I had one of those thoughts again in that state just when you are starting to wake up... I think it's not the first time I've thought about it. I may have just read about this at one point somewhere and now it keeps popping up as a subconscious thought.
Anyway, it's basically this... At some point Apple drops the "Finder" as we know it all together. Instead, there is something for lack of a better name called "NotTheFinder".
Essentially it was a "superset" of iTunes, with essentially the same layout we are familiar with now.
In addition to categories on the left like Music, would be categories like Applications, Utilities, Documents, Movies, Photos (yep, iPhoto also just becomes part of "NotTheFinder" too!)
The quick search feature of iTunes is still there, and so searching for an application or document or song to play or picture to view is really just all the same. Also, the ability to have "favourite" items is also there on the left side below the fixed items. Call them "collections" or whatever, we know them as things like Albums in iPhoto and folders in our current Finder. This new launcher would keep our drives organized for us by creation date regarding all our documents... we normally wouldn't bother doing any folder management like we do today in the Finder. Finding that most recently worked on file would always be easy as you could just go to the group on the left side for today or yesterday, etc. The "NotTheFinder" launcher would actually MOVE a file for us if we change it. Either that or it would just generate an alias to it and keep that alias in the appropriate location for when it was last modified. After all, most of us think that way with everything else we do in our lives... We tend to keep recent work near at hand on our desk, and we tend not to care so much about older stuff, as long as we know it is around somewhere in a filing cabinet.
I wouldn't be surprised if this idea is around in Apple but is waiting for the public to accept the end of the old Finder. I don't think I'd miss managing my stuff... After all, much of my recent files just ends up on the desktop anyway in a folder called "unsorted"!
There's probably launchers out there right now with this sort of interface that copies the look and feel of iTunes so that you avoid the Finder. However, any such shareware is just another program and the files on your drive are not going to be DIRECTLY managed by it all the time. And Finder would still be there hovering around in the background.
Some things could then also be dropped... things like the dock wouldn't be all that important for example.
Anyway. Maybe OS 11.0 will be when this debuts? Or as soon as OS X 10.6? Keep watching for it and you heard about it here first!
Anyway, it's basically this... At some point Apple drops the "Finder" as we know it all together. Instead, there is something for lack of a better name called "NotTheFinder".
Essentially it was a "superset" of iTunes, with essentially the same layout we are familiar with now.
In addition to categories on the left like Music, would be categories like Applications, Utilities, Documents, Movies, Photos (yep, iPhoto also just becomes part of "NotTheFinder" too!)
The quick search feature of iTunes is still there, and so searching for an application or document or song to play or picture to view is really just all the same. Also, the ability to have "favourite" items is also there on the left side below the fixed items. Call them "collections" or whatever, we know them as things like Albums in iPhoto and folders in our current Finder. This new launcher would keep our drives organized for us by creation date regarding all our documents... we normally wouldn't bother doing any folder management like we do today in the Finder. Finding that most recently worked on file would always be easy as you could just go to the group on the left side for today or yesterday, etc. The "NotTheFinder" launcher would actually MOVE a file for us if we change it. Either that or it would just generate an alias to it and keep that alias in the appropriate location for when it was last modified. After all, most of us think that way with everything else we do in our lives... We tend to keep recent work near at hand on our desk, and we tend not to care so much about older stuff, as long as we know it is around somewhere in a filing cabinet.
I wouldn't be surprised if this idea is around in Apple but is waiting for the public to accept the end of the old Finder. I don't think I'd miss managing my stuff... After all, much of my recent files just ends up on the desktop anyway in a folder called "unsorted"!
There's probably launchers out there right now with this sort of interface that copies the look and feel of iTunes so that you avoid the Finder. However, any such shareware is just another program and the files on your drive are not going to be DIRECTLY managed by it all the time. And Finder would still be there hovering around in the background.
Some things could then also be dropped... things like the dock wouldn't be all that important for example.
Anyway. Maybe OS 11.0 will be when this debuts? Or as soon as OS X 10.6? Keep watching for it and you heard about it here first!