Apple has changed its mind about DragonDrop, the file moving utility that we reviewed here a few weeks ago, and granted the app a place in the Mac App Store after initially saying it would never back down.
If you know your Apple history, you’ll probably know that NeXTSTEP, the grandfather of modern OS X, had a clever feature called the Shelf, a placeholder where you could temporarily drop files while dragging them from one location to another. Sadly, Mac OS X has never replicated this in Finder.
So today there’s a brand new app for OS X that seeks to fix this. It’s called DragonDrop, and you can buy it for five bucks.
Developer Mark Christian released it independently today after weeks of trying to get it into the Mac App Store. Apple weren’t interested, and rejected it every time.
While there are many features in OS X Lion that excite me, one that does not is the Resume feature. Clearly, Apple thought that opening windows from the last time an App was open would be a time saving feature, but I just find it annoying. Are you with me?
If so, we’ve got three separate ways to get rid of this behavior.
With a quick thumbing of Command+Tab, the built-in OS X Application Switcher is a great way to navigate apps for when your hands are just too busy to leave the keyboard.
One annoyance, though, is that no matter what, Finder is always listed in the Application Swticher, which you may not want to constantly have to be navigating against to go from, say, your e-mail and iTunes. Luckily, for advanced users, removing it from the Application Switcher for good is only a terminal command away.
Wouldn’t it be useful to click a link in Finder that showed only files accessed or created today, yesterday, or within the last week? That would make it significantly easier to find files you’ve been working on but forgotten the location of.
Users of OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard already have this at their fingertips in the Finder sidebar, but Apple saw fit to remove it from OS X Lion, its latest release. Here’s how to restore it.
Apple changed many things on the Finder sidebar with the release of Mac OS X Lion. Probably one of the better changes was how Apple locked down the sidebar. It is now harder to accidentally remove an item from the Favorite section on the sidebar.
If you work in AppleCare or any other kind of support organization you probably want to hug someone for this change, because it probably generated a lot of calls for support in earlier versions of Mac OS X.
You can quickly add items to the Finder Dock or Sidebar with this easy keyboard trick. Although Apple probably meant for it to be primarily used for folders, it actually works on a variety of different file types.
OS X Lion’s Finder is noticeably more drab than its predecessor. The once-colorful sidebar icons have now turned a rather flat shade of gray. In this video, I’ll show you how to restore color to your Finder sidebar icons.
The Mac and Mac OS X have changed tremendously in their nearly three-decade long existence, but some problems stand the test of time. Finder Error Code 36 has plagued Mac users since the Beige Days:
My girlfriend and I have matching 13″ MacBook Pros (4Gigs RAM and both with ample HDs) and are the same “age”. We both are music nuts and have tons of music and my Mac performs beautifully but her computer has been pausing/stalling (with spinning beach ball) when she plays music on iTunes. This happens mainly, but not limited to, when the screensaver starts up. We took it to the Genius Bar and their solution was to disable the screensaver with a hot corner. I find that solution unacceptable.
Ever since the switch to OS X Lion, there’s been a few little tweaks in the Finder that have annoyed me. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like change, but either way, I went about looking how to fix these problems. In this video, I’ll show you how to fix little annoyances you may have found with the Finder in OS X Lion.
Mac OS X Lion looks a lot different from its predecessor Mac OS X Snow Leopard and one of those differences is the sidebar in Finder and Mail. The sidebar looks a lot different because it displays different elements in Lion and the icon it displays aren’t even in color now.
Structurer is a clever free tool for rapidly creating file and folder trees without any messing about in Finder.
Over at GigaOm, Alex Layne asked the question: if Apple killed the Finder, would you miss it?
Hell yes. Yes I would.
Back in Tip #27, we showed you how to use QuickLook, an extremely handy way of previewing all sorts of different files on your Mac.
QuickLook is particularly handy for checking out image files, especially when you have a folder’s worth, all with identical generic icons rather than thumbnail icons, and you’re not sure exactly which one you want.
It also has a hidden secret feature: you can zoom in to images while in QuickLook mode. Here’s how.
Here’s a great tip that’s doing the rounds today. Chris Bowler uses his copy of Transmit as a file browser, because it has two viewing panes built-in, and lets you browse local files in each.
Anyone who has got tired of constantly having to open two adjacent Finder windows to transfer files from one place to another will see why this is a great idea.
Transmit comes with a handful of shortcuts for quick access to your Home folder, Desktop, or Documents folder. It also has a favorites feature – just drag any folder to the starred icon at the far left of the breadcrumb trail at the top of each pane. It also supports the Finder’s four different viewing modes (thumbnails, list, columns and CoverFlow). Great tip if you already have Transmit (or a similar two-pane FTP browser – anyone got any suggestions?) installed.
(Hat-tip to Minimal Mac for the link.)
Waaaay back in Tip #9, I said we’d take a closer look at the Finder sidebar. Let’s do that right now.
A Finder window has the Toolbar at the top. (We looked at how to customize it in Tip #11.) This is where you have controls for what you’re doing with the Finder, as well as (optionally), shortcuts to specific things like files or applications.
Today we’re looking at the sidebar to the left. It’s the place for shortcuts to locations. Here, you can put folders, drives or volumes that you want swift access to from everywhere.
We’ve just looked at user accounts, and showed you how to go about setting up your own personal account.
New accounts will be created with what’s called a Home folder. This is the area of the filesystem where everything created and edited by you, using your user account, will be kept.
The double mirrored face in the blue Mac Finder icon has always been a recognizable piece of Macintosh lore. But did the concept for this graphic originate in Cupertino in the 1980s, or much earlier on another continent? Blogger Cattani Simone has noticed some similarities to a portion of Picasso’s painting Two Characters (Deux Personnages), 1934, located at MART, the Museum of Modern Art in Rovereto (TN) Italy:
The icon of the Macintosh Finder seems very similar to the face of one of the characters of the work of the Spanish artist … Initially I told myself that it wasn’t possible … I’ve never heard about that and anyway someone would know the story for sure … but on the internet there seems to be no correspondence between these things … or at least … No one has mentioned it in the network ….
Coincidence, or Great Artist Stealing? Inquiring minds need to know…
[via MacInTouch] [Daring Fireball]
This is one of those simple little things that’s so obvious, and so simple, that it’s easy for newcomers to miss.
How do you rename a file on a Mac? If you’re coming from Windows, you’ll be accustomed to right-clicking on it and choosing the “Rename” menu item, but it’s not there on OS X.
