Spatial
Everyone says the Finder should be more spatial. But that’s a bit vague—what does it even mean? Here’s an everyday example of why spatiality is nice.
I have several folders on my Mac devoted to solely to images from the internet. Since such images usually have gibberish filenames and the content is what’s important, Cover Flow is perfect for viewing these folders in the Finder. But doing so effectively requires a big Finder window. This is a problem, since most of my Finder windows are small (a folder with, say, ten sub-folders is still a relatively tiny window). The normal browser-like behavior of the Finder is to replace the contents of the front window with the contents of the folder you open. Let’s see how that works for my Wallpapers folder, which I’ve set to always open in Cover Flow (in Show View Options).
My Pictures folder:
And opening Wallpaper:
Ooh, not good. Cover Flow gets squished into that tiny window. I’d have to manually resize it and then do the reverse every time. Now let’s try the same thing under old-school spatial mode (click the pill button on the top right).
Once again, the Pictures folder:
And Wallpaper:
My viewing preferences for this window were preserved from where I left it last. Beautiful.
So what’s the problem? Why don’t I just keep on going in old-school mode for the rest of my days? Unfortunately, the Finder exhibits browser-like behavior for the different views (icon, list, etc.) even when it looks old-school. So if I switch one folder to Cover Flow, then open another that used to be in icon view, that folder will also show up in Cover Flow. The Finder treats the views as a switch for newly opened folders: off or on.
To get the desired effect above, I had to go into View Options and set it manually as I described. New users are never going to see this option, and without it, old-school mode is exactly like browser mode except without the toolbar. In short, it looks inherently worse at face value. Not to mention the annoyance of opening that palette all the time.
