Cover Flow

I upgraded one of my machines to Leopard last night, and while it doesn't look like it's about to change my life it does have some cool features. And an annoying weird one. Namely, Apple has taken its somewhat weird and annoying "cover flow" feature from iTunes and brought it over to the Finder so now you can browse through your files and folders in the awkward, inefficient, can't-really-see-where-anything-is way. But why? Cover flow definitely does look cool on a television ad, but the crux of the matter is that actually using a computer is very different from sitting back and watching a scene unfold. Cover flow doesn't seem to me to work at all as a way to actually use your computer.

Comments

I know everyone disses coverflow, but there are certain situations where I find it very, very helpful, namely in going through folders filled with badly named photos and pdf's downloaded from the net.

Coverflow also works quite nicely with QuickLook.

It's useless 90% of the time, but very handy 10% of the time.

---

I actually wish Apple had brought more iTunes features into the Finder. Star ratings and editable metadata would both make the Finder a happier place.

Having 3 different sets of interfaces and metaphors in the Finder, iTunes, and iPhoto is a weakness.

Posted by Petey | November 9, 2007 8:25 AM

The other thing to say about coverflow is that it makes a lot more sense on a laptop -- because of the way scrolling works on the trackpad -- than it would on a desktop. But, as Petey said, it's really only appropriate for a few folders.

Posted by dr | November 9, 2007 8:30 AM

Also, how can a feature that you never have to see or deal with if you don't want to be termed "annoying"?

I can understand calling it useless, though I'd disagree with that as explained above, but annoying?

The translucent menubar is annoying. The inability to specify the icon for folders in the Dock is annoying.

Coverflow is completely avoidable if you dislike it.

Posted by Petey | November 9, 2007 8:35 AM

I guarantee none of it is as annoying as my 2003 vintage thinkpad.

Posted by southpaw | November 9, 2007 8:42 AM

Agree with others. Ignore it. I have one folder where its nice, but its an addition that's easy to ignore. I haven't been "annoyed" by it. Other than that, the finder needed a major overhaul, and largely got it. It is easier to get around. QuickLook is very nice. If you haven't tried it already, try to get used to spaces. I especially like it on a laptop. very clean, and no apparent load on the system.

Setting up for Time Machine is some work. I purchased a new peripheral 750 gig hard drive. but it seems well worth it to finally have a backup system that is almost invisible, works and is flexible. I've used it twice to find files that I unintentionally modified.

Also, the network connections seem improved. few spinning beach balls.

Overall, to me this seems like a major and useful upgrade.

Posted by cube | November 9, 2007 8:54 AM

I work with video, and have found cover flow to be a godsend...I can browse and preview all my files in the Finder window without having to launch editing or graphics applications. Pretty cool and pretty usable.

Don't dis something just cos it doesn't work for you. Makes you look foolish.

Posted by lorca | November 9, 2007 10:00 AM

Matt,

Everyone knows you don't let the Dock sit on the bottom of the screen.

You need to dock it to the left side of the screen and shrink it in size so you have more desktop real estate. Yes Matthew, your icons are too big.

Get with the program or the people who know how to properly use their Macs will sneer & mock you.

This is almost as kooky as you video blogging in a hoody.

-Joe

Posted by Joe | November 9, 2007 10:08 AM

I haven't gone to Leopard yet, but I'm desperate for something that will help me deal with the bulk of academic articles I've downloaded with names like "jppm%2E19%2E1%2E62%2E16949.pdf." Also big folders full of vaguely named design elements.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | November 9, 2007 10:19 AM

Cover flow is more useful for some files and folders. For PDFs especially it is incredibly useful. What bugs me (and has for 20 years) is Apple's refusal to include a proper maximize function.

Posted by Slippery Pete | November 9, 2007 10:24 AM

hey Joe- I think that is an Apple promo screen shot. Notice all of the apps are apples, the default background and generic documents.

Posted by Grogor | November 9, 2007 10:24 AM

"hey Joe- I think that is an Apple promo screen shot."

