Friday, June 10, 2011

Hey Zeus

Anything you can do I can do meta.
Finally, a good picture of me. Maybe it's the girl standing next to me who makes it good. Aslan Grealis took the shot.
Andrew Bellware and Sky Chari


OK, so on a list of things which are different between Macs and PCs. Macs don't seem to let you do anything in a File > Open window that you can normally do in the Finder. PC's "open" window inside applications do let you do whatever the file browser lets you do (like copy or delete files). 
Also, the default action when copying a folder in OSX is that it "replaces" rather than "merges" the data together. As we have multiple people working on multiple projects, or pieces of projects, that all go together, this can be highly dangerous. The default action on a PC is to "merge" data. I have zero idea why OSX is like this. Apparently you can use the terminal window to merge folders which is just awesome -- like a flashback to the 1980's. 
I heard a rumor they've fixed this in "Lion".

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are we starting a list now, of Explorer/Finder differences. Top of my wish list for Finder is a way to make it NOT auto refresh every time I change a file name. Followed quickly behind by easy file deletion.

Andrew Bellware said...

Yes!
I don't know what you mean by "easy file deletion" though.
Although if I were listing other annoyances I'd like things in the "trash" in OSX to not be findable by applications. That way I can temporarily throw something away, make sure that (say) Final Cut isn't using those files, and then go ahead an empty the trash without being... surprised.

Anonymous said...

I haven't come across that one but yeah, it definitely makes sense. I was once told I couldn't empty the trash because Final Cut was using the files. Really? Why did I delete them then?

For the delete thing I mentioned. In Explorer, you can use delete on the keyboard to delete a file. In Finder you can use Command-Delete - BUT you're then kicked out of that folder into the one above it which is the really stupid part since you have to navigate back to where you were to begin with.

Andrew Bellware said...

Ah yes, I get you. You know, for as advanced as OSX is, sometimes there's just a tad more engineering going on on the PC side. I'm hoping that Apple doesn't screw up the next version of Final Cut and I'm hoping Microsoft doesn't screw up the next version of Windows.
Note that "hope" and "expecting" are two different things... ;-)

Anonymous said...

It's so true. OS X (and Apple generally) does so many things really well (spotlight, yes please and thank you) but the shortcomings feel so obvious that sometimes you have to wonder what they're thinking. These are things (what we've mentioned) that barely seem functional in comparison. Does Apple just not want to seem like they're copying Windows? Are we back in the schoolyard here?

The upcoming OS X Lion now has the option to run applications in full screen. It's taken you how long, Apple to fit that in? Granted, who even knows how it will work in practice.

And I totes agree about hoping vs expecting.

While some of Final Cut's new features seem useful (background rendering) I don't know why they went with such a dramatic interface change (visually if nothing else). It looks a lot like Premiere now - of which I'm not really a fan.

I guess we'll see what happens.