I've abandoned my principles...

[Mike Hoxbig]

I was referring to your screenshot's immediate actions being to change the default shortcuts for a number of things, as a failure to adapt, not so much the usage of Finder itself. Most of everything in that screenshot is augmenting the standard MacOS shortcuts to make them like Windows.

Which isn't a good thing because it likely means you will now get stuck in other things failing to understand why it isn't working the way you expect it to because you've overridden the defaults in one app but can't necessarily do so in another.

My opinion is that vanilla is always best for that very reason and implore anyone switching over to at least run for a month "as is" before going to fix things with third party tooling.

If we are talking strictly GUI then I would agree Explorer is probably more user friendly, which goes hand in hand with the file/folder structure people have gotten used to and not the *nix "weird" people struggle to get their heads around with MacOS.

But for the very reason that MacOS is *nix based is why the Finder thing has never really been a deep issue for me and I struggle to point out a particular failure point comparing it to Explorer if you ignore the fact that shortcuts are different. On the flip side however if you wanted to do more command line work in Windows it was an abomination comparatively until they started bringing more and more Linux into the mix.

Finder vs Explorer is just not a thing that even comes up in my head when comparing the two systems, they are such a small part of the entire thing that it's not even something I consider worth a mention which is why I find it so baffling that people just to install third party tools to compensate for it.

So not really something I disagree with, just something I don't understand why it gets such priority.

Same way I don't understand the moans about Spotlight and people jumping to more third party tools, because it's always done what it said on the tin and now even more so with the clipboard and Actions etc.

I don't use Explorer that way, and never did. It gives you context by providing the entire tree structure, so you know exactly where you are without having to click or work it out from multiple panes or whatever context a particular OS gives you. Therefore you know exactly what you want to do and where you want to do it. That to me is the value, not user friendliness or replacing shortcuts.

Not sure what those people are on about, I think Spotlight is great...

 

[ArmatageShanks]

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And yeah I know you can add it to Finder, but you can't customise the crap out of Finder to do exactly what you want.

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And the whole point of being able to do so is to help you be more efficient in a way that works for you. What you've done is adapted to a limitation...

Why scratch the name in one screenshot and not the second?

 

[SauRoNZA]

I don't use Explorer that way, and never did. It gives you context by providing the entire tree structure, so you know exactly where you are without having to click or work it out from multiple panes or whatever context a particular OS gives you. Therefore you know exactly what you want to do and where you want to do it. That to me is the value, not user friendliness or replacing shortcuts.

Not sure what those people are on about, I think Spotlight is great...

Aaah so it ultimately comes down to having the tree view, which sure I can understand takes getting some used to when compared to multi pane view.

Thing is I can't really recall when last I've actually needed to work in that manner and remember where I am in a nested hierarchy...in fact the entire concept of File Management is a bit weird in the modern world of local file systems hardly being relevant.

It comes back to being such a small thing for me, so really the last thing I would see the need to augment.

 

[JerryMungo]

Nope.

If you gave a thunderbolt dock you can have 2 external displays. (source: I have this setup)

As was stated the very next post after mine LOL

 

[bwana]

I don't use Explorer that way, and never did. It gives you context by providing the entire tree structure, so you know exactly where you are without having to click or work it out from multiple panes or whatever context a particular OS gives you. Therefore you know exactly what you want to do and where you want to do it. That to me is the value, not user friendliness or replacing shortcuts.

Not sure what those people are on about, I think Spotlight is great...

So does enabling Path bar.

Intel based Mac's with bootcamp was awesome, not so great now with emulation.

The thing I miss about bootcamp is, apart from it running Windows really well, it let you read and write to NTFS natively.

 

[SauRoNZA]

So does enabling Path bar.

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The thing I miss about bootcamp is, apart from it running Windows really well, it let you read and write to NTFS natively.

I mean ExFAT solves that.

But also a few kernel driver tools to enable write access.

 

[bwana]

I mean ExFAT solves that.

ExFat only “solves that” if it’s been discussed/arranged beforehand.

Last time I checked, and I’ll admit it’s been a while, NTFS was the default option on a windows machine and few windows users realise Macs can’t handle it. Hell, not all Mac users know.

 

[SauRoNZA]

ExFat only “solves that” if it’s been discussed/arranged beforehand.

Last time I checked, and I’ll admit it’s been a while, NTFS was the default option on a windows machine and few windows users realise Macs can’t handle it. Hell, not all Mac users know.

Yeah it’s very much the default on Windows still.

But it’s also not that hard to just install an NTFS driver on MacOS if you need to write to one.

Obviously as a photographer this is more of a problem for you plugging stuff in but it’s been years…possibly a decade since I’ve needed to plug random drives into my MacBooks.

If it’s not being shared over the cloud then it’s getting plugged into my NAS.

 

[Robocop]

The wife's work recently switched them over to mac laptops and she has been impressed. She works in design/marketing and they are decent for that. Battery life is amazing, price was honestly better than the windows equivalent, and it works for her. Has been a bit of a mission after so many years of windows to get used to the new shortcuts, and layout of the OS. Anyways, to each their own. While I was an unhappy windows laptop user I am also hoping to see Linux finally crack a solid gaming supported OS at which point I will switch. Not a fan of Windows 11 but also not personally wanting to go Mac at this point for my laptop.

Pop OS and Mint is pretty cozy with steam and epic. I've been doing some testing the past couple of days and it look promising.

 

[konfab]

The wife's work recently switched them over to mac laptops and she has been impressed. She works in design/marketing and they are decent for that. Battery life is amazing, price was honestly better than the windows equivalent, and it works for her. Has been a bit of a mission after so many years of windows to get used to the new shortcuts, and layout of the OS. Anyways, to each their own. While I was an unhappy windows laptop user I am also hoping to see Linux finally crack a solid gaming supported OS at which point I will switch. Not a fan of Windows 11 but also not personally wanting to go Mac at this point for my laptop.

That is almost bait at this point. There is plenty to choose from, and Proton makes most Steam games work out of the box.

Bazzite is my new favourite desktop as it addresses the biggest problem I have with Linux and that is a random update trashing your entire computer. It is so good that I haven't even bothered to move to VanillaOS which is Debian based (which I am far more familiar with).

I will die on the hill for using MacOS for work though. Apple could take 0.0001% of the money they spent on AI crap and put it into developing a proton layer for MacOS and they would have the killer system.

 

[konfab]

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And yeah I know you can add it to Finder, but you can't customise the crap out of Finder to do exactly what you want.

And the whole point of being able to do so is to help you be more efficient in a way that works for you. What you've done is adapted to a limitation...

This was a bit frustrating for me, but luckily we have free coding helpers nowadays.

Gemini basically coded some Apple script, that looks at the current finder window, and passes it to the terminal app of my choice (for this Ghostty is the right choice, even though I use CMUX for most work)

 

[Speedster]

This was a bit frustrating for me, but luckily we have free coding helpers nowadays.

Gemini basically coded some Apple script, that looks at the current finder window, and passes it to the terminal app of my choice (for this Ghostty is the right choice, even though I use CMUX for most work)


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Explain a little more - I'm curious. What is the use case for this?

I normally just drag whichever folder or file I want to reference into the terminal.