Welcome to Part 2 of Deep Thought’s review of Mac OS X Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s venerable operating system. In Part 1 we discussed the user interface changes in Leopard; for the most it is an improvement but there are some areas that could be implemented better.

Like the first part, this section has a score at the end of the article. Again, note that this score pertains only to this section and not to the review as a whole. When our review is complete we will assign a cumulative score.

This second part will cover Spotlight and the Finder. I am reviewing both in the same article because Spotlight and Finder are tightly integrated in Leopard. No longer is there a fundamental difference between a Spotlight search and a Finder search; the only things you don’t get in the Finder that you get in the Spotlight search menu are calculations and word definitions. I’ll explain this more in a moment. For now, let’s take a quick look back in time.

A spotlight on Spotlight

Spotlight: the early days

Spotlight was hyped as one of the main features in Tiger, and it was an improvement over pervious search functions on Mac OS X in terms of speed. But unfortunately, Spotlight left a lot to be desired. Users expected an instant search feature; instead Spotlight in Tiger had an annoying tendency to lag before displaying results. And for some inexplicable reason, if you selected the “Show All” command from the Spotlight menu in Tiger, Spotlight would spawn another window that didn’t belong to any application and could easily get lost in a pile of windows. What we Mac users had was a great idea that needed a little refinement.

Spotlight grows up

If you’ve used Spotlight in Tiger, you know how to use Spotlight in Leopard. The basic concept is the same, though some of the minutiae is different. The biggest difference? Spotlight is actually very fast! A search for “Deep Thought” brought back 1,750 results within about a second and a half, if that, on my MacBook. The lag that was present in Tiger is now gone. Spotlight now makes an apt application launcher, whereas Tiger’s incarnation of Spotlight was too slow for such a use.

Spotlight can add, too!

Spotlight includes a couple “convenience” features. First of all, if you type a search term (e.g. “apple"), the Dictionary definition for “apple” will appear in the Spotlight results. Also, if you quickly need the product of 1653 x 9402, all you need to do is type “1653*9402” into Spotlight and it will give you the total. These aren’t groundbreaking, but I already find myself using these features. If nothing else, it shows the time and effort that has gone into refining Spotlight.

Spotlight now also searches your Safari history as well. For example, if there is a web site you visited yesterday that you wanted to show a friend, you can now run a Spotlight search for it instead of digging through your browser history.

Spotlight now supports boolean searches. For example, I can now easily search for files that contain “Deep Thought” and “pilky,” but not “arden” by entering my query as “deep thought AND pilky NOT arden”. As you would expect, this feature works well and serves up results quickly.

An example of a typical search query.

Last but not least, instead of spawning the orphaned results window, the Show All command now opens a Finder window filled with the search results. From there you can use the Finder’s search criteria to narrow down your search, or you can create a smart folder. Why this wasn’t the case since day one with Tiger just boggles the mind.

There are a few shortcomings to Spotlight, however. Spotlight view, which was the default view setting for Spotlight and Finder search results, is nowhere to be found in Leopard. This omission doesn’t really impact Spotlight’s usefulness, though. [UPDATE 5 Nov 2007: As I use it more and more, I’ve come to the conclusion that Apple made a mistake by removing Spotlight view from search. Finding the file you want in a jumbled mess of icons from all sorts of file types isn’t really any fun.]

While you can assign Spotlight Comments to files, you can’t assign proper keywords, nor can you edit metadata such as the document’s author via Spotlight or the Finder. Lastly, while boolean logic makes constructing advanced search queries easier, the Finder still does not let you exclude files with certain attributes. For example, I can have the Finder search for documents whose kind is “movies” but I can not have the Finder omit search results whose names include “dog.” However, by and large, Spotlight in Leopard is outstanding.

[UPDATE 5 Nov 2007: Spotlight will not search for most contents of /Library and ~/Library (as well as /System) from the Spotlight menubar search tool and command-F in the Finder. To search for the contents of these folders, you will need to navigate to the folder in question and then run the search. Oddly enough, you can search for items in ~/Library/Caches, which makes no sense and leads me to believe that there is a bug in Spotlight. Whether it’s a bug that prevents me from searching system files or a bug that allows me to search my Caches folder is beyond me. Either way, I am going to submit a but report to Apple over this.]

Finder: Finally fixed?