I'd say the odds of that are close to 100%.

Posted by Petey | November 9, 2007 10:28 AM

Joe, don't pile shit on Matthew for a picture that looks awfully a lot like the usual promotional one and not like whatever he's got in his own computer screen.

Also, I have the dock in the bottom, thanks. Works mightily fine with widescreens. The only thing is that I use tinkertool to keep it to the right (that way the trash is always in the same place).

Posted by El Cruzado | November 9, 2007 10:34 AM

People who have docks on the side are tools.

Posted by Damir | November 9, 2007 10:37 AM

"People who have docks on the side are tools."

You gotta be kidding.

If you have a laptop and position the Dock on the bottom, you're just not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

It's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of functionality.

Posted by Petey | November 9, 2007 10:42 AM

yea, but the real cool kids hide their docks.

Posted by lorca | November 9, 2007 10:49 AM

Yeah, it's a godsend for working with directories of images and PDFs. Other files, not so much.

Vista has a similarly useless feature - the 3D Tabs view of current application windows that alt-tab now brings up. It's sort of a badly-broken version of OS X's Expose feature. Eye-catching and whizzy and cool to play with for about five minutes, then you start looking for ways to disable it.

Posted by FMguru | November 9, 2007 10:52 AM

I'm with Petey et al. I am looking forward to the feature as a way to quickly scroll through an inbox folder full of pdfs and jpgs and rename them easily. Why metadata tagging is not more built in to Leopard though I can't understand.

Posted by Ottoe | November 9, 2007 11:22 AM

docks on the bottom are just plain dumb. You may think you like it because you have grown used to it, but there really is no reason....especially if you have a widescreen. The whole point of a widescreen is that it gives you more room on the left and right, in effect reducing your top to bottom distance. Why would you further reduce this by putting your dock on the bottom...

I installed the OS for my team at work, and set everyone up with docks on the right, with auto-hide on. I got a lot of complaints at first, now everyone loves it...

I think apple thinks the dock looks really cool for their promo ads and such, but in terms of every day use it is less functional than they'd like to think. For me, I dont even use it all the time...say I want to open safari, of course, i could reach over to my mouse and point to the dock and open it, but i prefer...

command-tab to finder, shift-command-A, S, command-O..

thus concludes my nerd rant...

[command-H, now back to work]

Posted by chris | November 9, 2007 11:23 AM

"docks on the bottom are just plain dumb. You may think you like it because you have grown used to it, but there really is no reason....especially if you have a widescreen."

If you've got lots and lots of screen real estate - a desktop with a big monitor or multiple monitors, then you can put the unhid Dock wherever you want.

But when you have the limited screen real estate of a laptop, vertical pixels become much more valuable than horizontal pixels.

And that means that unless you are hiding the Dock, you pay a real price in functionality for putting it at the bottom.

Posted by Petey | November 9, 2007 11:31 AM

to aaron:

try Papers (google mekentosj and it should come up). For years I would tell my friends, "I want an iTunes, but for PDFs." They thought i was stupid. They were wrong. Papers isn't perfect, but it organizes PDFs (the actual files, not just aliases), attaches metadata, and handles ref. software info. It's good.

As for coverflow, it's very un-apple. Apple for the most part has good design, which means not mere eye-candy, but also decent functionality. Coverflow is good for visual files -- videos and photos -- but almost useless for text. It's eye-candy, it doesn't really enhance the functionality (i doubt coverflow is any better than an array of biggish icons). But anyway, it's obvious that overall coverflow isn't "good" or "bad", it's just more or less useful with certain kinds of files.

Posted by km | November 9, 2007 11:43 AM

Dude..this is one of my favorite blogs. I attack because I CARE.

Side dock it!!!

Posted by Joe Loserman | November 9, 2007 12:24 PM

Yeah, having options as how to navigate a folder totally sucks doesn't it. CoverFlow is great for folders containing large numbers of photos in particular, but any folder with a lot of similarly or ambiguously named files it's a great help because it saves you the task of opening them all in a preview to see which one is the file you're looking for. I'm a designer so naturally I tend to use it a lot, but not as my main method of file navigation.

