Leopard Review: Finder & Quicklook

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.

What's New

New Look. I mentioned in the previous article that Leopard has undergone a system-wide facelift. Although the changes are hardly revolutionary, many of the rough edges and inconsistencies have been removed. With Tiger, it was clear that Apple was working to redefine the look of its operating system. Oddly, they didn't change the appearance of the programs that people use most: Finder and Safari. That has now changed, and Finder has received the polish it has always deserved.

The new Finder possesses a looks that is almost a carbon copy of iTunes.

There are sure to be some who criticize Finder's new look. They're free to do so. I, for one, think that Apple was wise in this decision. The most popular media player in the world (on both Windows and Macs) is iTunes. As someone who worked as a computer salesperson for nearly 2 years, I can attest to the fact that one of the most popular reasons people give when they choose to avoid the Mac platform is that they would have to learn everything over again. The validity of that excuse is slowly disintegrating. With the primary Mac program designed to look very familiar to Mac and Windows users alike, Apple has ensured a much smoother transition for those looking to make the "big switch."

In my opinion, the most significant aesthetic change in Finder has been to the sidebar. I've always liked the sidebar in Finder. However, I've also been critical. The sidebar assumed too much. It assumed that the user knew what the icons represented, which was often not the case. There was also the issue of the horizontal line in the sidebar. I knew why it was there, but the average Joe probably had no clue. Following in the steps of iTunes, iPhoto, etc., Finder's sidebar now employs "all-caps" headings to distinguish different groups of shortcuts. Each is collapsible if a person wishes to hide a given category.

The brushed metal look of Finder is gone at last!

CoverFlow. CoverFlow is a technology that was originally created by an independent developer and later purchased by Apple in 2006. The technology was first incorporated into iTunes 7.1. This unique method of previewing album art created quite a stir in the technology world. Apple promoted this feature at every opportunity. When Apple released the feature set of the new Finder, I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that Apple had (gasp) included CoverFlow.

Finder includes 4 optional viewing styles. CoverFlow is arguably the flagship viewing method and can be activated by clicking the on the button illustrated below.

 
Preview Icons. Although less advertised, Leopard's icon view has been dramatically improved. In the past, the appearance of an icon was set by the default program which opened it. Each icon of a similar type (e.g. Excel documents) was exactly the same. There was no simple method of visually distinguishing between icons of the same type. In Leopard, any supported document type has the ability to show an icon-sized preview of the actual document.

Spotlight. Tiger premiered this new technology. It allowed users to quickly and effortlessly search the contents of their computers. Compared to Windows XP, it was beautifully fast. Rather than waiting several minutes to retrieve search results, Tiger's Spotlight only required several seconds. In Vista, Microsoft began to offer a similar quick-search service. Apple seemed to recognize the threat to their desktop search supremacy. Spotlight in Leopard is certainly a prime example of a product being improved because of a competitive environment.

Besides even faster results for simple file searches, Spotlight has a few new tricks up its sleeve. Type in a calculation, and voila! behold your answer.

When a single word is typed, Spotlight provides a quick link to its dictionary definition. I have come across a few words that don’t seem to register, but aside from a couple fairly minor inconsistencies, it’s a handy new feature.

The ability to launch applications by searching spotlight has been sped up dramatically in Leopard. This is a feature that I personally use quite frequently. By activating Spotlight using the keyboard (Command-SpaceBar), I can type in the first few letters of a program's name, and voila, the programs name appears and can be launched by simpling hitting the enter (return) key.

Quicklook. In case the icons previews and CoverFlow wasn't enough to offer users a quick glimpse into the contents of their documents, Apple included another previewing feature called Quicklook. "How does it work," you say? Simple. Suppose you're looking for your most recent resume (true story in my case). You go to the folder where the resume is stored, and low and behold, there are 8 different files called "resume_unindicativesuffix". Technically you could simply open each one of the files one at a time and try to locate your most recent revision that way. You could also arrange the icons according to date modified. These options are either more time consuming, or less than foolproof. Using Quicklook, you can quickly and easily view the contents of your files without actually launching its associated program. In the case of the missing resume, all one needs to do is select an icon (single click) and then tap the space bar. Up pops a full-size preview. The preview can be resized or minimized with another tap of the space bar.

