Yes, but it's not because he's being nice. It's because Windows code has become such spaghetti that they can't develop fast enough. Every few years they're reinforcing the foundation rather than expanding at the top. OS X has a rock solid foundation that makes Apple's programmers far more productive. The annual upgrades have been worth every penny.

Chris

Not sure what you think it is doing - i.e. it is resizing the actual windows. E.g. if you are playing a movie, the movie continues to play while in tile mode.
I already pointed out that I think the reason why you can't drag & drop onto a tiled-mode window is that the destination might be ambiguous - you can't see very well in a small window where it is that you are dropping the file and for some windows (e.g. Finder windows) that matters a lot.

About the Action button: I recall reading that it was introduced precisely because it was found (via empirical studies) that many users did not use the facilities of the context menus. The Action button gives users a visual target.

As I explained above, even providing the ability to customize the interface comes at a cost in complexity. This cost may not be worth it. We're talking greatest good for the greatest number here. If it makes 4% of the users 20% more productive, but the added complexity makes the remaining 96% of the users 1% less productive, it is a net loss.

I think that's what schneb is saying -- as you drag a file over a window, magnify that window (like the Dock) so you can do more intelligent dropping. When you drag past the edge of the window, it would shrink back down to normal tiled size.

Which makes a certain amount of sense. Of course, I can't guarantee that I interpreted schneb's thoughts correctly.. :)

I don't think that would work very well. With a lot of windows in tiled mode (my usual situation), they would be jumping up and down in my face as I traversed the screen towards my destination window. To avoid this problem, there would have to be a delay - which is precisely the way it works now.

Hmm. I can't say I've used this before, but after a bit o' testing I see what you mean.

In all honesty, I barely use Exposé -- just not used to thinking that way, I suppose.

How about a Finder that actually WORKS!! It drives me absolutely crazy how slow the Finder is to update, even in Panther... It really is inexcusable. Talk about confusing to the average user! "I just saved that to the desktop; where is it???" I've run into that very scenario more times than I care to say. Then there's the fact that file sizes, free disk space, etc can take MINUTES to update!! Why???

Apple: FIX THE FINDER!!!

</rant>

Well, as long as we're doing wish lists, here's mine:

Fix file sharing. From an administrative account I ought to be able to select any folder on any volume and share it to any named account with any permission I want to share it (readonly, drop box, full editing), under whatever resource name I want to give it, by any protocol (SMB, AppleShare IP, oldfashioned plainvanilla AppleTalk; also, incidentally, FTP if I want it) I choose.

Or if it would be administratively easier, let us put a symbolic link to any folder in our home folder such that, when our home folder is shared, the contents of the folders referenced by the symlink appear when the remote user doubleclicks the symlink.

I don't need it much these days (we have Timbuktu extensively installed) and so I actually hadn't noticed until recently how screwed up it is, but file sharing under OS X is worse than anything since System 6.

That's some good stuff Allan, and I agree whole-heartedly.

Let me see if I can clarify how I would like Expose to behave. Picture in your mind's eye that I have four different folder windows open, various sizes and overlapping. I press F9 and all these open windows tile via Expose. Right now, with my finger still pressing F9, I can only "choose" a window for activation. What I WANT to do is select a file in one window and drag it to another. If one of these windows happens to be an application (such as GarageBand), I can drag a file to this application's window.
So basically, all Expose would do is temporarily resize "live and active" windows to the tile mode and then upon release of the hotkey, snap back to its original disorganized state.

The problem is that Exposé has to work consistently no matter how many windows there are. If you have a lot of windows, they will be too small to be able to manipulate objects that are inside those windows without the likelihood of error.

schneb,

The vast majority of the time, don't you know what file you want to act on before you invoke Exposé? If that's true, you simply start dragging the file, THEN invoke Exposé; then you're free to drop it on/in any of the windows that are open. How is this different from what you want (at least in any major way)?

