)? What if I want to backup an entire hard drive, with hundreds of different file types? 3) It'll be a complete hell if things go wrong, and you will have to resort to file management anyway. File lost extension somehow? Major file extension conflict? Unknown file type? You are screwed without manipulating the files themselves. And don't even get me started on the reliability of your "in the cloud" future.
rbanffy 16y ago
And so, the gap between those who can make and those who are limited to consuming widens. A computer ceases to be a bicycle for the mind and becomes just another environment for consumption. Is this really what we want?
jsankey 16y ago
It seems unlikely that the file system would disappear/become inaccessible altogether. Sure, when you want to edit photos you should have to dig around in folders. But existing apps already insulate you from these details - just by layering suitable abstractions over the file system. Having the more general layer underneath gives you more power when you need it. It also gives all apps a simple, standard place to store their data. The raw file system has been slowly losing its prominence over time, but I really don't see a benefit in scrapping it altogether.
Qz 16y ago
This is exactly why I hate iTunes and the Apple ideology. I was using it for a while before I decided that the UI sucked for my massive collection of music. But getting those files out of proprietary codecs is a pain. No I do not want your monolithic Apple apps.
mikecane 16y ago
Macs will be touchscreens. The OS will look like iPhone OS. This is not hard to see. Web Designers: Wake Up And Smell The Touchscreen Coffee! http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/web-designers-wake-up-and-smell-the-touchscreen-coffee/ http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/web-designers-wake... Edited to add: This does not necessarily mean access to the CLI will be taken away. I think Devs would revolt over that.

39 points by thedob 16y ago

While 90% of the time I agree with the ease of sandboxed and cloud-synced file management, there's still that 10% of the time that I'm annoyed by it. If I want to copy, rename, share, or email a specific file I find it easiest to do it in the file. I find it almost as easy to do it in an app that facilitate it easily like iPhoto (with it's built in share and email buttons). I find it much more difficult to do it in an app that doesn't make it quite as easily facilitated through the UI, like iTunes. I would love for the finder to go away, but I'd hate for it to go away at the expense of every app developer having to rebuild mechanisms into each app to expose general file manipulations that the finder handles quite well right now.

mattezell 16y ago

I, for one, hope not - not specifically Finder, but the file/folder model in general. I cringe every time I HAVE to drop to shell just to manipulate a specific file the way I would like to.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

jawngee 16y ago

This article is full of flaws. Finder was just rewritten from the ground up, from scratch. Heavy investment. Spaces is about windows management, which has nothing to do with Finder. Same with Expose. iPhone and iPad deal with files, one way or the other.

glhaynes 16y ago
Finder was rewritten because Apple is aggressively moving to 64-bit code which means Cocoa, not Carbon. Despite such extensive changes, the Finder (as seen by the user) arguably changed less than it had in any previous upgrade. Similarly, iPhone and iPad deal with files one way or the other, but the point isn't how it works underneath -- you could have a team rewrite iPhone OS to use Newton-style "soups" and have essentially no change to the user's experience. Files are a convenient abstraction for programmers (and, remember, an abstraction is all they are -- in the end, disks are just a linear stream of bits that the kernel/file system layer "artificially" organize into "files"), and there doesn't seem to be any need to hide a file system from programmers. But users are, in most cases, better off dealing with app-specific document managers.
dcurtis 16y ago
iPhone and iPad deal with files, one way or the other. For mere mortals, the 'file' as a concept is further up on the pyramid of taxonomy; most people think about their stuff in lower classifications like photos, movies, documents, etc. When you see a bear, you don't say "Look, an organism!" You say, "Look, a bear!"
a4agarwal 16y ago
the finder was rewritten (so i was wrong about that) but it didn't functionally change. Apple isn't actively innovating within the Finder. Spaces and Expose are not "Finder" directly, but they are still concepts trying to deal with the issues around windows, multiple apps, and sharing between apps.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Look at Gnome shell for some fresh desktop innovation.

DrumLady 16y ago

It may not be dead, but its been in perpetual suck-mode for multi-monitors since its inception.

