On the original macintosh you used to be able to drag a file or folder from the finder onto the desktop to work on it, then when you’d finished there was a contextual menu item to “return” it to the file. The process clearly replicated an old office filing system; find it in the filing cabinet, take the file/ document out, work on it on your desk and then replace it. Does the modern finder have any preferences that let you still do this?
Regarding folders and tags: A folder is a representation of a mathematical set, its name is the name of that set. Sub-folders are subsets, typically arranged into a hierarchy where each subfolder has a “is-a” or “has-a” relationship to its parent. For example a folder named for a client may contain sub-folders for each project that client has instructed (a “has-a” relationship).
A tag is also a representation of a set, again its name is the name of that set. The advantage of tags, as mentioned in the episode, is that a single document can have many tags and can therefore be allocated to many, disjoint sets. The problem is that tags cannot be arranged hierarchically; there is no “sub-tag” equivalent of a sub-folder. If there were then tags and folders would be identical and one could impose a storage structure using folders (this year’s, last year’s, this office’s, that office’s: what databases call sharding) and a semantic structure using tags. In the good old bad old days of the UNIX CLI, one could do this with file system hard links (i.e. the same document was separately referenced in more than one directory, at least within the same disk drive). Creating hard links was, admittedly, painful in deeply nested directory structures (see the man page for ln), but as far as I can tell the entire concept of hard linking seems to have been discarded in the finder. Does any one know of a finder replacement that supports hard links? Could it be achieved with an action item/ service? DT Pro supports the concept using “replicate” (cf. duplicate, which makes a copy).
Finally, a mathematical set has rules that constrain what can be put into that set. If Apple really want to improve the finder, they should look at how to apply constraints to a tag. For example, if I apply a “client” or a “date” tag, I would like the possible values to be constrained to the “domain” of valid clients or valid dates, thus preventing mis-tagging errors such as a misspelled name or an invalid date.
Has anyone suggestions for finder replacements/ tools that support structured tagging in these ways? I use DT Pro, which is part of the way there, but doesn’t meet the cut on structured tags.
For @MacSparky - I also have several upright Qi charges and have discovered most of them work if you flip the AirPods case upside down! Hope you find it works for yours too!
You know, I’ve never made a smart folder and there are 3-4 searches or scrolls through a folder I do regularly. That’s changing today. Nice crunchy episode!
@ismh when you were talking about gathering files from different folders into PathFinder’s stack – that’s a perfect use for tags, just click on the Jones Acct tag in Finder, and there are all your assets.
The thing I find most helpful with Default Folder X is that it (most of the time) highlights the last file you opened in a particular app. This is great when I’m processing a lot of files – the processing is both cognitively challenging, and mind numbing. DFX remembers what I processed last, so I can just down arrow to select the next file. Without DFX, it’s a matter of scroll, scroll, scroll, which one was it?
I use Path Finder every day. I also have Transmit and have used Forklift in the past. I prefer Path Finder for two main reasons:
The preview module lets me see my PDF drawings with out wasted space around them
Its batch rename function is very convenient and extremely powerful
I have not found another application that does these two features as well as Path Finder. A lot of my work involves checking that the name of the file corresponds correctly to information shown in the title block on the page and follows a particular convention. So the two features I mentioned make my job much easier.
I think this was my favorite episode of the year so far. I have most of these apps, but learned even more and got new ideas for how to use them.
Most importantly, this episode’s discussion helped me rethink some of my processes in ways that aren’t specific to the suggestions given in the show. By that, I mean that I am thinking differently (and more completely) about file management and productivity than I did before. That re-jiggering of my thinking is what makes MPU so important for me. Thanks, guys!
I got a quarter of the way through then had to stop - I’m going to re-listen when I’m at my Mac and not driving so I can make notes and research!
Great episode.
I use a MacBook Pro in a Windows office, and Forklift is a great tool for accessing a Windows shared drive and synching work documents to my Mac and to a Dropbox account. It’s a great tool for this environment.
This episode inspired me to pay a liitle more attention to the Finder and adjust it more to my needs, so thank you! I find Column view most appealing and useful but somehow I can’t set it as default. Even Apple points this out on their support document without clarifying why. Does anybody know why this is the case? And are there any workarounds? Thank you!
Loved this episode, thanks so much for it! I think I’ll have to go and use PathFinder again - I didn’t know you could have a built-in terminal window - might make it easier for me to force myself to learn to use it!! Does the PathFinder terminal respect bash profiles?
The best episodes are the most costly to the audience. We should gather data on listener spending to study this phenomenon, and it could lead to an objective measurement of episode quality. We could call it the Listener Cost Index. Any episode with an LCI above 100 is a “good” episode. Any episode below 100 is questionable.
