James, while I agree with you that Coverflow just seems silly inside Finder, the really important question is: What happened underneath?
Basically, we all know the current Finder sucks. Not just because its UI is crap, but because it still has major issues refreshing information, handling vanished network shares (CRAP, CRAP, CRAP!) etc.
We'll never see a Keynote where Steve comes on stage saying:
"Well, we know this product sucks, but finally we fixed all these little annyoing bugs!"
So let him show us some more or less impressive eye candy and hope the team got some time fixing the more important issues at hand.
Although Apple's track record in that topic is not so great - they are nearly as bad as Microsoft in regard to fixing stuff and making it useful. :-(
Hadley, the iPhone is the nano equivalent of the iPod.
It's nice that we finally have a "true" video iPod, but with 8 (or even 4) GB? wtf??
Apple has to produce a big widescreen iPod with a HD in the high two-digit, possibly even three-digit GB.
What exactly do I need GPS for to remember approved Hotspots? My MBP does a superb job in looking for Hotspots and automatically connect to the ones I approved before and I'll have provided the password before.
Well, the leather is nice, but the most inappropriate thing on a "mahogany boardroom table", besides the iPod, is the headphone cord.
This is a business case where a bluetooth enabled iPod would certainly have its appeal...
Oh yeah, the BeBox. Unfortunately, I just invested a lot of money into a big desktop for OS/2, so I couldn't afford it. I hate myself for that now, it's nearly impossible to get such a machine (at least in Europe). I would spend a lot for one.
You're absolutely right, PathFinder has A LOT of features. Depending on the user, more or less of them should definitely be in the next generation Finder.
I tried to use PathFinder for some time, but unfortunately it is not as nicely integrated into the system as the Finder is. For example, with PathFinder I lose the OS X "killer feature" of klicking in the menu bar of every document-centric application to open the folder in which the document is in. Besides that, there are a few other things were the system or some applications count on the original Finder and don't work as expected with PathFinder.
Unfortunately, PathFinder is not an alternative for me. :-(
It looks like you only want to put one Mac in the best list due to its design, but I (and I'm not the only one: http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/whatever-happened-to-the-applelution/) think this should be the iMac G4. Chris Howard is right, the iMac G4 is THE design icon. Nothing before or after ever managed to be that stylish and useful at the same time. I heard of restaurant chains (in Germany, the Mac-diaspora of all times) that changed to an all-Mac infrastructure because the iMac G4 looked so good on the counter.
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