Finder Smokes and Mirrors

Hey guys, this is Mids on one today's video called "Finder Smokes and Mirrors." Because personally, I find that Finder is not all that honest with me. It seems as though Finder goes in and makes things look more usable for the standard user, but there's no real way to make it look less usable for the Unix user.

So, um, I'm just going to be demonstrating to you what I mean. If I just open a new Finder window and then say go to slash, this is not my slash. This has a list of all the network drives and drives that I have, and it's not really real, you know? It's just crap; it's just junk that they're giving me.

Um, if I open Macintosh HD, this is somewhat my real um slash, but where's Ben? Where's Etsy? You know, all that stuff is gone. And you know why? Because, um, what Finder does is it takes files—even if they don't begin with DOT—that have a certain attribute on them that you can set with set file, and it makes them hidden.

That's very interesting about Finder that I don't experience on Linux. And then Finder, there's no way through the GUI of Finder, through Finder preferences or anything to make your computer um able to endure or um to show you all these hidden files. There is an option, but you can't set it through Finder's preferences.

Um, another thing I found that's kind of dishonest about Finder is that it shows you this thing at the bottom but everything comes off of Macintosh HD, which is unrealistic. Um, so that's just annoying. Um, yet Applications also comes off of that, but if you go to a network server, it comes off of that network server instead of saying slash volume slash and then the name of that network server or for any hard drive at all.

So this is kind of what Finder does to me that's frustrating. One of the cool things about Finder, um, though, is when you click a file, it shows you relatively the full path. But when I click a file like say Screen Flow, whatever, okay, you can take a look; it says "Macintosh HD Applications."

But if I select a file like this, it just says my home directory, so and so, so and so, so and so, so and so, so and so. If it's in my home directory, it doesn't see the drive; it just has my home directory, and that's something that it does that's not really—it shouldn't really do, okay?

So, um, that’s just how kind of Finder tries to trick you. Another thing is that it gives all these folders and applications icons when it's not really the application icon, and files really can't have icons, and so it kind of does that to your files.

Another thing is that Web Clips, it displays Web Clips as full-on files, but they're really zero bytes. Then it uses resource forks. So now my friend John is going to come in, and just his voice is going to appear, um, for a little bit, and he's going to tell you a little something about his opinion on this Finder thing.

Um, yeah, you can use um Firefox as a web browser. So if I open Firefox or even Safari, Firefox is a much more advanced one. You have to do file colon SL slash SL slash to go into the path slash. So file SL SL, and then we'll go to users.

Um, another thing is um Firefox actually lets you see hidden files unlike uh Finder, so there's a checkbox to that right over there. So talk to you guys later, subscribe, and goodbye.

So yeah, so um, John's family is going out to dinner, so we can't talk anymore. Um, so um, but that’s um how Finder kind of not cool in some ways and how um Firefox can be used as a more realistic browser. You can also go into Terminal or iTerm. Oops, I'm just going to open up Terminal.

Um, and I'll log in here, okay, and if you take a look, um, and if I'll by the way, if you want to be able to log in on Terminal, just um we will upload a video on that soon enough. So um, yeah, but um, if you check this out, um right here if you type LS space -A, it shows you everything.

So that's just a little bit of Terminal on this stuff; you should watch our Terminal lessons too. So anyway, that is how files are hidden in Finder. So thanks for watching that kids, one, subscribe, and goodbye.