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Macos file explorer is the most annoying and unintuitive software I use regularly.

1. Pressing the delete key does not delete the selected file.

2. Enter key renames the file???

3. Space key opens up some sort of fake viewer that doesn't always work.

4. There is no good way to browse a folder of pictures.

5. No way to navigate to home folder.

6. No way to see full filenames for long names.

7. Bin does not work consistently. I created a shortcut to it in the side panel, but that cannot be used for deleting an app.

It is just horrible to use.

You’re getting downvoted but honestly I can’t understand why anyone would defend Finder. It’s appalling. Half of the power user functions one expects from a modern file browser are hidden behind non-discoverable hot keys and the other half just don’t exist at all.

It’s honestly the worst file manager of all the major desktop environments. And I’m including the GNOME here too.

Because people can't stand criticism of their expensive toys.

Bingo, though some of us are cynical enough to encourage it lol

I fully agree. I always had to resort to command line when I couldn't find cut&paste in Finder. Finder was frankly the worst part of having to use Mac for a project.

Th3yre getting downvoted because they seem somewhat intentionally obtuse.

For example; dragging home into the sidebar creates an easy way to get there. It’s also in the menu under “go”.

There are icon and “cover flow’ views that work for navigating images.

That “fake viewer” is the standard preview. It works reasonably well for most files, and you can install additional viewers.

Yeah, finder is a horrible mishmash of ideas poorly executed… but:

1. macOS standard behaviour - actions require the command key.

2. Yeah, that’s strange. I’d expect a command key to be required.

3. That’s quick look. The behaviour relies on applications registering an extension, and many don’t. Still, I use it all the time for PDFs and images.

4. Nope.

5. Go -> Home. Command shift H iirc.

6. The inspector will show you. This isn’t a good solution, but it is one.

7. Yeah. NFI why it just lives in the dock.

Is there a better file browser? The macOS one is by far the one I’ve used the most (os6,7..X). Many routine operations seem hidden or non-existent when I try to move to windows or linux (which I’m keen to do).

Double Commander works on macOS too.

1. Command key requirement keeps you from accidentally deleting files

2. I actually really like Enter to rename now that I’m used to it. Renaming is a common operation in many instances.

3. Yes, space key opens quick view. It works with most common file types and is very fast. I don’t see a problem here.

4. This is a good point. The answer used to be Cover Flow but they unfortunately got rid of that very nice feature.

5. The home folder is not commonly used in their UI paradigm.

6. I’m not sure I’ve seen this behavior.

7. This is a good point.

I’d agree that “Finder is just horrible to use for someone who expects Linux- or Windows-like behaviors.” Once you’ve learned it, though, it’s mostly fine and, in my opinion, a bit better overall than Windows Explorer.

Yes, it could be improved. They really need a better cover flow replacement for browsing a folder of images or documents, for example. And they clearly haven’t been making much of an effort over the past few years to improve Finder beyond minor tweaks here and there. But it does its job overall, and long-time users (like myself) will miss features like Enter-to-rename if they adjust them to match the conventions in other operating systems.

There are also alternative file managers for Mac OS like Commander One and Path Finder for people who want more features.

> 1. Command key requirement keeps you from accidentally deleting files

You have the trash can for that.

> 2. I actually really like Enter to rename now that I’m used to it. Renaming is a common operation in many instances.

Agreed, so give it to a key like F2. The most common operation on a file is to open it. Enter should do that.

> 6. I’m not sure I’ve seen this behavior.

If you have a file with a long name "a_file_with_a_really_very_long_name.txt" will show up as an icon with "a_file_with_a...long_name.txt". Even if you select it, the name will not show. This is very annoying when I have similarly named files with slight differences.

> I’d agree that “Finder is just horrible to use for someone who expects Linux- or Windows-like behaviors.” Once you’ve learned it, though, it’s mostly fine and, in my opinion, a bit better overall than Windows Explorer.

I think you are right in part. Most of my pain is due to unfamiliarity. However there are a few things that I feel are genuinely horrible, and should be fixed. I think File Manager in Windows is a much better designed app with a very thoughtful attention to features and detail. You can get used to anything, but you shouldn't have to.

This is mostly a historical thing. There’s no real reason to use .dmg these days - historically it was the only Apple-supported way of compressing macOS files and keeping their resource forks intact. These days .zip is fine.

That said there isn’t an ‘install’ as such on macOS. Applications isn’t a special folder, it’s a regular folder like anything else. Putting an application bundle on your local disk anywhere is sufficient to get file type mappings to work.

The downside of course is there’s no corresponding uninstall that removes anything extra the app dropped in to ~/Library.

So if installation means simply moving an application to your local disk, or specifically to the Applications folder... then how does stuff end up in ~/Library instead?

Preferences, caches, etc. general by-products.

The app puts it there when it runs.

There totally is an install. Tons of apps use a Windows-style install process.

For applications there is no Windows style install process where things like the registry have to be updated, the os manages these associations itself.

For things like kernel extensions yes there’s an installer, and some more invasive apps do that as well. But for a plain app there’s no _need_ for an installer. That doesn’t prohibit them of course.

At work we make a .pkg inside a .dmg, and I'm told this is because that's the only way to have an icon?

> Putting an application bundle on your local disk anywhere is sufficient to get file type mappings to work.

How does this work "under the hood"?

