Ars Technica: About the Finder

John Siracusa finally distills alls his thoughts on the current OS X Finder into one article, About the Finder.<blockquote>In the past, my thoughts on the Finder have been scattered throughout several articles. The topic has never been given the thorough treatment that I believe it deserves. In this article, I will attempt to rectify the situation. In the process, I will try to answer one of the most common Finder-related questions asked by readers: "Okay Mister Smartypants, how should the Mac OS X Finder work?"</blockquote>If nothing else, John's articles are always very thought-provoking. He dissects all the bits and pieces that make up the Mac GUI, and thinks up ways that it could be better. I believe that some of his best points are around the use of meta-data. iTunes and iPhoto already interact with files and metadata, and there has been much talk of turning filesystems into databases, such as the one used by BeOS (and that developer now works at Apple, I believe). If the rumours are true, the next versions of Windows are also built on top of a database-like file system.