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February 12, 2008

software

Apple eats crow with stacks

Posted Feb. 12, ’08, 5:32 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Software

Dock Menu Write down the 11th of February as the day that Apple did an about face with one of its fancy new features. The company we both love was perfectly willing to kill the customizable Apple menu that was a trademark feature of the platform without ever bringing the feature back, but when it removed hierarchal folder navigation from the dock to replace it with stacks, it didn’t do so for good.

As of Mac OS X 10.5.2, there is now a “List” option for stacks. You know what that is? The hierarchal view that disappeared from earlier versions of Leopard. You know what’s even more remarkable? You don’t always have to set a stack to use that mode to gain access. For example, using the “Automatic” option, my Applications folder stack is naturally a hierarchal menu.

Back when users started crying for this to come back, all I could think was “not before 10.6”. This is a real precedent here. It’s the first time I’ve seen Apple change a major new feature in a serious way with a minor third number update. It’s a brave new world.


10 Comments

Goobimama said:

It's nice to see Apple actually listening to the customers and their gripes. Even the menubar transparency thing has been addressed in this (although I love the transparent menubar).

February 12, 2008 5:59 AM
boxlight said:

I actually like the stacks fan and grid view. My problem with stacks is the way the icons display overlapped on the doc. There should be a custom icon there instead of just putting one icon on top of the other.

February 12, 2008 6:07 AM
Ken said:

boxlight,

> There should be a custom icon there instead of just putting one icon on top of the other.

Apple addressed that complaint too. There is an option to "Display as" a stack or folder. Right/control click on the stack to see the option.

10.5.2 is the most extensive interim update I can remember for Mac OS X.

February 12, 2008 9:54 AM
Goobimama said:

@boxlight: Just use the custom stack drawers that the japanese dude brought by (google it).

February 12, 2008 10:02 AM
grsgrk said:

Boxlight, as you might already know, they now have a "Folder" display option for Stacks. One other thing though, does anyone else see a resemblance between the list view on Stacks, and a windows start menu?

Just throwing that out there!

February 12, 2008 10:24 AM
Zedd said:

Where is the option to revert to the way it worked in 10.4 and earlier? I want to put an icon in the dock, be able to click on it *once* and have the folder open in the finder.

Stacks simply added two more steps to that: click, move up and click again. Extremely annoying.

I shouldn't have to make an alias of the folder and put it in the dock to have that simplicity.

February 12, 2008 11:56 AM
Gary Morgan said:

I'm delighted that Apple listened to and responded quickly to customer reactions to the Stacks implementation in Leopard. I don't remember anything like this happening before in such a timely manner.

February 12, 2008 1:00 PM
James Bailey said:

I think stacks are a huge improvement over the previous dockable folders. I didn't find folders in my dock to be very useful but I do find stacks useful. I do appreciate the new functionality though. Especially the Display as Folder or Stack.

February 12, 2008 2:07 PM
Mac Fanboy said:

Stacks is an incredibly waste of coding prowess. But I'm happy now that Apple has restored the list mode which does have value. Overall, I find the Leopard Dock butt ugly and would much rather have the look it has in Tiger. I admit it took me a while to get used to the Dock, always preferring the OS9 Apple Menu/Application Menu combination. But life goes on. IMHO, two conspicuous shortcomings remain with the Dock, but can easily be remedied.

First, you should not be able to drag an item into the dock without holding down a modifier key, such as the Command key. It's a real pain to drop an item onto an application icon in the Dock since the application icons keep moving around (to accommodate an item drop in the Dock proper). Apple has this backwards now, requiring you to hold down the Command key to make the application icons stay put as you drop an item onto one.

Second, you should not be able to minimize a window into the Dock. That Apple took away WindowShade functionality for this is utter nonsense. WindowShade is far more useful. Who needs 10 windows minimized in the Dock, but maybe a Windows switcher? Dammit, Steve; I'm a Mac guy, not a PC guy. That being said, I'd be happy if Apple restored WindowShade functionality (double click a on window Title Bar) and left the minimize window feature as is for the PC crowd. Everybody wins then.

While I'm at it, here are a few other pet peeves I have with Leopard. One is regarding Finder labels. Whoever coded this feature was out of their mind, or at the very least, forgot to look at how it behaves in list mode. It's nearly useless in this case as it takes on the look of a Kindergarten tutti-frutti project when multiple items are labeled. And God forbid you try to readily determine what items are selected due to the conflict with the labeled colored lines. OS9 had labels down pat. Leopard needs to restore elegance to this feature, and it would be easy to do. And give us 16 labels rather than 8. They come in quite handy for organizing.

Second, woe is the return of Sherlock rebadged as SpotLight. I loathe this feature and effectively disable it so my drives aren't worked harder than necessary. I don't mind so much that SpotLight exists, but rather that Leopard cannot find anything without it — literally. It's a serious oversight that Apple removed the old find code from its OS. A better solution would be restore the option to search using the old find code. An ever better solution would be that Leopard searches using Spotlight for indexed volumes/folders, and transparently falls back on the old search code for items not indexed. At the very least, the OS should allow you to dictate which folders to index much like it now allows you dictate which folders to not index.

Third, have you ever tried to drag a group of items across a 30 inch screen? What a PITA when you loose control of the mouse down key during the drag process. A brilliant solution is to add a Click Lock feature (like in USB Overdrive). This is such a simple but effective feature. Why can't Apple give this to us?

Fourth, consider when a dialog window appears having multiple buttons. Most buttons start with a unique letter (relative to the others). It would be easy to have the OS default to a handle a Command keypress to select a button. In the case of buttons starting with identical letters, the OS could simply beep. Of course, this would never happen should the developer be careful when naming button titles. This feature would be simple to implement, and would be a meaty bone to throw to developers.

Finally, I would like to have an application to manage file mapping much like we enjoyed in OS9. The current method of setting this from a Get Info box is cumbersome at best.

These are but a few tweaks that would refine Mac OS X, which IMHO is the best consumer OS by far. But as good as it is, it sure would be nice if Apple would take the time to spit polish it rather than fold in new features. There's always room for improvement when one is in search for excellence. I say make it shine like the effort that goes into their hardware design.

February 13, 2008 4:48 AM
Eric said:

"Using the 'Automatic' option, my Applications folder stack is naturally a hierarchal menu."

That's because your Applications folder contains more items than will fit in grid view. "Automatic" defaults to stack view; too many items for that gives you grid view; too many items for that gives you list view.

February 13, 2008 3:50 PM

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