"Bundles" and "packages" as a general concept are interesting. Lots of games from DOOM upwards use "packfiles", which are effectively lots of files in a never-unpacked container. You can't see them in the filesystem, because the intent was to avoid incurring filesystem overhead for them. MacOS bundles appear to have gone in the opposite direction: the structure is brittle (if you move anything it breaks signing), but it's unpacked into the filesystem.

> that's the only way to have an icon

Icon for what? .apps inside dmgs have icons just fine, like anywhere else (locally). Moreover, people add background images via some special metadata files, to have those arrows telling you to drop the .app onto the symlink to the Applications folder.

A .app inside a zip is fine.

Under the hood, Apple used to have a tech note on it but I can’t find it right now. Essentially the OS uses file system event notifications to watch for bundles being added or removed. It maintains a database of the mappings declared in the plist for fast lookups.

For apps that are not installed via an App Store… most will come in either an installer as a PKG file or as just the app files inside of a ZIP or DMG container.

With PKGs you double click the file and it leads you through the installation process.

With DMG, these mount as disk images and you can then just drag the app into the applications folder. Sometimes they include a link inside the DMG to that applications folder to simplify that process.

With ZIP, you double-click the zip file and it unpacks in the current directory. Then you drag the app into the applications folder. These are mainly uses by individual developers or small shops who don’t want to go to the trouble of a PKG or DMG container.

Uninstall generally just means dragging an app from applications to the trash can. There is no registry and most apps don’t install helper apps. Those you usually uninstalled via the PKG.

I usually find the easiest way of installing software on macOS is homebrew.

But as great as homebrew is, I’m still left irritated that one of the most profitable companies in the world could make their flagship operating system such a fucking mess.

Why is it that free operating systems do a far far better job at managing software installs than any of the commercial ones?

Ways I can install software in Ubuntu:

Apt Dpkg Snap AppImage Flatpak Pip Cargo Homebrew Make install

And there's pacman, nix, rpm, and a bunch of other package managers for other distros.

It's actual worse now than it's ever been. Every program seems to have a different way to install it, or multiple ways and the versions in each package manager are different.

Since openly development systems often give you the most choices, you have way more ways to install software than you listed.

But for most purposes, what you'll need on a typical Ubuntu box is all available in the Apt repositories.

Giving options doesn't mean you have to use those options. With Ubuntu, you can safely assume (most of the time) that what you need is in a Apt repository. Compare this with macOS where applications does really come from anywhere and it's not safe to assume you can install application from any one place.

In my experience, recently developed applications are rarely in Apt and use one of the above listed distribution methods.

My counter-point to the parent is that installing software in Linux is NOT objectively better, in the sense that it's easier. Software that targets Linux almost always comes with installation instructions one must read (I'm not referring to the normal utilities, etc that have been around forever).

As an end-user who's barely involved in packaging anything, i strongly disagree with your point. On free systems, installing a package can either be super easy (apt install from official repos) or harder and you have to read instructions.

It is harder to install software that has not been reviewed/vetted (yet) and as a user i believe that's a very good thing. That's the only reason out of the many non-technical GNU/Linux users i know, i've never even once seen a virus like i have seen the same people get on Windows/Mac.

"Download & run" untrusted code from the Internet is very much an anti-pattern for security. I'm really glad AppImage exists for some usecases (as it does support PGP signatures for releases), but i'm really glad it's not the go-to method for releasing software.

Also worth noting, there's exactly one reasonably-secure alternative to distro packages, and that's GNU/guix, another distro inspired by nix but with much higher security standards (bootstrappability, "channel introductions", etc). Maybe some day our distros will be packaged with GNU/guix and a GNOME Software (or equivalent) backend for graphical usage?

I’d estimate that I need to read install instructions for maybe 1 in 20 pieces of software I install on desktop Linux (server is a little different because you’ll have config files that need to be coded in Ansible etc but we are talking desktop OSs anyways). Whereas if it wasn’t for homebrew, an unofficial hack, it would be 100% of software on macOS.

That doesn’t strike me as Linux being particularly worse.

> Ways I can install software in Ubuntu: > > Apt Dpkg Snap AppImage Flatpak Pip Cargo Homebrew Make install

Ways most users install applications in Ubuntu - the software repo/software center.

All those other options are options that most users don't use anyway.

> And there's pacman, nix, rpm, and a bunch of other package managers for other distros.

That's irrelevant - user's on a redhat system aren't going to get confused by the options for a debian system. You present those as if a user has to navigate all of those and make a decision which is patently incorrect.

> Every program seems to have a different way to install it,

You're correct, that is a recent thing and it's because software vendors (Microsoft, etc) are trying to make their delivery system the same for all supported platforms, so they tend to default for the lowest common denominator (i.e. the platform with the worst software installation support), which is Windows.

> You're correct, that is a recent thing and it's because software vendors (Microsoft, etc) are trying to make their delivery system the same for all supported platforms

I don't think the state of Linux package management has anything to do with Microsoft.

You dont have to 'Install' those apps. You're just moving their resource bundle (which yes, is a folder, but most people will not ever know) to a nice place where its easy to find. You can put it where ever you want, but there is an expectation that you will use Applications folder to keep things tidy. I dont see how its confusing, or why a normal user would be confused? They don't know anything about it being a folder unless they explicitly try and open it...