As you may know, the presentation mode for macOS Finder windows and tabs can rapidly be changed. Command 1 for icon view, Command 2 for list view, Command 3 for column view, and Command 4 Cover Flow. Each has its uses, including Cover Flow.

The ability to rapidly switch modes means I can, for example, use column view to drill down into deeply nested directories that contain thousands of automatically generated screenshots. When I'm in the directory I want, I then can choose Cover Flow view and use it to navigate a directory containing thousands of images to find the image that I want.

That is, if the images are very similar with subtle differences, I can relatively quickly find the state I'm looking for by scanning for changes using Cover Flow and scrolling left or right.

If I need to sort on demand, I can simply type Command 2 to access list view and then click on the column by which I'd like to sort. I can type Command-J and add additional columns if the one I need is not already visible.

Basically, the different Finder view modes are not one-size-fits-every-task. Many people never have an opportunity or take the time to understand how the different presentations of the file hierarchy can provide different features. Some users swear allegiance to the CLI (technically not a GUI). Others insist on list view. Still others insist that column view is the best way.

But there are some people who use different GUI modes depending on their purpose. I know I do. Personally, I'm grateful that the macOS Finder has several modes for presenting the same data because each mode provides a different set of features and I depend on these features in different ways at different times.

EDIT: grammar, clarity

> You can't even "reload" to reset their location

You can.

Right-Click/Cmd-Click > Arrange By... or Clean Up By...

You dislike the particular compromises made to implement a bad version of the ideal. That does not mean the ideal is to be avoided, just that it is more complicated to achieve than the OSX team was willing to implement.

I'm not sure how you're meaning "ideal". The point of my post was to illustrate that while some may prefer the "spatial" finder, others (such as my self) view that as the absolute worst behavior of the finder. So there are clearly two distinct ideals at play here, and the compromise sucks for both parties.

I agree with all of your points and would add:

1. Why is it so hard to keep track of recently recently touched files and folders in Finder?

2. Why does the save/open dialogue constantly forget where I was just saving/opening stuff?

3. Why doesn't opening a new tab open to your current location instead of ~/?

4. Why can't I completely customize the sidebar in a Finder window?

5. Why isn't there a native window switcher keyboard mapping?

6. Why do menubar items just vanish without a trace when menus need horizontal space?

I could go on but these things persist as problems for years while Apple focuses its efforts on superficial UI gimmicks.

1. Go to All My Files and order by date in list view perhaps?

2. Dependent on the application. Eg. for wxWidgets (which wraps Cocoa) you have to supply the default directory when the dialog is created. If you are a poor coder, you'll put a dumb value in here instead of remembering the CWD or recently used dir, hence the dialog showing the wrong dir all the time. It's basically down to each app to tell the dialog where it should start.

3. Not sure on this one - I thought it was a preference.

4. You can remove and add stuff - what else did you want to do? You wouldn't want that horrible places/links area of Windows 10's Explorer would you? It's horrible.

5. cmd-' I think, to switch windows inside the current app. Alternatively I map my bottom right screen zone as "show all windows", and map ctrl-up to do the same.

6. Daft isn't it? The menu font should decrease perhaps. The difficulty is I have loads of stuff in the menubar top right (sort of like Windows taskbar) so what can the menu do if it runs out of space?

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

1. Works but no way to include recent directories. I've tried smart search queries for this but it doesn't work. I usually need to recall locations of groups of files more so than a stream of touched files. Also, what if I want to create multiple versions of this with various filters. Again, saved searches don't work (or at least didn't when I tried it).

2. This is true, but obviously leaving it up to devs is a failed strategy that Apple should take control of.

3. There's a silly option to right click on the path at the bottom to open current location in a new tab but no global pref that I'm aware of. It seems like an easy one to implement!

4. I want that list of recently-touched folders in the sidebar.

5. It works but only within the current app, so you need to alternate between cmd-' and cmd-tab. I want something like witch. It's one thing windows does better.

6. They should collapse into a menu, similar to bartender.

Point 1 - what a pity! On Windows we can use Everything which uses the NTFS index to do really fast searches; it is a pity there isn't the same function on Mac OS filesystem (as far as I know).

Note that point 2 is the same problem on any OS - if you open a file dialog, you have to supply the working directory for the dialog so it affects Mac OS, Windows, Linux etc.

It isn't a problem that Apple should take care of - who says the dialog box should always go back to the same directory? In some cases it might not be required, which is why they leave it up to the application devs. Tell your app devs to stop being so lazy.

For point 5, it is debatable. On Windows if you have multiple non-modal (or even modal) dialogs open as children of an application, Windows can sometimes get the Z order wrong and there is no way to alt-tab to that window, as alt-tabbing shows the parent window. So having a window switch option would be great (actually Windows 10 fixes this a bit with its Windows-tab overview system).

I started wondering if there is no solution to this, so I posted a question to AskDifferent. This is the solution that was suggested and it looks extremely promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4unOC5ZDT98

> 1. Why is it so hard to keep track of recently recently touched files and folders in Finder?

This one's sort of on the user. Not sure how it could be simplified.

> 2. Why does the save/open dialogue constantly forget where I was just saving/opening stuff?

This is dependent on the application doing the saving, not on the Finder. Some applications are very good at remembering last-saved location. Photoshop and BBEdit are good examples of this, especially Photoshop which has per-menu-item preferences for things like Open, Save, and Export. However, many applications have developers not familiar with macOS conventions and so don't provide such affordances (I won't single out any applications because they really are too numerous to mention.)

> 3. Why doesn't opening a new tab open to your current location instead of ~/?

This is customizable in Finder > Preferences… I'm not sure what you mean by "current location". If you mean duplicate where you are now there are other ways to do it.