That is a good point, it may be my prejudice to have drag-and-drop work no matter what. That is what seperates what Mac "does" vs. what Windows "attempts". I guess it just seemed lacking to not even give me the ability to do so.
A rousing debate that stayed grounded in good thought process. Well done and have a good weekend!

schneb--

what you are asking already exists. but, you have to initiate the move BEFORE you activate exposé.

i use this daily: grab a file you want to move to another directory. while still holding the mouse button down, hit F9. drag the file to the window you want to move/copy it to; it will come to the front. release the mouse button.

furthermore, i've set F9 to my wheel-button.

it takes a bit of practice to get the dexterity down. but, now i can easily drag, mouse-button-F9, drop.

this isnt a workaround...this is what makes exposé usable for me. i rarely use it in any other situation.

Jeez, I don't even have Panther yet! I really like Jaguar and I haven't had the spare cash to buy Panther.
Teri

You must be a windows user. Finder works far better than anything microsoft ever made, so I don't know what you're looking for, but quit complaining.

I don't use them as buttons, but then again I know a lot of the keyboard shortcuts. I know a lot of people that don't know the power of Get Info, which IMO is very necessary. So providing a button I think is a great idea.

It allows you to set which applications will open which files or kind of files, change permissions, get the size of the file and other interesting info, etc.

v

schneb:
Well, back in the System 7 days there was a spectacularly cool 3rd-party control panel called PopupFolder. Better than spring-loaded folders, better than Exposé, it let you click any volume and thereby invoke a hierarchical menu of its contents; you could reach in and grab a file with a "grab hotkey", then having snagged it drag it onto another volume which would popup its own hierarchical menu so you could drag it for copying or onto any app for launching.

(It also gave you cool functionalities in Open/Save/Save As dialog boxes that only Default Folder has come with in shouting distance of).

As far as I'm concerned, the only improvements needed would be the addition of all volumes to the Finder's contexuttual menu (so you don't need to get to the actual volume) and a the replacement of the System 7 era "grab hotkey" with a control-click or a right-click for multibutton mice users. Give me that and Apple can ditch Exposéé and those silly spring-loaded folders.

Vonleigh:

That was my point. I was arguing with Hayne regarding Interface Design. He said that an interface is better when choices are removed. I felt the opposite was true. So I used a littly hyperbole by saying "Why not get rid of these two button then... I don't use them." The point being, just because I do not use them doesn't mean that others don't as well. The "customize menu" is a very important part of OSX, but it lacks a few important button choices IMHO. And that is why I am hoping Tiger will answer the call.

Allan:

I spent alot of years on OS7 and yet never saw that utility. Cool I guess all my needs were taken care of with my beloved NowUtilities.

I think it actually proves hayne's point. The most important functions are made into buttons, less important than that - menu items with shortcuts, less important than that - simply shortcuts. I don't see how you saying "let's eliminate something I don't use" proves anything at all. Notice I used important instead of popular.

Users don't want too many choices. If you give them too many choices you confuse them. Usually, when explaining computers, I'd go into the details of whatever was asked of me, and it would always confuse them. Nowadays I just tell them what they need to know with little background and they are much happier for it. I don't get into detail unless the user really wants that detail (and very few do).

You may well be right that it's missing some important buttons. Personally I don't even use the buttons so I wouldn't know. But as hayne says it's engineering, it's a tradeoff.

You ask for a button to go one level up. I don't see how that would be very useful, there's already umpteen ways of doing it: If you use column view it's not really necessary as you can see the parent folder, if you navigated to the folder you can use the back button, you can also use the path button and select any of the enclosing folders. Additionally if you know your shortcuts you can press apple-up arrow, or leave the apple key pressed and click on the name of the window (which does the same as the path button).

v

The ultimate self-customization utility, limited only by the user's ingenuity. ;)

That really ought to be possible in that it's already provided to a large extent in Mac OS X Server since at least v. 10.1 (which is--alas!--what I am using for Server). I don't understand why that kind of functionality hasn't been provided on OS X (client) as it's certainly useful and was included on Mac OS prior to 10.0.