If Apple Inc is looking to revamp Snow Leopard’s Finder they should take a deeper look into PathFinder. There’s an excellent opportunity to bring the finder up to date in the upcoming release and I’d like to see them seize that opportunity. But, it’s doubtful that we’ll be seeing Apple changing things up enough for it to substantially alter the current paradigm of the Finder, so it would be very smart to get some hands on time with Path Finder. It’ll change the way you think about the Finder’s abilities–It really can be a one stop shop for productivity.
Tabbed finder Windows, Application launchers, and Size Browsers.
Table of Contents
Tabbed Finder Windows is where it’s at!
It has been talked about a lot, and Apple has ignored the call entirely, tabbed Finder windows would save many headaches for a lot of people. I would love to minimize the multitude of windows floating around my desktop, as I’m sure most of you would! Eliminating the finder’s pollution would be the first major step towards less clutter. PathFinders M.O. is getting things done quicker and more efficently, so logically, they’ve implmented an excellent tabbed functionality–they’ve even given you the ability to drag and drop files from one tab to another.
Application Launcher
OS X has spotlight, which does a pretty damn good job searching for files and applications, but some people with older Mac’s and limited system resources find that it can be a bit of a hog and bogs down the system quite
a bit. There’s ways to disable it (not for the faint of heart), and now that there’s a whole slew of Application Launchers for OS X it’s starting to look like Apple needs to give users a simple way of disabling spotlight entirely. Path Finder has also thrown its hat into the ring with the other Application Launching software currently on the market. If any of the other features in Path Finder have you considering the software then the Application Launcher might be something that gets you over the hump towards making the financial investment. It’s sleek and simple. It’s light weight, and it doesn’t kill older systems.
Size Browsers
Need to track down run away folders or files? Path Finder has that covered as well!
It’s a finder window with file and folder sizes thrown to the left of each item in the window. It’s going to let you track things down super quickly.
The Main Application Windowpanes
If you don’t believe that this application puts everything at your finger tips you can check out some of the tools they give you right out of the gate.
Processes and Selection Path
Want to see what programs are running and bogging down your system? Want to be able to force quit them without having to leave a finder window? Path Finder does the trick again.
The Terminal
How about doing some terminal magic on the fly? Maybe change some permissions? Check.
What Path Finder Does well.
The whole software bundle does one thing exceptionally well, it gives you the information you need immediately. It gives you tools you need to be productive, and really takes the pain of system maintenance out of the computing experience. It’s unbelievably good at what it does and it certainly helps to declutter and organize your system better.
[image via toopie]
