According to the product’s info page on Versiontracker, Macintosh Explorer (from RAGE Software) provides “an alternative method of browsing your hard drives. The first ever Mac file browser to provide tabbed file browsing, thumbnail picture previews, and filter based file browsing. As well, it provides a familiar interface for file navigation for Windows users converting to the Mac.”
The ad copy further boasts of its “familiar hierarchal, two-pane file view known to Windows users,” and that it “provides Mac users with exciting new options and a totally new file browsing experience.”
I guess Macintosh Explorer is supposed to be a great piece of software, designed for people switch from Windows to Mac, but I just don’t get it. In all fairness to RAGE Software, Macintosh Explorer has been around for quite a while (version 3 was released back in 2002), but I think the natural development of Apple’s own Finder software has passed it by.
Macintosh Explorer is still good software, however, and if the one or two features it has that the Finder doesn’t have are enough to entice you, then the price – sixteen dollars – isn’t bad either.
So what does Macintosh Explorer do? Well, it allows you – just like the Finder – to view your folders and hard drives in icon, list or thumbnail view. The icon view here is a bit more flexible than that provided by the Finder, in that you can enlarge or shrink the icons right from the menu system, as opposed to needing to go into the Finder preferences. Macintosh Explorer also includes its own Info screen for items, similar to the Finder’s Get Info window (but in my mind, not quite as informative).
As mentioned, Macintosh Explorer has tabs, and that’s nice, because tabs almost always help avoid clutter. Still, with file browsing, if I have more than one window open, it’s usually because I want to be able to drag something from one window to the next. For pure file browsing, I think tabs are okay, but not a killer feature.
What I do really like about Macintosh Explorer – and would love to see added to the Finder – is the hierarchal view of the hard drive. The difference in speed isn’t huge, but I like being able to drill down into a folder system without having to open one folder, open the next folder, open the next folder, and finally see my document. It’s much easier to simply click the arrow beside a folder to see what’s inside, in my mind. This would be great in the Finder. Will it be added? Who really knows.
There’s one other feature Macintosh Explorer has that I thought was pretty cool. At first. This is called the shelf. The shelf is a small area that appears in each Macintosh Explorer window, which makes them always available. This is kind of neat, in that those documents are always available, but their use is a bit limited in my view. Once an item is in your shelf you can open it, reveal it in the Finder, show it in a list, get info on it, or remove it from the shelf. That’s it. It would be great if an item could be added to the shelf kind of as a temporary resting point. You could then navigate to an entirely different part of your hard drive, and then drag the item in the shelf to the new area. In this way, the shelf is like a halfway point, but sadly that’s not included.
So I guess while I really do want to recommend Macintosh Explorer (I’m a fan of anything that makes it easier to switch from Windows to Mac), I just can’t. In my book, the Finder is good enough, similar enough, and powerful enough, for most users. Macintosh Explorer is good software, but its days of being better have come and gone. If you really want to switch to something different and more advanced, try out Path Finder.