Now that stupid curved "Fan" thing they have going on down in the Dock is bad. In fact, much of what they did to the Dock is bad.

Posted by Fred F. | November 9, 2007 12:38 PM

And that means that unless you are hiding the Dock, you pay a real price in functionality for putting it at the bottom.

Of course you hide it? Why would anyone without a really huge monitor keep the doc visible? On the right a hidden doc interferes with scrollbars on the right. The left is better, but the bottom has room for more icons that, remember, take no space because it is hidden.

Oh, and have them expand to full size as you hover over them. That makes it easy to find all the icons but still easy to click on the one you want.

You guys may be nerds, but not nearly nerdy enough.

Posted by Mark | November 9, 2007 12:53 PM

chris writes:

command-tab to finder, shift-command-A, S, command-O..
thus concludes my nerd rant...
[command-H, now back to work]

I have an old copy of MS-DOS 3.0 you can have.

Posted by ndm | November 9, 2007 12:54 PM

If you have a laptop and position the Dock on the bottom, you're just not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

It's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of functionality.

A non-hidden Dock on the side prevents a MacBook from being able to display two Pages/Word/Final Draft documents side-by-side, which essentially destroys writely productivity.

Dock on the bottom is much more effective; vertical scrolling is obviously much preferable to sideways scroll.

Posted by Dave | November 9, 2007 1:12 PM

In addition to the points made above (badly named documents, etc), you're a writer, Matt, as are, I suspect, many of us here, and thus oriented to words. I wonder if Cover Flow is more useful/effective for people with a more visual approach to life.

Posted by Persia | November 9, 2007 1:14 PM

"A non-hidden Dock on the side prevents a MacBook from being able to display two Pages/Word/Final Draft documents side-by-side, which essentially destroys writely productivity."

Indeed. If you spend most of your time dealing with facing page documents, then Dock on the bottom makes more sense.

But that's an edge case scenario. For the huge majority of laptop users, vertical pixels are more valuable than horizontal pixels.

Posted by Petey | November 9, 2007 2:17 PM

I'm still on 10.4, with a hidden dock on the side and Dragthing on the bottom.

Dragthing is great. It's like the dock, except useful. Well worth the $30.

Posted by Matt B | November 9, 2007 2:32 PM

Note to Aaron,

Upgrade to Leopard right away.

I have a folder filled with pdfs and others scattered around.
In leopard, spotlight, combined with quickview is wonderful. Spotlight works. You can search for keywords or authors names or whatever, end up with a list of 10 or 20, then use quicklook on each to see what you want.

Its a transformation.

Posted by cube | November 9, 2007 2:48 PM

Seems quite likely that the point is to give maximum exposure to the iPhone's interface. Uniformity seemed to be a theme of this release. I don't have an iPhone though, so maybe cover flow is just as useless there.

Posted by Mike | November 9, 2007 4:58 PM

CoverFlow is totally useless for scanning iTunes or other very well organized groups of folders or files. If the group can easily be sorted in any non-visual way (date, name, size, etc.) CoverFlow is really the last useful choice to navigate. Where it comes in handy is when the file names do not identify what the content of the file is. Take for granted the 300 photos you just imported from your trip to Spain. The file names tell you nothing, the small icon previews aren't large enough to see clearly and why bother opening them all in Preview or iPhoto when you can hit Cmd-4, go into CoverFlow and quickly whip through them? I agree it's useless in iTunes and on the iPhone other than it looks pretty (iPhone already had a visual method for sorting photos and music that is easier given the limited screen) but it's a nice additional method of navigating on the desktop, imo.

Posted by Fred F. | November 9, 2007 5:33 PM

Ive forced myself to spend time on macs and I find them so much less efficient then windows. Common things like resizing windows and window swittching are harder to do. I dont get it. Style over functionality.

Posted by miguel | November 11, 2007 7:13 PM