Zak 16y ago

Do not want. Limiting the amount of interaction the end user has with a hierarchical filesystem may well be a Good Thing. Increasing the degree to which each application is a black box containing all associated data is a Bad Thing. Making each application responsible for the mechanism by which data can be transferred, archived and synchronized is also a Bad Thing.

jf 16y ago
Excellent point. As frustrated as I am with the limitations of the "file" and "directory" abstractions. Without them, transfer, archival, and synchronization of data would likely be far more difficult than it is now. Not that the systems we have now are anything to be proud of.
- protomyth 16y ago
  It seems Apple has evolved the iPad past "application / data - same place". It now looks like a common area with different types of data accessible by apps. This is actually a pretty good solution. People know how to use a search engine and the current hierarchy is not a good solution.
orangecat 16y ago
Right. Getting rid of the (constantly visible) filesystem could be a good thing if it's replaced by a metadata-rich database that lets you do interesting queries. But based on Apple's recent history they won't actually expose any of that functionality, and we'll be limited to what the apps are specifically written to do.

hughw 16y ago

Yeah. The command line is dead too. That's what purists believed in 1986. The Mac killed it. Except, it just keeps coming back because it's so danged useful.

ROFISH 16y ago
How many people do you know, whose job title does not start with computer and/or IT and/or sysadmin, actually use the terminal? Think of this as a "meta-filesystem". Instead of asking the OS for files and folders, an app just asks the OS for "photos" or "music". Most people, and by most people I am referring to the lowest common dominator like your grandmother, don't care where a file is and actually constantly loses where files are. As with all things Mac, since Apple obviously dogfoods their systems and servers with their computers, the filesystem will not go away. But it will be hidden from the bottom 99% technical layperson who simply doesn't care. Files and Finder, like Terminal.app, will be there for those of us who do care. You need to differentiate between what's good for the people/commoner and what's good for the developer/pro-user, since they are in extremely difference market segments given technical proficiency.
- philwelch 16y ago
  The terminal is not the only command line. I would imagine a lot of people use Start->Run, Windows Search, Spotlight, Google Desktop Search, and search engines, and those are all command line interfaces in a sense.
  - swernli 16y ago
    I disagree with you there. Yes, those are command line "interfaces" in terms of what the GUI (or lack thereof) is. But typing in a name into a search box and being presented with a graphical list of results as links or icons is not at all the same thing as a command line interface that lets you actually type commands, parse results, and execute other command line programs. Don't confuse a search box with a command line, because those are very different things.
    - 16y ago

aarongough 16y ago

I hope I'm not alone in really disliking the current over-use of the word 'App'. An 'App' is merely a shortening of 'Application', they are not different things. Even on the iPhone an App is still just an Application. Postulating that the current model of user's interacting with files mostly because Applications are now called Apps is faintly ludicrous. On the other hand I think that hiding the intricacies of the filesystem in a user-friendly way would be welcomed by most people that use a computer for non-technical purposes. It certainly reduces the likelihood of problems caused by accidental deletion of config/application data.

luckyland 16y ago

I don't see why the Finder and file concept have to die just because personal computing's storage model is evolving. In fact Finder capabilities should only grow as many people choose to de-centralize and sychronize their storage.

moron4hire 16y ago

A 10% market share company is going to change the face of computing... in a way that everyone has been predicting for the last 15, 20 years? I somehow doubt it.

blehn 16y ago
To be fair, they were a 0% market share company when they changed the face of handheld computing (iPhone).
- moron4hire 16y ago
  Has it? The iPhone is popular with geeks and rich folk, and mostly only in the US. Last I checked, such people weren't the majority of people. The iPhone has certainly pantsed WinMobile and Palm... but those were pretty easy targets to begin with. They haven't even come close to touching the global Symbian marketshare.
  - blehn 16y ago
    Who knows how accurate this is, but AdMob reports the iPhone as having a 50% share of the worldwide smartphone market. Moreover, even if they had a 1% share, I'd still say that Apple has utterly transformed that market. Any new versions of WinMo, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian, Android, etc will be influenced by and compared to the iPhone OS. src: http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49169-report-android-based-devices-threaten-iphones-dominance http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/49169-report-androi...
steveklabnik 16y ago
Apple's mindshare is far greater than its market share.

