Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

One thing that wasn’t talked about during last week’s keynote and Leopard preview that I desperately hoped would be a major topic was the Finder. I think most Mac users will agree that, for such an important part of the operating system, the Finder frankly sucks ass. I’m not speaking about spatialness or interface, I’m speaking about basic functionality. Somewhere on the net, I posted this recipe that I’ve found to be a sure fire way to crash the Finder on my machine:

• Mount an AFP network volume.
• Put my PowerBook to sleep.
• Move out of range of my wireless network, such as going to work form home.
• Wake my PowerBook and attempt to use the Finder. Instant spinning ball! The only way out that I’ve found is to hard restart the machine. And yes, I’ve waited upwards of 20 minutes in the past for the Finder to recover. Relaunching the Finder has never worked for me either.

So what should happen? The Finder should quickly realize the network volume isn’t available and dismount it, causing no interruption to the user. Mac OS is probably the most stable OS I’ve used, which is what makes the flaky Finder so disappointing and aggravating.

Here’s another Finder oddity I discovered this evening: I mounted an AFP network volume, and after some time, I put my PowerBook to sleep. When I woke it up, I couldn’t eject the volume. I could read and write, but not eject. Thankfully, the Finder didn’t hang making the machine useless, as in my previous example. The only way I could dismount the volume was to logout and login again. Completely unacceptable.

Here’s to hoping that Leopard will FTFF. An otherwise excellent operating system deserves better than a flaky file manager such as the Finder in its current incarnation.

Here’s an e-mail I got from my friend John Kurokawa this morning:

Hey Aaron,

… I have to take my PowerBook in to the Apple Store in Cleveland. If anyone ever asks you why they should get AppleCare, show them these pictures.

I walked away from the machine for 2 minutes, and when I came back, found a lovely (Aqua?) blue line running through the screen. It was like I’d been bitchslapped by my ex. It’s there when I boot off my installation CD and it passes the Apple hardware test, so I’m pretty sure it’s a motherboard/videocard problem. Anyway, I’ll take it to a Genius and leave it in the hands of the gods!

…

Later,

John

He’s had that PowerBook for (I think) two years now, and who-knows-what created this particular problem. If I remember correctly, AppleCare for a PowerBook cost somewhere in the $300 range. LCD or logic board replacement would likely cost much more.