This is the first of (hopefully) many tutorials that I will be providing on this site. I have been wanting to post some tutorials on my site for quite some time. However, I never had the resources (legally) before. Initially, I was thinking of creating some basic Mac OS X tutorials. In the last few months, Apple has posted many excellent tutorials, covering almost all of their programs and devices. There are a lot of excellent, free apps that are lacking solid video support documentation. I have a lot to learn about video tutorials, but I have to start somewhere. As with the rest of my site, hopefully someone finds this helpful. Please leave a comment if you are so inclined.

As I write this, I'm sitting behind a 19" monitor. The quality of the images and text on the screen is quite impressive. It's not a professional grade unit, it gets the job done. Monitors of this caliber are commonplace. If I were to walk into a Best Buy today, I would find many monitors much like this one for low low prices everyday (No, that was not a paid product placement. In fact, I don't really like Best Buy at all). I digress. Back to monitors. My point was that monitors these days are very...well..good. However, it was not too long ago, that the flat panel LCD was only a thing of science fiction. In those days, CRT's roamed the earth (Cathode Ray Tubes for uninitiated). During the late 1990's, they had evolved into bulky behemoths. They had sqare(ish) screens (4:3 ratios), and a large 19" CRT monitor would suck power like a herd of vacuum cleaners. Their shear size required that one have at least 3 acres of free desk space dedicated to the monitor alone.

I believe it was an old friend of mine that once told me, “There are two kinds of computer users: those who back up their files and those who have never experienced catastrophic data loss.” It would seem that backing up one’s files is much like exercise: everyone knows that it should be done, but very few make it a habit. Allow me to fabricate some statistics. In 1943, only 3.2% of left-handed Americans backed up their data regularly. That number rose by 1% during the great virus strike of 1957. However, since then, the percentage of people who regularly back up has remained fairly constant. The results are clear: not enough people back up their files!

I first began using Macs back in November of 2005. By some miracle, I twisted my parents’ arms into getting a shiny new iMac. This was only overshadowed by the fact that it was only two months before Apple would drop-kick the PowerPC processor and opt instead for the speedier, more powerful dual core Intel processors (thanks, Apple; great timing). During the first while that I used a Mac, I couldn’t help but be bedazzled by all the new features and the glitzy effects that the Mac had to offer. Also, I thought the Finder was God’s greatest gift to humanity. It was simple, it was clean, and it was relatively fast. Arguably, my favorite feature was the ability to add favorites into the left sidebar of Finder.

Over time, I became more critical of Finder. When working over a network, it was downright bipolar. One minute, it would behave swimmingly. It would quickly detect networked computers and allow me to effortlessly browse remote folders. The next minute, something would interrupt the connection briefly, and Finder would panic. It forgot who it was and essentially froze for 5 minutes until it finally redetermined its identity.

Finder's speed was also inconsistent. Loading folders with a large number of files in them (i.e., Applications folder) was a sometimes a slow-ish process.

In reading online blogs and Mac forums, I realized that I was not alone. In fact, there were many in the blogosphere who utterly hated Finder. Some had hoped that Apple would upgrade Finder when Tiger was released, but to no avail. Finder remained essentially unchanged. It was still plagued by little nuisances and held back by old legacy code (Carbon) that it had inherited from the Macs of yesteryear.

Considering that the Finder is such an integral part of a Mac user’s experience and efficiency, one might have thought that Apple would have revamped Finder much sooner. On the other hand, any change to finder would be difficult and would need to be extensive in order to be worthwhile. There was no sense going half way. With Leopard, Apple finally (thankfully) took the plunge! Finder has radically changed. It has fully freed itself from the shackles of the past and leapt into a bright new tomorrow. It has changed its spots, if you will.