Friday, May 24, 2013

The Macintosh Finder, Then and Now

John Siracusa illustrates how the Mac OS X Finder still doesn’t zoom windows properly.

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The OS 7 Finder really was an especially well-crafted piece of work.

10.6 actually did a fine job - it was broken in 10.7 and either not fixed or broken further in 10.8 (I never really used 10.7 much, so I can't tell).

Been meaning to file multiple bugs on these things for ages, but I'm sure by some twisted logic they'll be closed as 'behaves correctly'.

"10.6 actually did a fine job"

Huh. Just tested, and correct you are. I conduct myself in such a constricted manner in the OS X Finder that I'd never even bothered testing the zoom.

"Been meaning to file multiple bugs on these things for ages, but I'm sure by some twisted logic they'll be closed as 'behaves correctly'."

Given the consistent lack of interest over the years in ever getting the OS X Finder up to the very high standards of the Classic Finder, I'd assume you are likely correct that you won't get much traction that way. But file away anyway...

I mean, seriously, after ten+ years, why is FTFF still an acronym?

I think the Finder was rewritten in Cocoa in OS suX 10.7. This may explain that some things got broken.

@bob I’m pretty sure the Finder’s Cocoa rewrite was for 10.6. So I guess it was broken after that.

"I’m pretty sure the Finder’s Cocoa rewrite was for 10.6. So I guess it was broken after that."

Yup. And it was an amazingly smooth transition. Snowy's Finder didn't really have any significant regressions over the 10.5 Finder. It didn't FTFF, but it didn't make stuff worse, all the while upgrading to a modern development architecture.

Cupertino just burned down the house with Lion. The "Back to the Mac" keynote was the day the music died.

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