My BBEdit Backups folder is open in a list view sorted by date. I select 4957 items and type Command-Delete to move them to the trash. The Finder locks up with the larger and even more brightly colored spinning pizza of death—for 45
minutes. This is on an 800 MHz G4 with no other load except for iTunes.
I put the files back in the folder and rebooted into OS 9 to see how fast
it was. In 9, moving the same files to trash took 57 seconds. Add about four minutes to account for the two reboots, and that is still nine times faster than the OS X Finder.
Please don’t anyone tell me that I need to optimize my hard drive or buy more RAM, that the Finder is new code, that I should use Column view, that I should know not to put so many files in one folder, that I should have used
rm *, or that isn’t it great that iTunes didn’t skip while this was going on.
John C. Welch calls Apple on poor AppleScript support:
AppleScript is one of the most critical technologies on the Mac platform, yet unlike its positive attitude towards other high profile technologies, like WebObjects, Apple seems to be quite divided on AppleScript (AS). I tend to look at this as “Good Apple” and “Bad Apple”.
