With the default OS X settings, the Finder will not display invisible files. This pertains to the Find Files results window as well, even when the search criteria include “invisible files”. This can certainly be considered as a bug. As a registered Apple Developer, I just filed a bug report for that.

Now there is a supported, though somewhat hidden workaround. The Finder includes an option to display all files, even invisible files. Of course, if you turn it on, all invisible files will show up, and you might not like it.

Clearly, Apple’s choice was the right one: displaying invisible files for all users is an invitation for the user to tamper with them – bad idea.

The Finder option to display invisible files is not exposed to the user. It might have been better for Apple to expose it. Or not. That same request could be done to many many kinds of options. This is the difference between an Apple Preference pane and a Linux or Microsoft Preference pane. I tend to err on Apple’s side on that one.

So here is how to activate the Finder option to display invisible files: open the Terminal application, and type (or paste) the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

after which you need to restart the Finder (for example by logging out and back in).

On a side note, Blender defaulting to rendering to an invisible folder is *bad*. The blame is on them. Not Apple.

(and I don’t recall the TCP issue you mention. A bug too, by your description).

You missed my one about not being able to search for invisible files any more, lost in Tiger (don’t know about Leopard). Actually, you can search for them, that option is listed under OTHER – but invisible files won’t show up in the results. That is a loss of functionality that has near driven me mad on occasion.

I mentioned Blender earlier and Blender default-saves renders to an invisible TMP folder. That isn’t Apple’s fault and is changeable – but it happens (it also uses an invisible setup file) and when it does, searching for the file you just rendered is useless, even if you choose to search for invisible files. The option is there – it doesn’t work and hasn’t worked for quite some time.

(I also seem to recall a munted TCP control in OS 9.x that caused connections to drop-out after a few minutes. The solution required finding and re-installing an outdated TCP control.)

That’s all from me on this because my opinion holds no sway with anyone at Apple and my head is marginally softer than these brick walls.

GAry 7

I’ve still got a VIC-20 and a C64 laying around in the attic, both were very decent tools for their price point, back in the day anyway. The most powerful computers? By no means no, but with Amiga, that was not true. It was an awesome computer, and really ahead of its competition. Unfortunately, it was also made by a company whose management was far less than their competition’s’.

At one point Apple commanded 86% of the total PC market. That was shortly before the entrance of IBM’s second PC, the one we know and love (or not) as having started the DOS Revolution. People forget the first one, it was an abysmal failure.

What made the IBM machine get into business in a big way was Lotus 1-2-3, which blew away Visicalc. It also did not hurt that Wordstar’s implementation on the PC was very fast, and together the two together made for a complete (at the time) business solution. Coupled with IBM’s very effect corporate sales force, which was long seasoned in the Fortune 500′s computing needs and everyone was toast…except Microsoft.

People forget that Microsoft didn’t even create DOS, Seattle Computer Products did. Tim Paterson wrote DOS in 1980 and it was sold by Microsoft to IBM in the pre-production days of the PC when the IBM Boca Raton engineers came to town looking for applications, not operating systems. Those same engineers had just come from a bad experience with Gary Kildal and Digital Research, who made the then-standard OS of the day, CP/M. Had Kildal not asked for an extremely high price for CP/M for each copy IBM’s PC, then Microsoft would probably have never gotten into the OS business and we would not know them as the de facto standard they are today.

Basically, in the end, Microsoft leased Q-DOS from SCP and eventually bought it. The young businessman, Bill Gates, outsmarted them all.

Everything Mac enthusiasts claim for their system was true of the Amiga…only with the Amiga it was actually true.

Like what?

I’m not being defensive; I’m very promiscuous when it comes to the OSes I use. I’m just genuinely curious because I have no idea what sort of claims you’re talking about.

Not only was it true, it was true more than 20 years ago. We had colours and sound sampling years before any other home system. Commodore mismanaged their asset, what a shame

MAny and flat out weird are the Ways, of the Force, GrassHopper.

GAry 7

I, too, wish Amiga had made it. A friend of mine had an Amiga 2000, and who can forget the Amiga digital effects in Terminator 2.

Thanks! I’ll take a look.

The Amiga was amazing. Everything Mac enthusiasts claim for their system was true of the Amiga…only with the Amiga it was actually true.

I still have a working Amiga 2000 with Toaster/Flyer. I mainly use a PC with Sony Vegas these days, but I can’t help wondering where non-linear video editing would be if Amiga had lasted. Oh, well.

Ah, if only Amiga had survived.

Dry your eyes and go to the iTunes application store and check out programs below for iPod Touch or iPhone:

Pinball Dreaming: Pinball Dreams
Rick Rocketson (Rick Dangerous)
Rocket Gold (Thrust)
or
ModPlayer for all you old Amiga music.