In recent years the Finder seems to have been largely forgotten. Improvements have been minor in the grand scheme of things, and many people have opined on the state of the Finder and how to improve it. I am happy to say that Leopard’s Finder represents the most improved Finder version since Mac OS X’s inception.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat: Leopard’s Finder is not the Classic Mac OS Finder. The basic concept behind the Finder is the same as it was in prior Mac OS X versions; that is, it’s mainly based around a browser-style interface with a semi-spatial interface tacked on. This much in the Finder is still the same, for better or for worse, and I am not going to dwell on this too much, because I think most of you reading this article already know about the Finder’s shortfalls. The Finder is not spatial. That said, there is still a lot to like about Leopard’s Finder.

There are three major areas of improvement in the new Finder: organization (by way of the updated sidebar), file previews (new icon previews, CoverFlow, and QuickLook), and sharing. Let’s take a look at these three areas:

The new Finder sidebar.

Sidebar

The most obvious change at first glance is the retooled Finder sidebar. Finder’s sidebar now has an iTunes 7 look. The sidebar is broken down into four categories: Devices (hard drives, flash drives, iPods, etc…), Shared (I’ll discuss this section in a minute), Places (add your frequently-accessed folders here), and Search For (where smart folders live; some smart folders are under this heading by default).

There are a couple things to note about the sidebar. For one, the sidebar always uses small text and icons now; you may remember that in Panther and Tiger the sidebar icons would start larger and shrink as you added more items to fit as many as possible within a window. Leopard no longer allows you to collapse the sidebar; in Tiger you could resize the width of the sidebar so that only the icons would show, or you could close it completely. In Leopard, you can’t get rid of the sidebar completely unless you switch to the semi-spatial mode.

As for actually using it, if you’ve used Mac OS X before, you already know what to do, so I won’t get into too much detail about it, aside to say that the sidebar works as expected. You can collapse sections that you don’t need to see, and customize what you see via Finder Preferences. Despite the inability to collapse the entire sidebar, overall it is a step forward in terms of flexibility, and a great addition to Leopard.

Previewing files: Icons, CoverFlow, and Quick Look

Leopard’s Finder makes some big improvements in terms of previewing files. In Tiger and earlier, image files gave you icon previews. You could view QuickTime videos and image previews, as well as short text document previews in column view and Get Info windows. Leopard greatly improves upon file previewing in the Finder.

Let’s start simple. File icons for most popular file formats can now show previews of documents (screenshot). Whereas Tiger only supported this for images, Leopard allows you to preview Microsoft Office documents, iWork documents, and PDFs, among other file types using the file’s icon. The only downside is that at smaller sizes these icons can become pretty hard to make out (especially text files), though you can turn the icon previews off. Personally, I think the advantages of icon previews far outweigh any possible liabilities, so I use this feature.

Leopard doesn’t stop there. Leopard adds a new Finder view option--CoverFlow--where you can flip through documents and see live previews for common file formats (CoverFlow screenshot). When I first found out about CoverFlow in the Finder, I hat two thoughts: a) CoverFlow would be nothing but useless eye candy and never amount to be something useful, and b) it would kill the Finder’s performance, just as it killed iTunes’--even on a relatively new Mac. Luckily I was wrong on both counts.

First, CoverFlow is genuinely useful. I have a folder on my MacBook full of Leopard screenshots. CoverFlow has made finding the screenshots I want to use alongside articles much faster than it otherwise would have been. Second, CoverFlow is fast, even on a three-year-old iBook G4. I’m assuming this is Core Animation at work. CoverFlow in the Finder and CoverFlow in iTunes is like night and day.

Lastly, there’s Quick Look. What can I say? I don’t know how I lived before this feature. Like CoverFlow and the improved icon previews, Quick Look supports previews for many common file formats, including fonts. Quick Look allows you to view larger previews of your documents--full screen even if you wish--and even allows you to scroll through text documents. I found that it took me a couple days to retrain my brain to not open an application to preview a file and to use Quick Look instead. I enjoy it so much that I wish it were elsewhere too, like open and save dialogs.

In short, Leopard’s s new previewing tools are great. Each one works as advertised, and I had a hard time finding anything wrong with them. Well done, Apple.

Finder’s learns to share

File sharing in Leopard’s Finder is much simpler. All computers on your local network with file sharing enabled are accessible via the sidebar. You don’t need to go into a separate Network directory. You don’t need to know a network name or IP address. Anyone can access a users’ public folder, but if you know the account information for any user account on a remote computer, you can connect to that computer and access more files.

In practice this setup works very well. It greatly simplifies networking between computers around the house as it reduces at least two mouse clicks.

Also I should note that in my testing, the Finder is much faster when handling connections with remote servers and shared Macs. For example, on Tiger when I would connect to my iDisk, the Finder would hang for a few seconds as it connected. Leopard’s Finder connects cleanly, while allowing me to carry out other Finder tasks. Finally.