Stability and Performance. For many years, it seemed that anytime a program added visual effects, it immediately took a terrible turn for the worse. The performance usually suffers, and all in all, no one is further ahead. Aside from the immediately apparent performance hit, the visual effects usually do little to nothing to enhance the user's experience. If anything, the eye candy does little more than get in the way.

The Finder in Leopard certainly has its share of visual effects. Everything seems to shimmer and dance on command. As a power user, my immediate fear was that the visuals might be excessive and simply act to slow the system. Those hesitant to convert to Leopard can be confident in the fact that the new Finder is most certainly no slower than it was in Tiger. On the contrary, it is quite a lot faster.  The aforementioned transformation to Cocoa has done much to speed performance. Finder seems to open faster, navigate more effortlessly, and is less prone to hanging when navigating a network.

What I Like

The Interface. I've always thought highly of the iTunes interface. It’s clean. It’s quick. It’s clear. It’s effective. I was very happy to learn that Apple would be using this interface for Finder. There may be some who disapprove of the new finder for their own reasons. I, for one, welcome the change. Phooey on the nay-sayers.

Sidebar. One of my greatest peeves with Windows Explorer has been the fact that the sidebar is un-customizable (granted, this has been changed somewhat in Vista). The pre-defined shortcuts are for the most part, useless. When I’m saving a document, I don’t need a shortcut to my "Favorites". What am I going to do with that? Save my document to Disney.com? Obviously not. When I’m searching for a file in a folder that I access all the time, I appreciate Mac’s ability to add a specific folder shortcut to the sidebar. Windows offers shortcuts to the Network, Desktop, and My Documents. For complex folder structures, these three shortcuts just don’t cut it. Leopard’s Finder is even better at allowing for shortcuts. The size of the sidebar icons has been decreased from that of Tiger, allowing for more ‘favorites.’ As with Tiger, it’s as easy as dragging a file or folder icon into the sidebar.

 

Quicklook. In all honesty, I initially thought that Quicklook was going to be gimmicky. I figured it would primarily serve to slow the system. Thankfully, I was wrong. Oh so wrong! Quicklook is precisely that: quick! The performance has been impressive on all my test machines (and none of them are super-computers). I’m really liking the fact that accessing Quicklook is as easy as tapping the spacebar; I can guarantee you I would use it far less if it required some obscure keystroke sequence (e.g., Cmd-Option-*-Space-Click). All in all, I give this feature a 4.5 out of 5! “Five of what,” you ask? I haven’t decided. Stars are too cliché. I’ll get back to you on that. For now, just keep in mind that I really like Quicklook.

Icons. Mac OS X (and Windows XP) have offered thumbnail previews of images in the past. Vista began offering thumbnail previews of many more documents types. Apple has followed suit, and is now offering scalable thumbnail previews of many document types. The performance is acceptable. It will only get better! What's not to like? I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say something that may shock many of you. I prefer Vista's preview icons. That's right. I said it. For once, Microsoft has managed to best Apple in the appearance of icons. Shocking! They even managed to come out with lovely previews before Apple! 

What Could Stand Improvement

The overall stability of Leopard is quite impressive. The system hasn't cratered on me as of yet. Having said that, it's not perfectly stable yet. Finder has frozen on me. Icons don't always display as they should, and while I'm writing this, my control panel just froze.  In fact, my whole computer just froze. What a great selling feature. If anyone tries to tell you that Macs never freeze, don't believe them. They do freeze. Arguably not as often, but they freeze nonetheless!

External disk recognition is sometimes a crap shoot with this version of Leopard (10.5.1). I can only hope and pray that my two external firewire drives actually register. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. It seems to depend on the alignment of the stars. This is definitely something that I hope Apple fixes. Soon!

Finder was completely re-written from the ground up for Leopard, so I'm not really surprised to see some bugs. However, Apple will want to focus all of their energy perfecting this integral part of their operating system. If the eye candy suffers as a result, so be it. One doesn't care much about drop shadows and Core Animation when there's trouble accessing folders or when faced by the horrid beach ball of death!