One of those TOP SECRET features in Leopard that Apple was to chicken to share with the world in 2006 was the new Finder, although when you look at it, you kind of wonder why. In short, Leopard’s Finder represents Apple’s love of its own iTunes, and represents the iTunes interface more than anything else–maybe a little too much. Although the Finder as a whole does feel a bit more mature and more polished, it still feels like it falls short of where it could have been. Nevertheless, despite one or two strange features, the Finder still feels like a modern file browser, and while it’s no Path Finder, it remains probably the most accessible, easiest to understand, and easiest to navigate application. And, thank goodness, it still retains the same application icon.

Leopard’s Finder may be considered the third significant evolution of the Finder during Mac OS X’s lifespan. 10.0-10.2 featured the original Finder which introduced the toolbar and column view. Panther (and Tiger) brought brushed metal to the Finder, downplayed the significance of the toolbar, and introduced a new sidebar where users could drag in anything they wanted–files, folders, etc. The sidebar was separated by a line with devices on the top and everything else on the bottom. With the premiere of Spotlight in Tiger, new Smart Folders could be saved into the sidebar as well.

Leopard’s Finder introduces a brand new sidebar that’s significantly based on the one in iTunes 7. Everything in the sidebar is now at a small size and is not resizable, but making it more static actually makes it look a bit more professional. The items in the sidebar are now divided by iTunes style dividers–the four dividers being DEVICES, SHARED, PLACES, and SEARCH FOR. You can still drag things in and out under the PLACES header like before, but the other three sections have some additional functions as well. DEVICES now automatically shows any devices (Computer, Hard Disks, External Devices, Removable Media, etc.) connected to your computer. SEARCH FOR is the new location for Spotlight Smart Folders, and six convenient ones come included by default (smart folders containing everything you’ve used Today, Yesterday, This Week, or folders of All Movies, All Images, and All Documents). Overall, I actually think that this new sidebar benefits from the clearer organization and adds a level of professionality to it missing in Panther and Tiger.

However, the one aspect I left off from the sidebar is the SHARED section. If you’re on a network, and another computer is recognized from the same network, those computers automatically pop up under a section of the sidebar called SHARED. I really like how Apple now correctly pairs the computer’s model with its icon. After all, they’ve been matching iPods with their correct icon for a few years, so it’s nice to see Macs getting the treatment. However, non-Mac computers on the network with sufficient file sharing permissions also pop up under this section as well, and if you have Back to My Mac on, your computers through Back to My Mac show up there too. (A full review of Back to My Mac will come in a future Feature Presentation.) Leopard uses Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous) to instantly recognize when a sharable computer comes online or goes offline

When you click on one of the computers in the sidebar, it pops open the various public folders accessible to any guest, and a “Connect to…” button in the upper-right window lets you login to your files. (There’s also a “Share screen…” button for computers running OS X Leopard and with screen sharing on; this opens Leopard’s Screen Sharing application which will get a full review later this month.) Now, the ability to browse through the files on your network’s computer is not new, but in older versions of Mac OS X the experience was a bit quirkier and didn’t work as smoothly as this. As someone who frequently has to crawl over onto other computers around my home network, I love this.

One thing that I’m not as thrilled about in Leopard’s Finder is Cover Flow. I don’t know what it is about Apple and its undying love for Cover Flow, especially considering that Apple didn’t even develop it themselves. They bought it. Cover Flow was originally an iTunes plugin written by an independent developer who wanted to bring back the attention to album artwork, and in September 2006, Apple bought it and added it to iTunes 7. But they didn’t stop there. They added Cover Flow directly into the iTunes Store. Then they put Cover Flow on the iPhone. Then they announced that they were putting it in Leopard’s Finder. Then they announced that they were putting it right on the iPod and iPod nano! I mean, at this point, a majority of Apple’s products have been dominated by this eighth wonder of the world called Cover Flow!

The thing is, although Cover Flow does really seem like it belongs in iTunes, I really don’t use it much as a search tool–I use it as eye candy. I do agree with the original developer’s intentions that when you listen to music, you should be able to see the cover art, and that’s why when I’m in Cover Flow view on iTunes, I actually browse through the list at the bottom and then let Cover Flow fly to the album that I just picked. It’s eye candy. Apple, however, has tried to make it into a great tool for finding things, but I personally think it’s more efficient to search through things in a list than via Cover Flow, which is why if I had an iPhone or iPod, I probably wouldn’t be inclined to use it as much. Granted, it probably has some usefulness on the iPhone, when you can tilt it on its side and get to browse through, but on the iPod, by putting Cover Flow in a separate section of the menu on such a small screen, it hardly seems worth it.

Similarly, Cover Flow hardly seems worth it in Finder. Now, granted, if you were searching through a folder with a lot of images or video, then it might be more worth it, but most of my files are folders and documents, and Cover Flow really doesn’t become much different than the list view that’s already in Finder, plus some additional eye candy. Even the slightly saving grace that you can preview files right inside Cover Flow doesn’t quite do it justice when you can hit the space bar and bring up Quick Look in ANY view. Furthermore, previewing files inside Cover Flow is quite small, yet Cover Flow takes up quite a bit of screen space. In short, 98% of the time, Cover Flow really isn’t useful in Finder.

The other significant change to Finder is that icons now update themselves to reflect a bit about what the actual document looks like. I’m kind of unsure about the position to take on this feature. Granted, it is nice to sort of get a general idea about what the document sort of looks like, but it’s hard to see something like this being super useful unless the icon was huge, at which point it would kind of defeat the ability to navigate. Even then, you can satisfy your urge to quickly preview a file via Quick Look. Then again, there’s something more satisfying about being able to get an idea of what the document looks like, so I wouldn’t scratch that feature down as a Con, but more of a “jury’s still out.”

There are a number of things that would still be nice to see in the Finder. Like, for example, tabs! For Pete’s sake, there’s tabs in Safari, there’s tabs in iChat, heck, there’s even tabs in Terminal! I say that Finder should be able to have tabbed browsing, along with all of Safari’s tab features, like the ability to rearrange tabs and move them in and out of windows. Wouldn’t you agree? And I’m sure there are plenty of other things that Finder could be able to do to take it even waves beyond where it is now. Then again, Apple’s gotta have some things to show off in 10.6, right? In the meantime, Finder remains a high-class file navigation system, continues the Mac legacy of simplicity with style, and Leopard’s new Finder enhancements carry it along even further.

Feature Satisfaction Rating:

Note: There are some other features that are part of Leopard’s Finder, but as they are more significant Leopard features in general, I will be giving many of them more in-depth treatment with their own Feature Presentations later this month.

Be sure to check out the other articles in the Leopard Feature Presentation, occurring throughout the month of November here on Webmacster87.info.

Tags: Cover Flow, features, files, Finder, icons, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, navigation, review, sidebar