It is also worth noting that you can specify which folders you want to share with anyone, just like you could with Classic Mac OS versions. For those who have switched to the Mac after OS X’s release and have never laid a finger on Classic Mac OS, this means that you can share any folder on your Mac, and you can specify who can and cannot access that folder. Isn’t it great when old friends come back?

In addition to streamlined local area network sharing, the new Finder adds screen sharing to the mix. (Actually, the screen sharing is handled by a separate app, but it is tightly integrated into the Finder.)

Screen sharing is essentially built-in remote desktop (screenshot), and judging from tidbits gleaned from the Sharing preferences pane, it is based on VNC, which means that anyone using a VNC client should be able to interact with Leopard’s screen sharing feature. Screen sharing in the Finder is not the same thing as screen sharing in iChat. The Finder variation is straight-up remote desktop while iChat’s variation seems to be a specialized AV chat (remote desktop + audio chat).

Leopard’s screen sharing feature works well. I have yet to encounter any issues with it, and the quality is very good. In fact, I am using it to write portions of this review. My review document is on the MacBook, and I am using an iBook, but I don’t have Pages installed on the iBook.

You can get the type of functionality that screen sharing offers with free solutions, yes, but I can guarantee you, it won’t be nearly as easy to use as Leopard’s screen sharing feature.

Lastly, I haven’t yet had the occasion to try out Back to my Mac, but as soon as I do I’ll write about it.

The little things

In addition to the big new features, the Finder has a number of smaller little additions as well.  Apple has added keyboard shortcuts to the “Arrange by” submenu. If you want to arrange the items in a folder by name, press command-control-1, for example.

Frickin’ finally. GOSH!

The View Options palette has been retooled, and now closely resembles Mac OS 9’s View Options feature. The previous method of using radio buttons to toggle between using the default view options of specialized view options are gone. (Thank you! I would sometimes end up editing the default configuration when I really only wanted to edit the settings for a particular folder) The View Options palette now deals primarily with the folder you are dealing with at that particular moment instead of handling default view options as well. If you do configure a folder in a specific way and would like to use those settings as the default, however, simply click the “Use as Defaults” button. Oh! And grid spacing adjusting finally makes its way back into the Finder--after only six and a half years of being absent.

Also, Apple added another no-brainer: the path bar. Why it took Apple so long to make this addition is beyond me, as it makes working in the non-spatial Finder easier. The path bar is off by default, but you can turn it on via the View menu. Not only does the path bar show the filename path, it can also be used to move items to a higher level in the file system (e.g. from my home folder to the root level of the hard drive). For some inexplicable reason, though, folders listed in the path bar are not spring-loaded, which really limits the path bar’s usefulness. Pity. Apple almost got this right.

The innards

Poking through the Finder’s package contents--specifically the Resources folder--is always a good time. Here are some tidbits I learned:

• Time Machine appears to be a service of the Finder. The Resources folder contains the full-size Time Machine icon, as well as images included in the Time Machine UI (the starfield background and floating stars).
• The pre-generated smart folders are all contained in a folder aptly named “Canned Searches”. There are other pre-generated smart folders available than what is exposed in the Finder UI, such as All PDFs, All Downloads, All Presentations, and All Applications. There is, of course, nothing special about these; they are just ordinary smart folders.
• There is a folder icon that resembles a cross between the older OS X folder icons and Leopard’s icons. It uses the same basic form of Leopard’s folder icons but shares a design aesthetic with Tiger’s folder icons.

The bottom line

By and large, the improvements made to Spotlight and the Finder are awesome. Some of the changes and improvements are drastic, others are fairly minor.

Spotlight is now the feature we all hoped it would be in Tiger. Despite limited sort options and a couple other omissions, Leopard’s incarnation is a winner.

There are a few areas of the Finder that need a little more attention, mind you. Apple needs to separate the browser-style Finder and spatial Finder functionality. Giving users the choice to pick one or the other through a Finder Preferences option (i.e. a radio button to pick either a spatial style or browser style) and discarding the funky hybrid setup we have today would improve both modes in my opinion. There are some other, more minor omissions too; sorting options are still limited and the path bar’s lack of spring-loaded support is disappointing. But without a doubt, the Finder is no longer the Mac OS X whipping boy. It is perfect? No. Is it a very good file manager despite its flaws? You bet.

If I had to pick one reason to upgrade to Leopard, the improvements made to Spotlight and the Finder would be it. There’s nothing really revolutionary here, but the improvements and enhancements made are certainly noteworthy, and makes using my Mac even more enjoyable.

Previously in this series

• Part 1: The Leopard UI
• Leopard screenshots

UPDATE 5 Nov 2007: score revised to reflect additions to Spotlight section.