I personally have a AppleScript that copies my current POSIX path to my clipboard. I type Command T to open a new tab, Type Command-Shift G to "Go to Folder" and type Command V to paste what's on my clipboard.

But I'm not sure that's what you're looking for. You might head on over to http://discussions.apple.com and ask over there.

> 4. Why can't I completely customize the sidebar in a Finder window?

Yeah the customizability is restricted, mainly because letting it be too customizable means inexperienced users can get their sidebar where it's next to impossible to provide support. That said, advanced users usually know that the sidebar is only to store a few handy items. I mainly use it only for visual confirmation that my remote mounts and local disks are mounted.

I use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the file system in the Finder.

> 5. Why isn't there a native window switcher keyboard mapping?

I think you're looking for Command ` and Command-shift `. This works pretty much system wide (except for a few applications by software vendors that. Just. Refuse. Native. Keyboard shortcuts.)

> 6. Why do menubar items just vanish without a trace when menus need horizontal space?

Do you mean that your menubar is so crowded that you lose menu items? I think I recall this happening and, to be honest, I don't have any solutions here. You might head on over to http://discussions.apple.com. People can be really helpful there.

Good luck.

I hate Launchpad. You can organise any of the icons by name or date etc., just manually. Clicking around a grid of many icons is no fun (I am sure it is easy on a fresh empty Mac). I use my Desktop for putting files I am working on before I have truly finished with them (sort of a TODO area). If they are out of sight, they go out of mind and I forget to deal with them.

And you can't even snap windows left-and-right like in other OS's. Apple is too caught up on trying to be that anti-establishment-use-different-key-combos-than-the-standard-and-forget-about-standardized-ports sort of workshop. They'd rather do it different than do it practical as it's done in Windows and Linux (well, depending on the Window manager). :)

Since the Macintosh predates Windows and Linux, it's arguably the Macintosh that set the standard and the others that are anti-establishment. :-)

Seriously, Apple is very unlikely to change the keyboard defaults to match Windows, since (among other reasons) it would unnecessarily aggravate long-time Mac users.

Edit: Long-pressing the green zoom button in El Capitan lets you move the window left or right to a half-full-screen view -- not exactly what you probably have in mind, but a reasonable approximation.

> since (among other reasons) it would unnecessarily aggravate long-time Mac users.

As if that has ever stopped them (see: Final Cut "Pro" X)

I assume that that doesn't take up a half-hour animation like going full-screen does?

I'm on 10.10 Yosemite, and have no desire to upgrade, since I'm sure that the annoying full-screen functionality is now slightly different and I'll have to spend a few minutes trying to figure out how to un-fuck it again.

> use-different-key-combos-than-the-standard

As someone who lives in the command line, the fact that they use the standard readline/emacs key combos is one of the few things I really appreciate about OSX.

For sure. And you can actually copy/paste normally in the command line without the use of the shift key.

Apple is different from the standard because the standard sucks. With macOS you get: CLI bindings on control, GUI bindings with command, and text entry with option and shift. The Windows equivalent is just a mess, even with an extra Windows™ key that ends up being mostly useless. And don't get me started on Ubuntu.

It's not just Emacs bindings, you can customize system-wide text area navigation (including any well-behaved apps)[1]. It's one of many things I appreciate about OSX.

[1]: http://xahlee.info/kbd/osx_keybinding.html

I think these boil down to personal preferences. My home/preferred OS is Mac, my work OS is Windows, and I find myself just preferring how macOS handles things just because it is more hands off in my opinion.

I disabled window snapping because I don't like the OS meddling with where I put windows - I dislike having hot-corners that activate when I don't intend them to, and it's frustrating to have things resize on me when I'm arranging windows for my viewing needs.

I also dislike having so much functionality on CTRL in windows since I find I get a lot of annoying unexpected behavior due to my own laziness. On OS X, typing short cuts are tied to CMD, but a few crucial editing shortcuts are tied to option, such as deleting the entire preceding word. On Windows, this is on CTRL and sometimes I screw up and don't release ctrl fast enough so it catches my next keystroke with CTRL and tries to perform a command. I grant this is my problem since I'm either too slow or fast and my hands are trained for an OS X keyboard, but it just makes more sense to my mind.

I don't think this is so much "anti-establishment" as much as just a different way of doing things, and I like the idea of keeping the commands separated a little. It's the same with alt-tabbing/cmd-tabbing - I understand the way Windows does it, but I like the way OS X does it better. CMD+Tab for apps, CMD+~ for windows within an app instead of all windows on the same...um...chain I guess.

It's not that I can't use Windows (quite the opposite), I just dislike it's attempts at convenience. I'm glad it's a setting, so I have no ill-will really, but I think it's just preference.

I've been pretty happy with this app for snapping windows: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

I like Spectacle, which looks like it has similar functionality to Magnet but is free and open source on GitHub:

https://www.spectacleapp.com/

https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle

> And you can't even snap windows left-and-right like in other OS's.

For apps that support split-view, you can do that in one of the following ways:

• The easiest is to just press and hold on a window's Green/Fullscreen button.

• Activate Mission Control, then drag a normal window to the desktop space of an existing fullscreen window.

• Activate Mission Control, then drag a window into a blank space at the top to make it fullscreen, then drag another window to that newly created desktop space to make them share it in split-view.

Mission Control can be activated by:

• Hard-dragging a window by its titlebar to outside the top of the screen to activate Mission Control.

* Pressing F3.

* Throwing the mouse cursor to a preset Hot Corner.

I install ShiftIt and use the keyboard to do that, just like Windows+left/right/up/down in Windows 7+.