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[packbat]

Warning: this is going to be very random and probably completely uninteresting. I'm only making an entry so I can remember it. End warning.

A few days ago, at the infamous ASME lounge, we were discussing the relative merits of Apple- and Microsoft-powered computers. After telling my favorite Mac-vs-PC story - the one where my lab mates and I set up IP printers on OSX 10.3.9 and Windows XP, respectively - I enthusiastically extended myself beyond my experience to sum up the difference as follows: Windows computers make most things consistently hard, where Macs make the tasks they expect you to do incredibly easy but leave everything else even harder. One of the participants in the debate replied to this by saying he'd never seen anything that he wanted to do that Apple had not thought of already.

Well, here's one they've missed in 10.3.9. When you're using Finder in "View: As List" mode and select a folder, the right arrow opens the folder as an indented subdirectory and the left arrow closes it. This is well and proper. However, if your cursor is within the indented subdirectory, the left arrow does not make the cursor "jump" to the folder in the parent directory. If it did, as it does in (for example) Firefox and Second Life, repeatedly pressing the left arrow would allow you to close directories all the way back to the top level being viewed.

Is this a major flaw? Absolutely not. Did they fix it in 10.4? Quite possibly. (If anyone has a computer running 10.4 handy, please check - I'm curious.) (Edit: kirabug confirms that it has been fixed by 10.5.2.) But it is an avoidable aggravation, something they didn't think of.

Comments

It's fixed.

[kirabug.livejournal.com]

If I'm reading you right, it's fixed in 10.5.2, which is what I'm running. Not sure what version they fixed it in... anyway, if you left-arrow, the cursor jumps to the parent directory, where left-arrow again closes it, and then on up the line.

Re: It's fixed.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Ah, excellent. I guess that sort of thing is too low-priority to write into the patches for 10.3.9.

Re: It's fixed.

[majoru.livejournal.com]

It wasn't fixed by 10.4.11, either.

Re: It's fixed.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Fascinating - so it's recent. Thanks for the heads-up.