@Everybody else: A computer is just a tool, the best hammer in the world will not make you hit the nails any better.

Good point. This is significant. Now the reason for that one is very clear (pressure from the Majors).

@ AndyD: all sort of complaints about OS X Human Interface vs OS 9
Your complaints are legitimate, and I share a number of them. However none of them is about *removing* a *significant* piece of functionality.

• Finder labels. Yes OK, during the transition from OS 9 to OS X, Apple chose to deliver early rather than deliver complete. I would contend there was no real loss of functionality anyhow, since during the transition, you could still run OS 9.

• Window shade’s functionality: reducing the screen real estate of a window. OS X lets you do the same with the “orange ball”, to hide the window in the dock. You might think this change is for the worse, but there is no reduction in functionality. Further, I would contend this functionality is not very significant, though significance is in the eye of the beholder.

• Clicking the name in save as: I use that feature a lot! This is very useful to me. Please Apple, leave it. And this is an additional feature. No reduction here.

• Keyboard shortcuts for dialog items: no loss of functionality, since you can still click them. Now I can’t really remember OS9 on that, but you can do it with OS X (see Full Keyboard Access).

• Trash Can location: again, no loss of functionality, whatever the validity of the point.

So that leaves us with 3 cases:

1) OS 9 to OS X transition, kind of, due to delivery schedule.
2) iTunes WAN streaming, due to legal pressure.
3) iMovie, due to rewrite from scratch.

My Apple-N gripe stems from the fact hat it always made a new folder. Then in OS X they decided they wanted a shortcut to open a window and decided to give Apple-N to that new function and give a new shortcut to the old function.

I only use Apple-T in Firefox since I prefer tabs to windows. But even there, Apple-N in Firefox is like making a new document in any other app so it makes absolute sense there.

@ Jean Denis
When OS X was first released, Apple dropped Labels from the Finder. (Oh, I see you acknowledged such things – but eventually reinstating them isn’t really the point, is it?)

I’d have to disagree about the dropping of window shades (two clicks gone, two clicks back, fast, easy and nothing moves) not representing a loss of functionality. Exposé does not compare by a long stretch.

Oh, and then there’s that whole choosing a “save as” filename by accidentally clicking once on a name already in the list. Aaarggh! It should take two clicks or a modifier to do that. And wasn’t there a time when you could switch buttons on a dialogue box with a shortcut rather than a mouse click? That was fast too.

Oh, and the ability to put the damned trash can wherever the hell you wanted it – like next to the window you’re working in – instead of “all the way over there”.

I suspect there’s some really good underlying stuff that makes OS X much better than its predecessors (I do use crontab and rsync for customisable backup) but much of the over-animated front end still looks to me like it was designed as fruit, not for function.

As someone who braved and tamed Blender (3D animation software with a much-maligned interface), I don’t think I lack the ability to learn new things – but there should be a good reason to have to when you’re doing the same things you’ve done for almost ever.

Can you say OOPS???

Some of those so affected said a great deal more,,,

Wasn’t aware of the problems Y’All are mentioning about the iPod software upgrades. I don’t use those gadgets. I HAVE been bugging them about their use of MP3 over lossless compression formats such as FLAC but have been told Apple has their own loss less compression. I really don’t like losing 90% of my music due to compression drop out. Subtle music is my preference and subtlety can get trashed in compression .

GAry 7

Crank the contrast up to limit the anti-aliasing and switch to greyscale to avoid color artifacts.

I stand by my point: iMovie is the only instance where Apple replaced software with a new version having *significantly less* functionality.

I submit (iSubmit?) to you iTunes 4.0.1, which removed unlimited streaming to the network.

iTunes 8.1 played havoc with the syncing. It would no longer put the podacsts in reverse chronological order (a feature I relied on to listen to today’s news, then yesterday’s news, then any that had become backlogged), wouldn’t remove deleted podcasts, removed the “the list contains duplicate items, would you like to [skip] / [add]” feature, and you couldn’t play from the iPod when it was attached to the computer. There are some other feature problems that other users have documented, but they were related to features I don’t use.

I fortunately had iTunes 8.0 backed up on Time Machine and did a downgrade, but it involved fiddling with the iTunes Library because the 8.1 library isn’t the same format as the 8.0 library. I did get it it working correctly, and now the trusty shuffle performs as before.

Check out the following link. It has two apple flavored kool aids, one Candy Apple and one regular apple.
Just FYI,,,

http://www.gunaxin.com/15-mia-kool-aid-flavors/19821

GAry 7