Mac OS X system & software stuff
I finally returned to the appleinsider forums yesterday night when i couldn’t sleep (great place to waste your time) and came across this post: a reason why mac os x panthers finder is brushed metal in which there’s some speculation that it might be a clue that eventually some apps which are used for management of your data (like itunes and iphoto) will be integrated with the finder. I had exactly the same thought before on the same day. I had the idea when browsing a directory of images, incidentally the first time i missed a win xp feature, the image preview. All the images were of temporary importance and therefore i didn’t bother to import them into iphoto to save me the hassle of getting rid of them afterwards again, so i opened them one by one in preview. This, of course, sucked. My main grief with the current set of iApps is that they are terribly bad at handling temporary or disposable files. I let itunes manage my music library because it’s doing a great job, but i don’t dare opening some short sound clips i just downloaded for a quick listen in itunes because it’ll import it into my library. If i wanted to delete the file afterwards i would have to delete the actual file i downloaded, plus the copy in my itunes library, therefore i usually just open those files with vlc. Tighter integration of the iApps into mac os x’s finder would be a great and elegant solution for the problem.
The second interesting thread showed some concept mock-ups of dock piles. Looks very cool, i want those. Also, check out this demo of an afaik older and abandoned piles feature. Looks quite interesting, too.
Then there’s this thread about an alternate expose show desktop effect. Nice to try, but i prefer the default behaviour. Offers some insight into earlier expose concepts.
Finally, from the cool apps department and also via a pointer from the appleinsider forums: shiira, a webkit based, opensource browser made in japan. I’m currently typing this post in it, and even though it’s not quite ready for primetime yet, it’s promising. It feels a little faster than safari and got some quite nice interface ideas, but it’s still a little rough around the edges. Give it some time and it might become another viable mac os x browser alternative. It can even share bookmarks with safari, making migration very fast and convenient.