After seeing John Siracusa complain about the Mac OS X Finder for the umpteenth time (and I don't disagree), I've finally got around to trying Path Finder, a popular third-party Finder replacement. This thing has been on everyone's must-have Mac software lists for a long time, and I can see why.

It's a little feature-heavy, and the default apearance is a little intimidating: a tight columnar file list with column headers, a path bar, two status bars, a toolbar, and an open drawer on each side that look like my window has wings and is about to fly away, with another drawer on the bottom that's closed by default. And everything—everything—is brushed metal by default. Naturally, everything is customizable, and once you turn off the brushed metal and figure out what's in the drawers, it's quite comfortable to use.

The bottom drawer (the one that starts out closed) is a little Terminal window that starts out in the window's current folder. I got so used to the command line and the Finder being separate environments that I would do everything in either one or the other, and I was about ready to give up the Finder and just do it all in Emacs. I can't help but love the Terminal drawer.

Built-in PDF and text file viewers seem like baggage, but they eliminate a minor annoyance of viewer apps (TextEdit, Preview) left sitting open after casual file browsing. It's a very minor thing; Preview sitting open does no harm other than to clutter process lists (Cmd-Tab, DragThing or Path Finder process panes). There's also a built-in hex viewer, and both it and the text viewer are immediately made available for files with no associated applicaitons.

What kicked me over to PF from Finder was an attempt to learn Finder's keyboard shortcuts. Too many times I've hit Enter to open an item, and too many times I've been disappointed that this doesn't open anything. Instead, it tries to let you rename the item. Maybe there's a user-friendly rationale for making Open a more difficult keystroke (Cmd-O, or Cmd-down), but it'd almost be better if Enter did nothing. For it to do something entirely different from what I want is frustrating. In PF, Enter's behavior is configurable, and opens by default.

The only real problem I see so far is the tendency of other Mac apps, such as Safari, to continue to resort to Finder for certain tasks. It seems my usual workflow can help but result in Finder windows mixed in with my PF windows, even if I start out with Finder not running. Maybe PF 4.0, due later this year, will have solutions for some of these little problems.

Speaking of DragThing: Between QuickSilver and Spotlight and Path Finder, I wonder if I need it any more. I still see a use for organizing some less-often-used apps into little categorical collections, pretty much all of my other uses for DT are handled by these other apps. Once again, this probably means I'm under-utilizing my tools: I've seen people use DT for shelving, and I have yet to try anything shelf-like in my work environment. I just don't get to use my Mac for project work often enough.