Path Finder from Cocoatech: File Management Redefined

Originally downloaded 2/14/06.This is a fabulous piece of software… I was extremely impressed with the interface, with the intense bundle of functions, and with the potential utility of the whole thing. After trying to make it my default Finder for a week, though, I’ve decided to stick with the plain old Finder. Why?

• No smart folders. I decided I just can’t live without this extremely useful Finder feature.
• Tabs While tabs sounded like a great idea, they don’t really do what I’d hoped… it’s easy for them to proliferate, and it’s often just as easy to open a new tab as to find the one you were previously working with.
• Incompatibility with Quick Access CM I’ve used this amazing free contextual menu for over a year now, and it lets me customize “Move to” and “Copy to” destinations for quick, easy file management. Path Finder doesn’t have the same ability, and for some reason the QA CM’s don’t work in Path Finder.
• Default apps: Not? A real weird one last night… Although I had set PF to open graphics files by default, I assumed that wouldn’t extend to PSD (Photoshop) files. But it did! Even when I turned that option off, PathFinder opened a PSD file in Preview! This could be a real bother that I don’t need.
• Terminal weirdness. This is a fault only because the promise is so great, and PF falls short. PF has a drawer that will open the Terminal to your currently selected directory. How great is that? Only problem is, the toolbar Terminal link doesn’t open the drawer… it opens a terminal window! You have to select a menu item to use the drawer. I did set a keyboard shortcut for that function but decided it was just one too many shortcuts for now.
• Finder Won’t Die Quietly. I went through a good set of steps from MacOSX Hints to replace the Finder with Path Finder, but I found that the Finder kept popping up all too often. This can get really confusing, since the way you do things effectively in Path Finder is quite different from your usual Finder rituals. I just couldn’t live with two radically different Finder tools.
• Cost Did I mention that the Finder is free, but Path Finder costs $35?

That said, Path Finder is a terrific product, and I hope Apple steals–er, incorporates–some of its ideas into a future Finder release.