Filed under: Rumors, Leopard, Snow Leopard
AI: 'Snow Leopard' to include rewritten Finder
AppleInsider claims that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will feature (among other things) a Finder re-written entirely in Cocoa. The Finder has remained Carbon-based for the entire history of Mac OS X so far, but the long journey from those frameworks towards Cocoa seems to be reaching its end for Apple's homegrown apps.
Test versions of the new Finder are being seeded to select developers in revisions of Snow Leopard with build numbers beginning with 10A. AppleInsider notes that seeds could be more broadly available to the developer community as early as tomorrow.
As Ars Technica noted in June, Apple apps will also apparently come "wrapped" in Cocoa. Further deprecation of some Carbon APIs seems likely as well, but it's unclear yet as to how Snow Leopard's support for Carbon apps will differ from plain-ol' Leopard's.
In addition to the Finder, improvements to support for Microsoft Exchange are expected for Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Also included is a new option for booting a Mac called ImageBoot. ImageBoot takes NetBoot a step further, allowing administrators to boot a workstation into Mac OS X directly from an image on a local disk.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mentalsticks said 2:13PM on 10-17-2008
So, TUAW has a standard abbreviation now for the site they most often rip off?
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Robert Palmer said 2:22PM on 10-17-2008
So explain to me how properly attributing (and linking back to) their story is ripping them off.
ballistik said 3:05PM on 10-17-2008
oh grow up!!!
sam said 5:50PM on 10-17-2008
There's only so much Apple news to go around - it is inevitable that all the Apple sites are going to cover the same things.
mtfootfun said 6:48PM on 10-18-2008
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let the finder have tabs. PathFinder is great, but it's slow and has too many features. I want the middle road.
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eminemdrdre00 said 2:25PM on 10-17-2008
I just want to know why Cory bought a Macbook a few weeks ago! Doesnt he read the blog he writes for?!
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Michael Rose said 4:04PM on 10-17-2008
Off-topic, but Cory had a long string of replacement machines after his original MacBook Pro (bought in June) failed. It wasn't a failure of judgement, just the circumstances.
Rajiv said 2:25PM on 10-17-2008
How easy would it be for them to convert this Finder into Cocoa Touch? Is this the precursor to a Touch based UI?
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Darren said 2:43PM on 10-17-2008
When Apple releases the MacTablet, its touch-based input will need to be compatible with existing OS X applications that only expect mouse input. Nonetheless, Cocoa will surely contain additions explicitly for aiding touch-based input, and surely Apple's Cocoa apps will make use of these additions, including Finder.
mcdj said 2:28PM on 10-17-2008
Hopefully this will mean I can search system files in Spotlight without having to click 87 options. Tiger's Spotlight was so much better for this.
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Dennis said 5:08PM on 10-17-2008
Uh, I just did it in 3 clicks. 87 - 3 = 84 extra clicks. How exactly are you doing it? ;-)
Seriously, I agree that it could be easier but let's not over exaggerate here. It's not *that* bad.
Tomahawk said 11:05PM on 10-17-2008
funny I can do it with zero clicks 87-0 = 87. What crack are you smoking? I just press command+space bam you're there, it's that simple.
PSM said 2:42AM on 10-18-2008
SYSTEM files are not searched by Spotlight. If you're looking for anything in your library or someplace where they don't want a casual user to go, it will not show up in spotlight.
ars_workerbee said 2:56PM on 10-17-2008
The real story about these seeds is that paying ADC Select and Premier developers haven't seen a single one since WWDC, yet apparently some "special" folks are getting them.
What gives, Apple?
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oZ said 5:28PM on 10-17-2008
Standard operating procedure. It isn't until more stable builds start coming out that ADC members start seeing builds. It's the top of the top that see builds before that, and usually, there's a working relationship between the two companies.
Dan Woods said 10:12PM on 10-17-2008
Cocoa Finder and Quicktime, what else?
iTunes is still Carbon (and you can tell on faster machines).
Anyone know what System Requirements are likely to be? Will my trusty iBook and PPC MacMini be supported? I can't afford to upgrade my portable and loaner to a MacBook and new MacMini just yet
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Philip said 4:17PM on 10-17-2008
Actually iTunes is a Cocoa app now. It was Carbon for a long while, but versioin 7 (I think) was rewritten in Cocoa.
Dennis said 5:05PM on 10-17-2008
No, Dan is right. iTunes is clearly a Carbon app, and that probably makes it a lot easier to maintain a Windows version.
Shunnabunich said 3:31PM on 10-17-2008
Pff. These "rewritten Finder" rumours are the Mac community's version of "next year will be the Year of Desktop Linux...no, for real this time". I won't believe something like that until I see it, not even with all the other fancy-pants improvements Snow Leopard is supposedly getting. Pff, I say!
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sam said 5:51PM on 10-17-2008
I believe it when they've seeded it to developers. Which they have.