Path Finder, the OS X Finder replacement that most geeks recommend for some reason, has finally reached version 4, after a year and a half of intensive rewriting.
The new bits are rather good: the interface isn’t ugly and unpleasant anymore (except for a few remains, like the messy “Get Info” window and its three “+” buttons with no label), the keyboard shortcuts aren’t so stupid anymore (in version 3, Command-< and Command-> changed icon size instead of switching windows, for instance), Spotlight is integrated, and Path Finder even embeds Stuffit to create and extract archives of all formats. So you think, you might want this.
Unfortunately, the things I didn’t like about the previous version are still there. Whereas most advanced users resent the OS X Finder’s forgetting about the spaciality of its ancestors (the fact that for each file there was one and only one window, always displayed the same way at the same place) to become a file browser (originally inherited from NeXTstep, then modified to move back a bit toward the MacOS Classic version, but never quite being up to par), they recommend Path Finder although it only works as a browser: when you open a folder into a new window, it always uses the default size and display, no matter the state you’d left it in before.
Incidentally, that’s the main reason why, although I may find Path Finder useful once in a while (such as when the Finder starts crashing, which happens every other time when I wake up my Mac), I can’t even conceive using it as a desktop replacement: I like to keep various folders on my dekstop, and they have to open where and how I want them every time I double-click them. For instance, the hard drives opens into a big window with all sidebars one, but the “Bookmark” folder gets a small window, in a corner, with no buttons and a list-mode display. If I use the Path Finder display, I just can’t — not to mention that another Finder flaw, the fact that its icon grid is too wide and can’t be modified, is just copied; what’s the point of making an alternative file manager, reaching version 4, if you’re not going to allow people to change icon spacing?
After that, I don’t really care that it crashes, that the console is hideous (and I don’t understand why they made it anyway), or that you keep wondering whether the search box is in “filter” (search through the window’s contents, instantaneous) or Spotlight (search through the computer, slow) mode. Path Finder is still rather useless and poorly designed. I’m always amazed, appalled and a bit scared when some people show it as an example of the way Apple should redesign the Finder someday. Heavens no!
I’m very happy to share that PathFinder 4 is now out and available for download at Cocoatech’s site. […] Life inside a single Finder window is closer than ever.
Come on! It’s 2005 2006 (thanks, P.), they’re using a Mac, and still pining for a text-mode Norton Commander? Is it supposed to be easier to drag and drop a file onto a tiny tab than a separate window?
[01/17] 43 Folders: 7 things I like about Path Finder for OS X. All valid points, but in my opinion they don’t make up for the flaws I wrote about.
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