lurkinggrue 16y ago

Yay! Lockin! The future is one big black box that it difficult to manage or migrate.

ugh 16y ago
Doesn’t have to be, though. Can’t you have both? iTunes does pretty well but doesn’t make it all the way. More a fault of the of metadata than iTunes. You are be able to access your music the old-fashioned (crappy) way – which doesn’t make any sense for music – but there you go. All nicely organized in folders. That’s how it should be. I want specialized apps, I don’t think any generic file browser could be as feature rich as specialized apps without turning into some kind hybrid monster and usability abomination. So it’s possible. Sure, it’s also hard.
- habitue 16y ago
  It's possible sure, it's not hard, Apple will just never want to do it. Just like Microsoft, lock-in is not something they want to avoid.

philwelch 16y ago

In June or so (according to macrumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/23/mac-os-x-10-7-appearing-in-web-logs-dev-release-at-wwdc/ http://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/23/mac-os-x-10-7-appearing-...) 10.7 will be pushed out to developers at WWDC and we'll see for sure. Personally, I can't stand this speculation that, just because Apple designed an iPhone and iPad, that they're going to cripple the Mac. I think if they think people will be better off with a limited device, they'll just try and sell them an iPad instead of a Mac. Hierarchical file systems aren't terribly usable--how many people do you know who just splay all their files across their desktop--but I can't imagine Apple replacing it with just an app model. (Personally, I like Gmail's archive/label/search system for a filesystem UI, but it's hard to see what wrinkles we'd run into translating it into a general FS.)

Tichy 16y ago

Try attaching a photo from iPhoto to an Email.

swernli 16y ago
There is a button in iPhoto for that. You click it, it asks you what size you want the photo(s) to be, compresses them for you if needed, opens up Mail, opens a new mail window, and inserts the photos for you. What any other mail client does by requiring you to search through folders, potentially needing to go back and "save as" the photo if it's too big, iPhoto does with 2-3 clicks.
- Tichy 16y ago
  Just found that, but it only seems to work with OS X mail. I use Thunderbird.
  - a4agarwal 16y ago
    You're kidding, right? iPhotos email button for photos is exactly my point. There should be intelligent communication and data sharing between apps, not at the Finder level. in iPhoto, there's a preference to set which email client it sends to
    - Tichy 16y ago
      What if I want to do something else with my photo, that iPhoto doesn't yet have a button for? How does a universal interface look like, that allows arbitrary other apps to get photos from iPhoto? Intents on Android do something like that, but I am not sure how much they live up to their potential yet. I am new to iPhoto and don't know about the config. I saw other people having problems with emailing photos from iPhoto, too. Not everything Apple does or want is automatically the best way of doing things. This model they push works best if all applications are from the same vendor. Guess who has a vested interest in pushing that model? Will all apps have the same kind of config? Or will I have to learn each new app, to make it work with another app? If I don't want to listen to my MP3s in iTunes, what do i do? Suppose I can send photos from iPhoto to Photoshop (or should I request them from within Photoshop, or should it work both ways?). Can I send them to The Gimp, too? If the Gimp adds a "request from iPhoto" button, will it add a "request from <Flickr|someOtherPhotoApp>" button, too? Will Photoshop? Because the file system is pretty simple and universal. It's true that a lot of people have some trouble with it, but there might be trouble with the alternatives, too. I think something like desktop search has maybe a better chance than the shiny GUIs.

johnrob 16y ago

I think you can go one step further and assume the browser is going to be the only app most people use. It's happening on the desktop, and there's no reason the same phenomenon won't happen on devices. If this seems far fetched, look at it this way: most desktop apps are becoming more like browsers given how they use the network. Spotify is a perfect example (for those who've used it).

teilo 16y ago

One of the reasons I love the unix world and despise Windows is precisely because things are not in black boxes. I can read and parse log files. Config is in text files that can be grepped. Automated processes are run from scripts that I can open and examine. Very little is done in a walled garden closed binary format. Even Apple's applications are folders inside of which I can find yet more scripts, text files, resources, etc. When something goes wrong I can usually figure out why. When something fails for some god-knows-why reason in Windows, I get an error box, and nothing else. Please don't try to hide the guts of a system from me. It is the thing I value most about my Mac.

glhaynes 16y ago
This is exactly why I think "computers" (using the 'folk' parlance here: I know iPhones and iPads are "computers") are on their way to becoming, essentially, workstations. Complicated tools to do complicated things. I don't see any reason that the Mac should ever move away from having Finder and Terminal (though they will become less and less used by the average user), but the vast majority of things that "end users" do with computers don't need to deal with this sort of stuff. The tools to make end user tools (end user tools such as device OSes, apps, and server software for end user apps to interact with), will always necessarily be of another level of complexity. Let the Mac stay a Mac (read: UNIX), I say. But I don't want to do most of my non-techie stuff on it anymore.

AndrewDucker 16y ago

In this delightful future, how do I change the app I use to edit my photos? Or change the app I use to listen to my music?

a4agarwal 16y ago
Every app should be able to access the music, photos, videos, and other files on a system through smart APIs. But the user doesn't need to know about it or manage it
- AndrewDucker 16y ago
  So the user is going to be able to organise their files through smart apis, but doesn't need to manage it? How's that going work work?

cmelbye 16y ago

Has this guy seen the video for the iPad announcement? It makes it pretty clear that Apple intends on keeping Macs as the high-end/advanced machines, the iPhone as a somewhat limited portable device, and the iPad situated comfortably in between.

BoppreH 16y ago

This is bad. Sure, you can make the user forget about files most of the times, but not kill it completely, because: 1) It'll be a hell of work to parse everything. Should my music clips go into the music folder or video folder? Sure, you can associate file extensions, but what if the software isn't installed yet? If two programs have to share files? The relations can fail in too many ways. 2) All software to ever run in this machine would have to fully implement it's own "file explorer". The picture manager will have to be able to rename, organize move files, as will the document editor, the video player, the text editor... 3) Less freedom of movement. What if I want to send a set of videos, documents and audio files to someone else? Would I have to open each app and politely ask it to send an email (which they will have to implement, too)? What if I want to backup an entire hard drive, with hundreds of different file types? 3) It'll be a complete hell if things go wrong, and you will have to resort to file management anyway. File lost extension somehow? Major file extension conflict? Unknown file type? You are screwed without manipulating the files themselves. And don't even get me started on the reliability of your "in the cloud" future.

rbanffy 16y ago

And so, the gap between those who can make and those who are limited to consuming widens. A computer ceases to be a bicycle for the mind and becomes just another environment for consumption. Is this really what we want?

jsankey 16y ago

It seems unlikely that the file system would disappear/become inaccessible altogether. Sure, when you want to edit photos you should have to dig around in folders. But existing apps already insulate you from these details - just by layering suitable abstractions over the file system. Having the more general layer underneath gives you more power when you need it. It also gives all apps a simple, standard place to store their data. The raw file system has been slowly losing its prominence over time, but I really don't see a benefit in scrapping it altogether.

Qz 16y ago

This is exactly why I hate iTunes and the Apple ideology. I was using it for a while before I decided that the UI sucked for my massive collection of music. But getting those files out of proprietary codecs is a pain. No I do not want your monolithic Apple apps.

mikecane 16y ago

Macs will be touchscreens. The OS will look like iPhone OS. This is not hard to see. Web Designers: Wake Up And Smell The Touchscreen Coffee! http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/web-designers-wake-up-and-smell-the-touchscreen-coffee/ http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/web-designers-wake... Edited to add: This does not necessarily mean access to the CLI will be taken away. I think Devs would revolt over that.